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Comment by freditup | Hacker News Reader

> Amazon executives met two weeks ago with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the governor’s Manhattan office, said one of the people briefed on the process, adding that the state had offered potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies

> “I am doing everything I can,” Governor Cuomo told reporters when asked Monday about the state’s efforts to lure the company. “We have a great incentive package,” he said.

> “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” Governor Cuomo said. “Because it would be a great economic boost.”

If these quotes are truly representative of Cuomo's attitude towards Amazon, that's an incredible amount of pandering for the governor of the state containing New York City to be doing. Isn't large amounts of incentives for Amazon essentially a trickle-down economics policy? Interesting to see that Cuomo, ostensibly a progressive, would be for such a thing.

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> that's an incredible amount of pandering for the governor of the state containing New York City to be doing

Pandering is free.

I imagine infrastructure-based incentives will be popular in New York. Large tenants make big infrastructure possible. That enables further density, which means more jobs, more municipal budget and more demand for local commerce. Turning Amazon's HQ2 into the catalyst for building out Western Brooklyn and LIC infrastructure isn't a bad trade for the city. (Tax credits would be tone deaf, but if done in a budget-neutral manner could be okay.)

New York City is a commercial centre. Pragmatism wins votes.

>"I imagine infrastructure-based incentives will be popular in New York. Large tenants make big infrastructure possible. That enables further density, which means more jobs, more municipal budget and more demand for local commerce. Turning Amazon's HQ2 into the catalyst for building out Western Brooklyn and LIC infrastructure isn't a bad trade for the city"

What infrastructure is that exactly?

Long Island City and Greenpoint/Williamsburg have already been absurdly built up by developers over the last two decades.

It's hard to believe an influx of new tens of thousands of individuals to fill vacancies at Amazon is going to produce new train tunnels under the East River or new bridges over it. NYC already has large tenants - Google, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Verizon etc, and the city's infrastructure woes have worsened despite their presence.

I would also imagine that much of the gain in the local tax coffers by the additional work force will be offset by whatever tax deals the city and states extends to Amazon.

This is such a glib response.

- The G train can be elongated and run more often. Signal work can allow it to run more frequently with the F.

- The East Side LIRR extension can be expedited.

- The circumferential freight line can be restored to create a new transit line between Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.

- The L train restoration can be expedited.

All these project are cheap and would increase the livibility of NYC outside of Manhattan, while also shortening commute time to LIC.

>"This is such a glib response."

It's ironic that you have chosen to call my comment glib when you offer nothing but "___ can be expedited." You can't get any more hand-wavey than that. Your comment is the very epitome of glib.

No they can not be "expedited." The highest priority for the MTA right now is upgrading the depression-era signaling, which even under the aggressive rollout that Andrew Byford is advocating will take 10 years. The L train shutdown is already being "expedited" the line will be completely shutdown for almost a year a half starting in a couple of months. You can't really "expedite" much more than that now can you? And even after the repairs its still the same single track tunnel it was before.

My comment was actually thought out and based on decades of observing growth and change in the city. Maybe you don't understand the meaning of the word "glib"?

Thanks for the shoddy dismissal and personal insult, I guess?

It took NYC one hundred years to finish the Second Avenue subway. The MTA is crumbling and can barely maintain the already existing service. The L train shutting down will be a huge blow to the functioning of NYC and if they could bring it back any faster, they would. I wouldn't count on a G extension anytime soon, or on the L repairs magically being expedited.

It's almost impossible to overstate how important the L train is. It is the main artery into the city for absolutely enormous swaths of Brooklyn.

Ferry transportation is also becoming mainstream

Ferry transportation doesn't scale to tens of thousands of commuters though. I think.

The system island ferry carries 70k per day [0]. The San Francisco ferries do almost 10k per day [1].

[0] https://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/225-17/mayor-d...

[1] https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/08/07/vid...

Do the people downvoting this live in NYC? It has massive infrastructure problems.

I took njtransit every day for the last 3 years. It has massive delays, cancellations, derailments, manpower shortages, etc, all the time. Probably at least twice a week you should expect a major delay. (an extra hour kind of delay)

The Subway also has major problems. It's falling apart, chronically late and costs a fortune. But there's no money for fixing it.

They're shutting down the L-Train next year, the main train you take from the most popular places in Brooklyn.

Commuting in NYC sucks and you shoud expect it to get worse.

> Commuting in NYC sucks and you should expect it to get worse.

The secret is to move to Jersey and take the NY Waterway ferry. $272/month, including bus transit on both sides if you need it. While your boat may occasionally be 5 minutes late (like every other mass transit option), they almost never shut down.

I can't speak to the East River Ferry.

I agree with the "move to Jersey" part, but NY Waterway is a truly terrible company.

They fraudulently overbilled the government for ferry services they provided after the 9/11 attacks. Really profoundly sick behavior. [1] [2]

More recently, they've sold their Weehawken depot to a developer -- and then used their lack of a depot as an excuse to shadily land-grab space in Hoboken. They're threatening to put an industrial refueling depot in a spot surrounded entirely by parks, housing, and a university. [3] [4]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/nyregion/ferry-operator-i...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/nyregion/18ferry.html

[3] https://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2018/01/hoboken_mayor_bl...

[4] https://betterwaterfront.org/?p=7820

I agree that it’s a shitty company run by a real life Montgomery Burns. But that whole dispute over the “land grab” strikes me as sour grapes.

Union Dry Dock has been courting buyers since at least 2000 when the Stevens Institute planned to buy it. If it was so important to the city of Hoboken, why didn’t they just buy the land in the intervening decade and a half?

Seems to me that the residents ought to be taking their own local government to task here. It’s like they were holding off indefinitely, under the assumption that they could avoid spending the money, then swoop in when someone else tries to buy it. And then their plan bit them in the ass.

My understanding is that NY Waterway's execs previously owned the Weehawken land where their current depot is, but chose to sell to a developer. Their entire predicament seems to be tied to this decision, of their own making, which they profited from.

Meanwhile in 2017, when Union Dry Dock announced they were winding down their business, Hoboken tried to buy the land, but they could not come to an agreement. Ditto for multiple previous attempts by Stevens, private developers, etc over the years. The value of some of these offers exceeded the amount eventually paid by NY Waterway!

And now the only reason Hoboken can't use eminent domain is that NY Waterway convinced NJ Transit to swoop in and buy the land from them. As a state agency NJ Transit is immune to municipal eminent domain. Yet, NJ Transit does not operate ferries, and never has, to my knowledge. And NY Waterway's execs have state lobbyists and make extensive political donations [1]. This smells corrupt.

[1] https://betterwaterfront.org/?p=7797

Yeah, I'm not sympathetic to either side. And while I have very strong feelings about using eminent domain against private citizens, I'm much less likely to object to it being used against a corporation (though I guess that ship has sailed thanks to the deal with NJ Transit).

From a legal and due process perspective, I'm ambivalent as to how the situation shakes out. There's been enough foolish, lazy and/or shady behavior on both sides that neither has much ground to stand on.

As far as my personal feelings go, I'd rather not see a refueling station built there, but nobody asked me.

Don't forget the best effect of all: even more insane housing prices!

Seriously, Amazon, kindly fuck off somewhere.

Indeed. Many people will say dropping a huge Amazon campus in Queens will adversely effect the character of the city, and exacerbate many of its issues.

I don't necessarily disagree with them, and if it was up to me, I'd rather Amazon land in Dallas that probably needs the jobs more.

However, this will be an objectively good thing for NYC as a center of commerce, and help establish it as a tech hub at a time its local job market isn't doing all too well.

Moreover, I doubt Amazon will game the system so excessively that it won't end up paying in taxes and investment and influx of business and salaries much more than it will receive in tax breaks.

It's unlikely they'll game the system so badly because it's not wise to screw the municipal authorities that can make your life miserable.

>"However, this will be an objectively good thing for NYC as a center of commerce, and help establish it as a tech hub at a time its local job market isn't doing all too well."

NYC is already a tech hub and has been for the last decade at least - Google, FB, Spotify, MongoDB, Pinterest, Bloomberg, Etsy, Salesforce, Seamless, Twitter, MLBAM, Square etc are all in NYC.

NYC's economy isn't doing too well? It grew by 2.7% for the second consecutive quarter in 2018[1]. It's expanding, how is that "not doing too well" exactly?

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/new-york-city-quarterly-...

I am sure Amazon is also already "in" NYC. Having a presence in a important is not the same as moving/adding 50k+ employees/HQ there.

Out of the companies you mentioned I think only Etsy , MongoDB, Seamless are NYC based, all the larger employers such as Google,FB,SalesForce ,Twitter are valley based.

No the companies I mentioned don't just have a presence "in" NYC. Google owns an entire city block with some 5K employees. It's the biggest office outside of Mountain View. Spotify's headquarter are also NYC and that some 3K employees. Sales Force also owns a building in midtown. FB has 10 floors. These are not "satellite" offices.

And the point is that 50K people is not some magic tipping point that is going to fix NYC infrastructure issues.

JP Morgan chase has 15K employees in it new building on 270 Park Ave and guess what, NYC infrastructure woes didn't disappear.

I am willing to bet that Amazon also already has significant presence in NYC, while I don't know exact numbers, a reasonable proxy is their job site, it lists around 600 active openings in the NYC, which means they employ 5-10k employees already.

NYC is way too big for any material impact either way by Amazon on infra, however the tech scene could use the boost, while as you point out there is already significant presence from some major folks, this could be potentially be the start of something much larger

> NYC's economy isn't doing too well? It grew by 2.7% for the second consecutive quarter in 2018.

The economy has been growing at 3.5-4% during this time nationally, so a 2.7% is actually training the national growth by a significant margin.

I don't have have the article handy, but hiring in NYC has been down this year by 3% or so. My unscientific observation is that finance employment in NYC has been in a slow but steady decline since 2008, and unlikely to recover.

NYC was already doing better than most of the country economically. NYC recovered from the Great Recession rather quickly compared to much of the rest of the country.

Perhaps in past years. This year, with the lower growth and decline in job numbers, it's been doing worse.

> I'd rather Amazon land in Dallas that probably needs the jobs more.

Having lived there, disincentivizing jobs and thereby incentivizing emmigration is the best outcome for most people in the DFW area. What a hellhole. "I want to die in Dallas" said noone ever.

I grew up around Dallas, a lot of the suburbs around there are _really_ nice (All-American feel, everybody goes to high school football games, etc.), had a lot of the fastest growing communities in the nation, the economy is booming in Texas, lower taxes, family friendly, and the culture is a lot more neighborly/friendly than most of the places I've lived (our neighbors brought over cookies when we moved in). Curious what gave you the opposite impression?

There are plenty of nice people everywhere.

> cookies

Our neighbors in California let us stay in their house for 3 weeks. For free.

> a lot of the suburbs around there are _really_ nice

If you think suburban sprawl is a selling point for a city, you may want to visit some other places.

> fastest growing communities in the nation

When land is cheaper than free, you're sort of incentivized to build.

> lower taxes > the economy is booming in Texas

Who gets that money? Texas has a fairly regressive system of taxation: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/29392/texas-third-reg...

> family friendly

* Texas is in the bottom quartile of social welfare spending: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

* The climate is brutal (at certain times in the summer it's actually cooler further south).

* The distance to anywhere else is unreal.

I absolutely agree many of the people are absolutely wonderful. I have also been to plenty of high school football games where a lot of racial slurs were muttered in the stands.

Totally agree that there are lots of nice people everywhere. I live in California now and I much prefer the weather, more to do too, and lots of nice people here too. I think you're criteria are a bit different than mine, and you interpret it differently, and that's okay. I'm mainly just pointing out that Texas is actually quite nice for some people and for lots of reasons. If you don't agree or think those reasons aren't important, that's totally fine, but lots of people who live there disagree with you.

It’s funny to me that your example of all American is changing pretty quickly, at least in places with educated parents, since it involves watching children get brain damage.

Hehe, I actually hate football, and my mom never liked it either since she wanted us to have brain cells and such (we all played basketball instead), but I give it as an example of a community thing people did and supported. Totally agree on that point though.

Dallas is not a hellhole, yea may be a couple of months in Summer. I am confused about Dallas being a contender, but Texas Enterprise Fund usually makes a hard to refuse offer. Still, do not think Amazon is going to land here. Having said that, Dallas in a logistical center, especially it has become a national distribution point for goods coming from Mexico to US. It also makes sense if Amazon is splitting HQ2 into two smaller one, instead of having two HQs in East Coast, might as well send one part to central timezone.

Given Amazon's workforce demographics the optics of a very Red state don't look good.

It does if they enforce their non-discrimination policies. The oppressed need jobs too.

Also, news media's love of simplification has really twisted people's view of states other than their own. Georgia is about as "blue" as California or New York, but most of it is concentrated in a few counties in Metro Atlanta amid 159 state-wide. People mistake resolution for politics.

If an alleged "blue" state had as many counties as Georgia, those county election maps would look awfully red too. But since they don't, the counties that lean D take up more space, and the extremes on both ends are attenuated in a larger pool so red doesn't look as red.

The south in particular is notorious for having lots of counties. It was a way to get more money during Reconstruction. There's a reason the most prosperous former Confederate states have more counties even if you exclude those formed post-Reconstruction.

But its perception that counts if your asking people to move to a new area especially if your recruiting internationally

And also living in a small liberal eclave isn't that appealing.

The aforementioned Atlanta metro is the 9th largest MSA in the US (just ahead of Boston).

So not really a small liberal enclave.

I think the person you replied to started working on their reply in the time I added everything after the first line.

Assuming that they don't want to import a bunch of blue folks to Seattle (college hires)

I suspect that a lot more people want to work in NYC "the city that never sleeps" than Dallas "home of Jr Ewing"

Dallas gets a lot of (imo, undeserved) hate, but I'm curious as to why you didn't like it?

It effectively puts them in the heart of government and business. In hindsight it’s a pretty strong choice. Really wish they had chosen somewhere that really needed work though.

> I'd rather Amazon land in Dallas that probably needs the jobs more.

Nah, jobs are definitely not needed and there is already an influx of large out of state companies moving in. I will say with the rapidly expanding suburbs coupled with the lack of culture or protectionist policies due to everyone around being transplants anyways, it could absorb it (assuming we're not talking about Dallas proper but outside of the city which is where most companies reside).

Cuomo isn't a progressive.

> Interesting to see that Cuomo, ostensibly a progressive, would be for such a thing.

Cuomo literally engineered a Republican majority in the state senate, even though the Democrats had been elected to the majority, so that he wouldn't be pressured to sign overly-progressive legislation before his 2020 run.

I would love for Amazon to actually take him up on this. It would be an great illustration for all time of politicians being in the back pockets of corporations.

I think we should tease all politicians offering tax breaks to corporations that they might as well say their first name is "Amazon".

I think we should have a federal legislation, (allowed under the interstate commerce clause), banning the current race to the bottom for states and municipalities to offer tax breaks to corporations. Sure we'd have to still deal with companies leaving the US but the leverage is different there and it'd be a start. Am I wrong?

Surprised to see Cuomo go on record with that quote given how it will be used against him when he runs for President.

Interesting enough, he did not have to make these concessions, Amazon wants to come to NY, regardless.

"This will be New York or it will be DC - Prof. Galloway, Feb 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3baKe4B3eyI

It's conservative to let people keep what they earn. It's progressive to take from people (tax) and give to Amazon in the form of subsidies.

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