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Seriously. Google owns the fourth largest building in NYC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue

This is why HQ2 is in Long Island City though, because that's how economic development programs work. Cities give incentives to minimize the risks involved in locating in a less desirable location.

It absolutely would've been smarter for amazon to remain in midtown like they currently are since it would be much easier to recruit from the suburbs many existing tech workers live in, but they would've lost over a billion of the incentive dollars they got in the process.

Cuomo's just looking for new innovative ways to take money out of the MTA budget. The fact that there will be more people trying to ride the 7 train just puts icing on the cake.

This is not a travesty. This is cementing NYC as the place to go on the east coast if you want to work in tech, and helping to diversify the NYC economy away from being so heavily dependent on finance.

Wouldn't it be nice if your options for working in tech didn't consist of a handful of large banks and hedge funds?

What you describe is already the status quo in NYC. Every large tech company is already here and has been.

NYC needs more diversity outside of finance.

This potentially puts NYC on top for retail again. I think incentives and payments for this purpose is a meh idea, it if you’re going to do it, bet on a winner.

Imagine giving $48,000 to 25,000 small business owners over 10 years instead.

They already do this, the excelsior tax break among other community development incentives are available to any employer that wants to locate in long island city. Small employers are probably less effective at leveraging these things, but nothing amazon is getting isn't totally open to the public.

You can to some extent. The compliance requirements are daunting for many businesses.

retail of what?

> NYC needs more diversity outside of finance.

The beauty of NYC is that it is not singularly focused like SF is. Media, Fashion, Finance, Tech all call NYC their home.

That's right but may be NYC is trying to avoid becoming another Chicago?

The city wants to develop a new business district in LIC.

So if the numbers are so small, why does it matter that this tax deal exists then.

I think most of the hate is fueled by emotional anger at the rich due to increasing inequality in the USA, even though this investment in NYC is a positive for it when you look at it rationally.

> why does it matter that this tax deal exists then.

He's saying the tax breaks provide create no gain for the city, but he's not disputing they're valuable to Amazon.

They're also not valuable to taxpayers, who are being forced to subsidize one company without the opportunity to voice their opinion a priori.

Finally, there's the incremental point that countless other entrepreneurs are not enjoying these same benefits. Not the biggest issue with it, but an important one nonetheless.

How does it help anybody outside NYC?

To what extent should that be a major concern of NY legislators?

> How about instead, Cuomo gives me and any other startup founder who's been in Brooklyn or Queens for decades $48,000 for every job we've created, and we tell Amazon to go fuck themselves.

Why don't you use your leverage as a job creator to go to a town and get similar benefits since clearly you will bring the same level of benefits to that town? Or do you recognize your lack of mobility and limited investment in your town may result in a less favorable negotiating position. It's like wondering why a used car dealer gave a better deal to someone w/ a better trade in.

>> This giveaway is a goddamm travesty. How about instead, Cuomo gives me and any other startup founder who's been in Brooklyn or Queens for decades $48,000 for every job we've created and we tell Amazon to go fuck themselves.

So true. The rent in NYC is already very high. What kind of lifestyle can a blue collar worker afford in NYC? Obviously the only winners here are corrupt politicians and greedy Amazon execs. They should all be jailed.

> Obviously the only winners here are corrupt politicians and greedy Amazon execs. They should all be jailed.

You can dislike tax incentives if you want to, but the hyperbole is so over the top it becomes radical, divisive, noise.

We need less of this in these discussions.

The division is real and worsening. It's not an imaginary concept that we can choose not to discuss.

Discussing can be productive.

Calling for a blanket incarceration of legislators and Amazon executives is not.

My god, you're bitter for a startup founder! As a veteran founder myself, I'd be excited: this brings talent to fuel my startup, this brings interactive infrastructure, etc.

Amazon and Google are not regular employers: your startup pays outlets in taxes and mooches off infrastructure. The big companies find that with real profits.

Finally, $48k/employee is peanuts to a big city startup, and typically that kind of money is available from accelerator/etc programs.

> " this brings talent to fuel my startup,"

Yes it brings talent. But that doesn't mean such people are startup talent.

It's also going to drive up demand for housing (read: the cost of housing). So for those __not__ employed by one of these, the question becomes: how much __startup-centric__ talent are they driving __out__ of your area?

Long to short, the market is being manipulated, and it's being manipulated by the government. The gov created the house bubble and the student loan bubble. If there are examples of the gov manipulating the market and that ending well for taxpayers, I'd like to read about it.

We're literally giving New York tax money to the richest man in the world, who lives somewhere else, instead of spending it on the subway, or parks, or schools, or literally anything. If you're not outraged you're not paying attention.

As it happens I don't have a Silicon Valley venture backed profitless startup, I have a company that gets paid money to do work and makes a healthy profit. I've paid very considerable taxes in NYC for 20 years.

Now, literally, they are handing them to Jeff Bezos in exchange for nothing. That area of LIC would just be something else instead. We don't need these guys to bring "talent" this is literally New York City, a giant magnet that has drawn the most talented people on the planet for at least a hundred years.

Cuomo is an obvious crook and has been since conception, and this deal sucks. I see no reason not to point that out.

Richard Wolff in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTth4Rb25H4 does a good job of concisely making the points on just how bad a deal this is for New York and Virginia (which are together funding over half of the costs of this project -- $5.5B versus Amazon's $5B according to the New York Times) -- and all for an estimated 2,500 jobs in New York. Here's what he said:

This is a shocking display. What they are calling a government-private partnership is nothing of the sort. It's a public subsidy to Amazon. The New York Times reported $5 billion in this project will be invested by Amazon. $5.5 billion dollars will be invested by New York and Virginia. That is a subsidy of over 50% of the cost of this project. We the taxpayers will be either paying higher taxes to fund this private company, among the richest in the world, or, if we don't get our taxes raised, the government will deliver fewer services to us because it has given this enormous subsidy to a company. $5 billion from Virginia and New York where Mr. Bezos, the owner of Amazon, is himself the owner of $160 billion. He didn't need it, the company doesn't need it. We are being asked to subsidize. All of the profits will go to the private companies and their shareholders. We, the public, will be funding more than half of this project. Shame is what Mr. DeBlasio ought to feel rather than posing in the PR as if he has delivered something. [...]

The projected number of jobs in the New York area from this is 2,500. That's a very small number and will have no effect on the unemployment problem of this city [New York City] it's just too small and that's not a surprise [...] because the kind of work Amazon does is highly automated; it uses machines for 90% of what it does. And half of the people it's likely to have working in New York will be brought in from other parts of the Amazon empire.

Fascinating link. In it, Amazon lists the FAA first in its list of access to key stakeholders.

They must be really serious about drone delivery...

Isn’t the projected number of jobs 25,000?

It's tough for me to say because I've read multiple estimates and they vary by a factor of 10. Amazon's promises https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/amazon-selects-new... are one thing, what actually happens as the deal is approved and implemented is another.

I don't take Amazon's numbers seriously until they show that they will live up to their own hype. If Wisconsin's Scott Walker was elected on making 250,000 new jobs in 2010 he has fallen far short of that. One of his job-creating deals was Foxconn, something he used to tout heavily but tried to shy away from when he last ran. Foxconn's 13,000 (I'm assuming human) job figure for Wisconsin hasn't been met. I'll believe it when I see it but I still don't see how New York is getting a fair deal in this; it seems like they have no problem attracting businesses to their city and don't need to give nearly as much as they are.

Here's another interview with Wolff:

Transcript should arrive here eventually: https://therealnews.com/stories/amazon-gets-3-billion-in-ny-...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlECXGQfVyY

Some of the highlights of the jobs points that makes it clear the exact figure of the promised number of jobs is virtually irrelevant precisely because so little is asked of Amazon here:

- Ben Norton says that in 2017 NYC gained over 72,000 new jobs. Therefore the money NYC is giving Amazon with virtually no strings attached effectively buys them about 4 months of job growth. That's a remarkably low number of jobs for such a large amount of money.

- It's not even clear if the 25,000 jobs are new jobs or if Amazon will shift workers from one location to HQ2. This means New Yorkers are subsidizing job movement for extant employees.

- There are no performance guarantees for Amazon in this -- if Amazon doesn't add the promised number of jobs, or if those jobs turn out to be significantly less attractive (perhaps near minimum-wage jobs, it takes Amazon a decade to add these jobs, or the jobs are done remotely thus pitting New Yorkers against the rest of the world) there's no penalty for Amazon to pay. No Amazon profit-sharing to NYC.