Google didn't need any dog and pony show or significant forms of corporate welfare (that we know of) to announce a doubling of their presence in New York.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google-...
The reality is that NYC is not Wisconsin, they don't need to give out money.
EDIT: I'd even go a step further, and predict that both Amazon and Google will also have ludicrously large presences in the DC-NOVA area in 10 years as well. In fact, Amazon's presence in the DC-NOVA area will be even bigger than they initially said it would.
The story of the Foxconn factory, for example, is one of Wisconsin acting as if you can give a bunch of money to a company that smells of technology, and they will plunk a bunch of jobs for highly educated and skilled people in the middle of a region with relatively few highly educated and skilled workers. Which, it never worked that way. It never will work that way.
Companies go to places that can fill their staffing needs. Wisconsin, which has been systematically defunding its education system in order to re-route that money toward corporate subsidies, is undercutting its own ability to fill those staffing needs. I don't know that everyone in the state realizes it, but Wisconsin is stumbling all over itself to become the darling dumping ground for companies that are founded[1] in cities and states with the kinds of intellectual and entrepreneurial ferments you get around well-run and well-funded university systems to put their call centers, distribution centers, big boxes mostly full of robots, and other things they don't want to waste money putting in a more affluent area.
[1] I think "founded" is a key word, here, too. Supporting local entrepreneurship is the key to prosperity. Which mostly means getting out of the way of your entrepreneurs. If you get into a bidding wars to acquire the office where a company puts all their jobs that didn't merit being located at HQ, not only do you end up overspending - the people deciding what to bid aren't playing with their own money, so what else did you expect? - but you're also draining the talent pool that supports their growth.
tl;dr: The cart goes behind the horse.
As long as some places in strategic areas do the incentive thing, it’s hard not to.
It’s difficult though as it’s a prisoner’s dilemma type situation.
Definitely a bad situation and a story told a thousand times in the US
If anything the workers left even more because there was even less attractiveness to be there.
If dumping on ostensible conservatives for wantonly doling out government largesse is wrong, I don't want to be right.
That said, FWIW, the greater context here is an article about New York getting in on the game, too.
Additionally,it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon has seen the obscene amounts of money Microsoft is making pitching cloud security and general technical support to the government, and wants in on it.
Agree with all that, I suspect DC-NOVA will be a whole lot bigger than 25k workers now for Amazon.
I really have no interest in them though. Primarily remote work is the best.
I'm just saying that the smart money is clearly on DC-NOVA in the long term with NYC as the next big winner there.
New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy in 1975, less than 50 years ago.
Detroit’s population started declining as early as the 1950s as companies moved to the suburbs.
New York has a world-class, diverse economy, and I expect it to continue to be a central engine of the American and world economy for our lifetimes, but it does require good stewardship to nurture the economy.
We may be on the cusp of a reversal of the great urban migration of the last several decades, with populations moving into suburban satellite cities as remote work gains acceptance, driverless cars allow for easier commutes, logistics companies and drones allow for easy delivery of goods to your doorstep, and urban housing prices continue to relentlessly outpace wage growth.
The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history. This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly. That deal is gone. But feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it". Maybe it works out great as other companies will lease those buildings and hire a combined ~20k employees averaging $150,000 in compensation, but that's likely not going to happen.
Cut off your nose to spite your face.
There's now way to. Campus expansions are blocked by layers and layers of NIMBYs. The big selling point of the deal was the state government ensuring Amazon would have a campus that could hold 25,000 people.
Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack.
Real growth brings with it real increases in public funding, that can be used to fund real increases in infrastructure demands and demands on other public services.
When a local government has to bribe their way into increasing local business, they tip the scales in favor of one thing (i.e. jobs) while burdening other things (tax base, transit support, etc.)
When companies choose to do business in your area—because it's naturally the best place for them—it functions as a market verification that you're doing something right.
This.
That's exactly why what's now going to happen in NYC is what should happen in all cases. Wish we could get this going in Wisconsin.
It's not going to be organic. Instead, these same deals are going to be spread out to a bunch of other companies, most of which will pay less than Amazon on average and the "subsidies" will take longer to be a net positive.
Again, people confuse bribes with standard deals. Any company is eligible to receive the tax breaks that Amazon was going to. So New Yorkers have really "won" here. Same subsidies paid out to lower paying companies at a significant slower scale and significantly less economic upside.
There's no way to turn this into a positive here.
Only if you assume those other companies collectively hold the same bargaining power that Amazon did, which is an assumption I can't agree with
The biggest aspect of this deal for Amazon was reduced regulatory burden. That was Amazon's actual goal here, the tax offsets were just the icing that every company is going to end up getting by making a major move like this.
I dunno. It seems like an unambiguous positive to me. The giveaway to Amazon was enormous -- so much so that it seems extremely dubious that New York would ever have been able to recoup that money, let alone increase it.
Add on to the fact that if you sold that one car for $25K, you end up with other people who would've paid $30K but now want that same discount, so you may have given away a lot more than $5K.
Well, if you believe Amazon coming to NY was good, it's no more negative or positive than me not winning the lottery today, and I didn't buy a ticket either.
Predicting the future is hard and counterfactuals are tricky, so we may never know which choice was better.
The commodity these days is skilled workforce. Amazon will still be where they can get that commodity, economic incentives aren't needed. Cash is not the limiting factor it is the people they need. It was a smart business move to try to extract some cash too but they did not need that to expand in NY.
There are skilled workforces outside of NY, believe it or not. And they aren't going to go through the regulatory burdens to expand NY to a major campus, since that's really what this was about.
To be clear, since this point is being missed by so many people: This wasn't a special deal outside of the reduced regulatory burden. Any company that meets the eligibility requirements will get these exact same "subsidies".
What happened here is a bunch of local politicians and local people who are absolutely clueless about how corporate tax reductions work pushed against something that's still going to happen just, at least potentially, not with a high paying company like Amazon.
I'm not so sure that people are actually missing this point.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19165374
The grants are all based on the size of the deal, and the reason this one was so large is because the number of employees was so large.
Interesting if true, but I don't think people are going to accept it on your say-so. I recommend digging up a citation.
Is there an article the explains this?
They did a vastly superior job than I could do.
Really? Let look at what was offered:
1 $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and
2 $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP)
3 $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits
4 $505 million in a capital grant
Yes the first 3 are existing programs. But the idea that those sums or anything remotely close to them would simply be made available to any company moving to NY is comical at best. Now lets look at number 4, a 505 million dollar capital grant. That's a pure giveaway compliment of the tax payer. And let's remember that both the city and state governments put together dedicated teams to find this money for Amazon. This was in addition to the work the city and state did for give Amazon data, such as "detailed information on the availability of machine-learning specialists, user-experience designers and hardware engineers."[1]
There is no way any of this is available to "any company moving to NY."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/technology/amazon-new-yor...
> $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP)
That works out to $35,880 per employee that Amazon promised. Per the REAP program website[1], the credits available are $3000 per employee for 12 years. That actually works out to slightly more per employee ($36,000). So yes, any company not currently in NYC that creates 25,000 jobs in one of the designated areas would get the $897MM in benefits.
> $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP)
ICAP is a property tax abatement available to any company willing to redevelop qualifying properties[2]. The value of the abatement is based on the final value of the property and which benefit schedule[3] it qualifies for. Any company willing to put in the same amount of redevelopment in one of the designated areas as Amazon was will get the same abatement value.
> $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits
I don't have the time at the moment to calculate how this was arrived at, but looking at the overview of credits available[4] it appears to follow similar formulas as the NYC programs.
In short, I do not see it as "comical" by any measure that any company offering to create 25,000 new jobs and redevelop hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in designated areas would get these same values. Amazon didn't get these numbers because they were Amazon, but because of the scale of what they proposed to do. Whether that is a good idea to offer to any company is open for debate.
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/benefits/business-reap.pag...
[2] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/finance/benefits/benefits-industri...
[3] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/finance/downloads/pdf/icap/icap_...
>"In short, I do not see it as "comical" by any measure that any company offering to create 25,000 new jobs and redevelop hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property in designated areas "
It sounds like you aren't familiar with NYC. Long Island City has long since been "developed." That building boom started 18 years ago. The volume and velocity of luxury high rises appearing across the East River has been incredible. LIC does not need to be "redeveloped" nor is it some basket case "designated" area that requires incentives and credits to build there.
First of all, these jobs were all white collar. Amazon's current new grad SDE's in NY and SF both have more than $150k in comp. New grads.
Second, the food delivery people for Amazon Fresh are employees of Amazon. The Amazon Flex drivers is what you are talking about, and there is no "mandatory" tip for that service. What you're talking about is something Instacart and DoorDash was doing. Those are entirely different companies.
Down voting because you dislike Amazon isn't a valid reason.
It is also amusing that you consider Amazon's assertion about the job count an iron truth of what would have happened. While Amazon does not have Foxconn's long history of scamming municipalities, there is also no reason to weight their words any higher than other companies who have played this game in the past, and the odds look significantly worse than a sure thing viewed that way.
Finally, the way you win these games is not to play, no different than the continual sports stadium scams or other "let's you and him fight" grifts.
It corrodes discussion badly, and we're trying to stave off that decline here.
In this context, they're referring to the actions of NY (not the comment they're replying to), and TBH, there's nothing personally acidic; it's just a saying.
Moderators have to make these calls. From my perspective this is no different from what we've done thousands of times.
And often when I get votes, there's no signal whether it's due to tone, or content, or whether it's because I'm expressing something that is true, but makes people feel sad (seems to happen a lot, makes no sense to me).
Dan was spot on when saying that this acidity compounds. It leads to a vicious circle of increasingly hostile comments unless someone decides to be the bigger person and break the chain. Having a neutral third party step in to play this role (i.e. a moderator) makes this chain-breaking far more likely and works to all of our benefit.
> feel free to pat yourself on the back for not "falling for it"
is condescending?
Because to me it sounds super condescending, flippant, and dismissive.
And that's the fundamental issue with moderating rhetorical devices. You're assuming you know how the other person intended to say something.
Moderating personal attacks is easy. Because that's not a rhetorical device and it's intent is quite clear.
Anybody who thinks that through should see why it's such a terrible idea. Not even NY can "very quickly" absorb 25k people in a small area without screwing up quality of life for the people who already live there. That's a great way to make real estate prices sky rocket and screw over the existing residents. And it'll completely screw up infrastructure and transportation, because there's not enough money to pay for them when the company causing the issues is getting a huge tax break and not paying their fair share, and they're not things that can be fixed quickly in any case.
> Maybe it works out great as other companies will lease those buildings and hire a combined ~20k employees averaging $150,000 in compensation, but that's likely not going to happen.
If the current residents are qualified for $150k a year jobs then they presumably already have one - it's not like there are 25k unemployed software devs waiting around for companies to move to NY.
That whole competition was a shameful money grab by Amazon and I'm glad it didn't work out for them.
This was over a 10 year period. New York City would have absorbed this just fine. Population projections for the city over that same time span is an additional 600,000 people.
The "small area" that Amazon was relocating to (Queens) is expected to get 150,000 of those people. And we can ignore the assumption that people making 150k a year all want to live in Queens (or LIC) and not Manhattan.
Of course it can. This is New York fucking City, there are literally single buildings with that many jobs in them here.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-amazon-invasion-in-new-...
So the "value proposition" had nothing to do with access to a talent pool of qualified candidates to fill those 25K jobs? Because that would be odds with the reasons Google, FB et al have set up shop in NYC.
>"This tax deal was all about Amazon expanding very quickly."
Yet there was never any specifics of when Amazon would arrive at that mythical 25K job number. The closest you can find to any time qualification is the phrase "within a decade." I guess you have a very different idea of "quickly."
>"The fact that you (and many others) consider this a win is an attempt to revise history."
No the "win" here is not giving out corporate subsidies, more especially to a company that absolutely does not need it. NYC will be just fine without Amazon. There is no shortage of tech jobs in NYC these days. It been that way for over 10 years now.
On the other hand, smaller, not thriving cities may have indeed benefited from attracting an Amazon. But it's a bigger debate whether they would benefit more than the cost they might've had to pay to attract an Amazon.
Do we even have an example on record of a state or city making huge concessions to attract a company and it "completely reviving a city and building up a new ecosystem that funnels in new wealth and new money"?
You're suggesting that another city will generate money and wealth to rival NYC by getting a few Amazon jobs?
Frankly, that would not happen. Maybe if that other city was DC? But, yeah, probably not even then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
There is no place, in the US, that rivals the wealth and power of NYC. Now internationally, that's where you start to get your Beijing's, and your London's, and your Tokyo's, and your Monte Carlo's, and your Paris, and Shanghai's etc. But in the US it's NYC at the center of the preponderance of wealth and power. Only place in a position to make a run at NYC is DC, and they'll need a lot more than Amazon to do it.
(There's also LA and Chicago, but those cities are not as "powerful", nowhere near as wealthy, and to be frank, making a run at NYC is not their ambition.)
Amazon already has a presence in NYC.
Amazon already has an office in New York City, as well as a sizeable presence in New Jersey just outside the city limits (within commuting distance), split between two New Jersey offices, last I checked.
Disclaimer, I'm one of those 5k. Currently I work from home 99% of the time because the office spaces Amazon has in NY aren't fantastic. It would have been nice to have a new headquarters building, but I'll still be enjoying working from home now I guess.
It's pretty amazing how large some of the non-home offices are at these mega tech companies.
How many of those are working in tech? When I interviewed at Amazon NYC in 2016, I think there were only around 100 software engineers there. Has it grown a lot since then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111_Eighth_Avenue
111 8th is a major internet traffic exchange point. It's also gargantuan, it's 2.9 million square feet and occupies a whole city block.
One of the interesting things about 111 8th is that it was designed for much higher than normal pounds per square foot floor loading. Which means that Google could convert the entire thing to datacenter space if they really wanted to. Already a significant portion of it is conditioned datacenter/telecom space run by tenants.
These real estate acquisitions were so large that they explicitly needed to be called out on the quarterly earnings calls to explain why CapEx exploded for that quarter.
At Google's densities, they would never run a datacenter in Manhattan. POPs, sure, like their peering with https://www.peeringdb.com/fac/16, but that's it.
They're more of a managed services provider.
"The Internap expansion represents approximately 1.3MW of additional critical power in a severely constrained downtown NY market.”
https://www.inap.com/press-release/internap-continues-green-...
That was 34000 sqft. Equinix has 36000.
Edit: they had 75K by the time they left. DRT says they have 110K.
Google on the other hand bought 111 8th ave 8 years ago(houses 7K employees) and now they are opening a new space in the same area that will house an additional 12K more employees[1]. That will bring their total to 19K employees in a 10 year time frame.
And this was all done without extracting corporate subsidies and without all the pageantry.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-plans-large-new-york-cit...
> Whereas if you work in LIC it's not like you can really commute into the city from New Jersey or Stamford.
Why not? Take the Path to the E or the metro north to the 7.
LIC will never become a second Midtown because its transport connections are so poor.
In what sense? I used to work in LIC and it was pretty easy to get to. Lots of lines go though Queensboro Plaza.
And god help you the days there are mets games if you're taking the 7.
Could you please edit swipes like that out of your comments here? They acidify discussion. Your comment would be fine without that bit.
Does the city get back more than the 3 billion in concessions and how long does that take?
Would those new Amazon jobs cause 25k people to move to NYC? Or is it more likely to just make the local market more competitive? How would other businesses react? Would they move? Embrace remote? If they increase salary across the board and live with unfilled positions, how does that affect tax revenue? Even if those people do move, how does that influx affect people with lower paying jobs? Will they be pushed out? How does that affect tax revenues?
Those are the kinds of questions I saw raised by opponents, and it seems like there weren't clear answers to them.
Google hasn't committed to anything. Once it does, it will most likely seek the same tax benefits that Amazon did from the pre-existing programs if it qualifies
In NYC there are are tax incentive plans for relocating and hiring that companies can apply for if they qualify. Just because Google doesn’t include that portion in their announcement does not mean they won’t pursue it if they can.
A good article would be one where Google states it won’t take any tax incentives even if it qualifies for it.