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Comment by dumbfounder | Hacker News Reader

Amazon workers are highly paid, thus bringing the average income up, and contributing to taxes, strengthening the housing market, and much more. That's interesting that you call it pollution. High paying tech jobs are pollution? That doesn't compute to me.

Companies that compete for talent will be pissed, but for lots of others it's a huge win. The only way I see it as a "bad" thing is if you are in a small city that wants to remain small.

It's absolutely nothing like building a McDonalds.

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> contributing to taxes

Well, not in the case of Chicago http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/amazon-hq2-c...

> strengthening the housing market

Like the strong SF housing market which nobody can afford?

> strengthening the housing market, and much more. That's interesting that you call it pollution.

Talk to anyone who grew up in Seattle or SF pre-tech boom and you might find a different perspective. I think it's worth considering that while it's great for us in tech it's not like it's a net-win for everyone else.

If you work in an industry outside of tech(or a part of tech that doesn't track payscales like the game industry) you may get pushed out of a city/metro just by nature of the impact tech has.

But on the flip side, I can't imagine that people living in Detroit were thrilled by the decades of urban decay there.

I think I'd rather live in a city that's so popular that infrastructure can't keep up than to live in a city where entire neighborhoods are empty and are razed due to neglect and criminal activities.

Good point, but is it not true Detroit was a biz and tech center last century?

It's not a binary choice. The sweet spot is in the middle.

but sometimes it is a binary choice. Leaders can see their community dying after the former big industry left -- with lots of luck and years of a strong economy they may be able to attract some replacement industries that keep the town prosperous (but not not overly so).

Or they can hit the "Amazon lottery", bringing in billions of dollars of investment and 50,000 high paid jobs (plus all of the ancillary jobs to support these high paid workers).

So a community could very well face a binary choice.

> and 50,000 high paid jobs

Er, “as many as 50,000 high-paying jobs” is what Amazon claims HQ2 is planned to grow to over an unspecified time horizon. “As many as...” is marketing weasel words for “for some number definitely not exceeding, and probably much smaller than...”; it sets an upper bound, but counts on people treating it as an expected level.

> Leaders can see their community dying after the former big industry left -- with lots of luck and years of a strong economy they may be able to attract some replacement industries that keep the town prosperous (but not not overly so).

That's overly hopeful. I doubt Amazon will seriously consider a dying ex-company town that needs the investment. My bet it's going to pick someplace that's already doing pretty well, overall.

My in-laws sold their house in Saratoga for more than 10x what they paid for it, and are quite happy with that result.

> strengthening the housing market

Which is a unmitigated benefit only to some current real estate property owners and an almost-entirely unmitigated cost to everyone else.

Especially all the renters, which is almost the entire Millenial generation.

"Strengthening the housing market"

Other than code for "making everything much more unaffordable", what does this mean?

And yeah, it's pollution for those who don't have high paying tech jobs. There are more people living in those cities than Amazon employees; their interests and needs need to be taking into consideration as well.

I would rather live in a housing market that continues to increase rather than one that goes up and down with the wind.

If the price of housing always increases, how is anyone who's younger than you (and not richer than you) supposed to be able to afford a house?

Unaffordable is relative. If HQ2 brings thousands of high-paying jobs with it, plus creates an ecosystem where tens of thousands of other good paying jobs are created, housing can become more affordable to more people while rising in price.

Owning a house has been a part of the post-WW2 American dream for good reason, and it should remain so. And people buying homes should want their property to retain value

Except none of that helps someone who doesn't have one of those Amazon jobs, and sees their rent soar anyway.

> Unaffordable is relative. If HQ2 brings thousands of high-paying jobs with it, plus creates an ecosystem where tens of thousands of other good paying jobs are created, housing can become more affordable to more people while rising in price.

Shouldn't this have played out just like that in SF then?

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