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Comment by raiyu | Hacker News Reader

After being a resident of NYC for 30 years and seeing the city change and become a technology hub and just a financial center I think this is a real loss for NYC.

It would also be in Long island City which would provide a huge influx of new workers and move that neighborhood forward in development rapidly. The down side would be that it would push some residents and business owners out but this is simply a fact of life in NYC where on a long enough time line every undesirable neighborhood eventually become desirable simply because of increase in residents and increase in real estate prices. That would also conversely make adjacent neighborhoods more attractive.

As for the tax breaks those would eventually be off set and it would still be cheaper than the amount that was spent on a useless Subway line that took a decade and really added no real capacity where it mattered.

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LIC is one of the most heavily redeveloped areas in the city with 40+ story towers popping up like candy. It didn’t need a development boost.

In fact they tore up an existing redevelopment plan for HQ2

I expect the number of tech workers and high income workers will be much less without hq2.

Although I hope that it’s a bustling tech hub in 5 years.

Not all of those 25k jobs are highly paid tech workers. There will still be highly paid workers living there as they do now, commuting to Manhattan.

Not all, but very many will be highly paid.

My comment is about tech workers working in that area. I think this is better for that area to have highly paid workers in remote queens who can live or commute in.

There’s already a ton of tech companies in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The new change would be to have a tech hub in LIC.

Better for who? Better how? Queens is already richly diverse in both income and in every other category worth listing. There is nothing that the borough lacks that mythical tech workers will bring in their wake.

On the contrary, much of what makes Queens quite unique is threatened by the one thing we know would follow on the heels of something like an Amazon HQ landing here: even more heated real estate speculation fueled by absentee capital, small businesses losing their leases, rent hikes, and general homogenization.

Nothing about Queens needs to be preserved in amber, but neither does anything about Queens require some intervention to bring up to par. Possibly public transit but that is true of every borough.

I meant better for people who don’t want to commute into the city, better for the tax base.

Certainly it will increase property values but I don’t think it will be absentee capital as the demand will be driven by something that requires occupancy, working at hq2.

Maybe Queens doesn’t require intervention, maybe it does. Since there’s no hq2 we’ll close to seeing the contra factual of not having this intervention. Maybe the area grows substantially without it.

The redevelopment plan they scrapped was much much smaller than what Amazon was proposing. Several city blocks smaller.

The bottom line is that the Amazon deal had very broad support in NYC, and a very vocal irrational minority just ruined it for everyone.

How many jobs are in LIC though? This would've been a massive boon to the LIC and the NYC job market without the added congestion that putting these jobs in Manhattan would've caused. Manhattan is already at/over capacity, but I don't think the Manhattan -> LIC rush hour subway is.

I don't think it's reasonable to think that most people working at HQ2 would have been doing a reverse commute from Manhattan into LIC. It's equally likely that they would just be crowding the already crowded trains heading through LIC to Manhattan.

If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster.

Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and LIC, so much smoke blown on both sides it's hard to say ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

If they want to sell and support AWS to bigcos in NYC they are going to need a major presence regardless, not sure how much sense it makes for their other businesses to have a big HQ in NYC.

"[..]$100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard,[..]"

It's possible to be both at the same time.

They are also aggressively expanding into display ads, and the epicenter of the display ads ecosystem is in NYC. A lot of the hiring in tech they do in NYC was for ads positions.

$100k in taxes is maybe 6.5 yrs of a tech worker's state income (using 6.85% state income tax @ 220k/yr).

That's before other taxes, like property (directly or indirectly through rent), sales, etc.

They don't need 25k jobs to support AWS clients in NYC. It's not like they're supporting on-site installations.

Usually 1 job means 1 person-year worth of work. So 6.5 years of a tech worker would usually mean 6.5 jobs.

The jobs also tend to include things like construction workers, etc. So if you hire 500 people to build the place over 2 years that's 1,000 jobs created.

Tax abatements like this are a serious antitrust issue as well. Smaller competitors don't have the political clout to get tax breaks like this, will have to pay more, will pass those costs onto customers, and won't be as competitive.

We're all going to have to do something for the people at the actual bottom once we cater to the people racing to the bottom. The people that can't afford to live at the bottom of NYC also can't afford to move their families to Central African Republic and run the tshirt machines producing stuff they ship back where they came from.

The USA already has a tax structure in place. Amazon could afford to pay the existing taxes if they wanted to. Heck, they're paying their tax accountants to figure out how not to pay those taxes. Why doesn't Amazon just buy, say, Nebraska, and set up shop there?

UBI, livable wages, raise estate and corporate taxes, operable unions without "right to work" (for less) / union-busting laws, more worker-owned co-ops and integrated standard-of-living net that lifts instead of treating people like criminals.

But first, getting rid of the corporate capture of both major political parties, elected officials, government and policy-making is a precondition to do anything to reverse the neoliberal, cannibalistic anarcho-capitalism inverted totalitarianism being forced on us.

I would also like some flying pigs and entropy reversed with my order of complete fantasy.

Im not saying its wrong, but us muggles worth less than countries have no real, meaningful say in the future at this, and to be fair also at most other, points in history.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez & Bernie Sanders openly espouse many of those ideas and are two of the most popular politicians in America. These ideas have a tremendous amount of traction and their advocates are getting closer to the centers of American power. This isn't a complete fantasy -- it's not an inevitably, but it is absolutely a viable part of political discourse & struggle

Even if one of them were elected president - which, again, faces staunch resistance by the olgiarch controlled DNC - a vast majority of congress is bought and paid for by globalist interests.

The Occupy Wall Street movement was probably the last possible chance to correct course. Further attempts need to somehow capture a greater mindshare than the immediate aftermath of Bush's imperialism, wanton greed and corruption throughout the federal for thirty years across four presidents, the desolation of the working class, and the unabased billionaire wellfare that bailouts represented.

We are now a decade later into corporate and wealth consolidation, a decade after Citizens United, another decade of corporate media brainwashing the "average" American into compliance and obedience. And this is a global conglomerate of business that will deter and influence all governments and societies to bow to their interests. The only way out at this point is an internal struggle between these private men and women of influence between those who have ethics and the interests of humanity at heart and the majority.

This is extremely fatalistic. I agree that the system is severely flawed, but your conclusion that struggle for a better country is pointless is hopeless, and is not shared by a lot of the country. for many people, political struggle is necessary. This sort of fatalism is only really a tenable position when your livelihood is not at stake.

Fully agreed. And if you don’t like the people in Congress, start volunteering for people you think are good. Or make yourself into one of those people. It’s not fast, it’s not easy, but it is possible. And fight for law changes that will help change - I would highly suggest advocating for ranked choice voting.

the issue for me is that the main benefit of the tax breaks is capitalized by owners of AMZN stock, mainly Bezos, the wealthiest man in the world. AMZN is going to grow somewhere, they should pay taxes where they grow.

Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless at least this we can continue to make NYC a powerhouse tech center.

And it's in Long island City not in Manhattan like Facebook and Google.

> Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless

Evidently not. Their tax break in Northern Virginia was not nearly as egregious (northern VA resident here; I'm totally fine with what we're paying for what we're getting). By contrast, what they were getting for LIC was insane.

And by not having anyone else lined up and by looking at the backlash over the size of the tax break, I'd be surprised if anyone else approached that amount, so it doesn't look like they'll get that tax break regardless.

> Yeah but they will get that tax break regardless

I just don't understand this argument. It's like "Someone's gonna get fucked, so I'd prefer it be me."

That tax break is real money. Money that your community will not be able to spend on education, infrastructure, police, parks, all the things that make a place worth living in. Why would you hand that over to a company that doesn't need it?

I rather the money go to bringing tech jobs to NYC and making it a true technology hub then leave it in the hands of the city to spend billions on useless subway lines that are 3x the construction cost of anywhere else in the world:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...

Ah yes, "useless" subway lines that carry [checks notes] 5.6 million trips a day.

I'd rather have money go towards our public transit system, no matter how fucked up it is at the moment, than spend another cent on bringing tech jobs that will come here no matter what. NYC's been a "true technology hub" for a long time, regardless of one giant company deciding to abstain from coming here.

Referring to the second avenue extension.

Why is everyone doing this ‘checks notes’ bit all of a sudden? It’s all over Twitter.

People want to live and work in NYC in part because of those useless subway lines. There is no need for NYC to hand out taxpayer money to any company. Companies will come regardless.

Increasing density isn’t going to make subway lines cheaper by the way.

+1. I've fallen in love with NYC over the past few years in no small part due to the transit system working well enough for me to explore all around it comfortably.

> That tax break is real money.

Sure, but it's real money that your community doesn't get either way.

You're living in a fantasy world if you believe that the choice was legitimately between "Tax money and 25,000 jobs" or "No tax money and 25,000 jobs." No, the choice has always been between "No tax money and 25,000 jobs" or "No tax money and no jobs." You're not getting the tax money either way. Either Amazon builds with subsidies and you get no tax money from them, or they go elsewhere, and you get no tax money from them.

Your decision is really between "Do you want 25,000 jobs, or not?" 25,000 jobs whose incomes that can be taxed. 25,000 jobs that are going to shop at local stores, pay for local gas, pay local rents, raise local property values, and so on.

And that choice is pretty damn clear.

I disagree. Amazon does not have as many choices as it would seem from the outset. Perhaps NYC is no longer going to get an HQ2 with 25k jobs, but Amazon will be expanding there regardless of subsidies.

The talent required is not evenly spread throughout the cities that bid on HQ2, and a world-class city like NYC does not need Amazon as much as Amazon needs them.

That's one way to look at it.

Another way would be that only taxing the jobs, and all the economic activity they might generate would still not cover the strain that the company would put on the local system.

Now they need to start taxing Wall St. heavily.

Except it's not really just 25,000 jobs, right? It's increased stress on already struggling infrastructure. It's higher prices and increased gentrification in the same neighborhood that has the largest public housing development in the entire country. It's people who will need mail and emergency services and schools for their kids.

All those things cost money. Usually, that money would come from taxing residents and local businesses. But given that we've agreed that the city wouldn't be getting that money, it's not at all clear that those 25,000 jobs would be a good thing.

> Your decision is really between "Do you want 25,000 jobs, or not?"

Except that's not the choice either - as others have pointed out. If Amazon doesn't build something in NY, some one else will over the same time period. Will it be more or less than 25,000 jobs? Who knows. But NY is already an attractive metropolitan area judging by its density and property value. It's not a struggling rural town that can't attract talent and capital.

You make it sound like the city has a throughput of X new jobs per year that it allows to be created. There is no such limit. Without Amazon it's necessarily 25K fewer jobs than there would have been with Amazon.

Jobs for whom? Not the vulnerable members of New York, jobs for upper middle class yuppies like you or me or nearly anyone on this site from the rest of the country. People in Queens aren't stupid, they know what the impact of Amazon would be and how it absolutely would not benefit them.

And almost certainly because of this struggle, the next City they try and go to isn't going to give them nearly as sweet a deal. They will demand more. Struggles like this are effective.

Thanks for saying this. People are forgetting the effect this move was going to have on locals. I am very dubious of the Queen's polls saying things like 70% approval. A dear friend of mine does social work and volunteering with inmates and was telling me how all their families were scared as hell at getting priced out.

NY does not need 25k jobs, it's growing fast. So no, it'll be better off with real tax paying businesses. Maybe they'll start slower, but it won't be a problem.

So no, that's NOT the choice to be made. That choice is something you've pulled from nowhere.

So if you assume government costs scale linearly per person (which is actually probably opimisic) and then you turn down a bunch of money a company would normally pay as they're bringing in dump trucks of people from out of state, that's a pretty good way to ensure under investment in things like infrastructure and other public needs at best, or the situation where you shove the tax burden on to existing (in this case lower-income on average) residents.

I just really hated the setup. All amazon would repeat was "We're bringing thousands of jobs! Look at all the big projects we promise to do!"

Well why is trusting you to build parks better than just spending your tax money on parks? Why do we need a new indirection in that process?

It's temporary. The city was projected to get back $25bn in tax revenue on the deal, and the initial outlay paid back in a few years. Amazon had also agreed to completely redevelop the waterfront of LIC. For the long term, the deal absolutely made sense.

These we're existing tax programs.

Regardless of what Amazon does, a for profit company is going to receive those tax breaks. They are available to anyone who meets the qualifications.

So it isn't "handing over" anything that isn't going to be handed over to a company already.

Depends. If nothing is being constructed on that site like HQ2 then you won't get the money you 'lost' on the tax break. Unless these tax breaks include refundable tax credits?

>That tax break is real money. Money that your community will not be able to spend on education, infrastructure, police, parks,

You run a store. You put up a sign offering a 50% discount. I walk in the store and you tell me there is no discount. I walk out. Guess what? You didn't get any money and I didn't get anything out of the deal.

Amazon backing out of HQ2 doesn't mean you get to keep the money. You never had the money.

What if you came in and bought something at a discount and then took way more than you payed for...

That's more like what they were going to do.

How is Amazon taking more than what they paid for? Think of a building with apartments for rent. Half the apartments are empty and the building is falling apart because the rent doesn't cover repairs. The building manager offers new renters 20% off for a year. The existing renters protest and the new renters back out. You don't suddenly end up with more money to cover repairs.

No one is saying that money is being produced out of thin air.

Think of it this way. Walmart doesn't pay some of their employees enough to survive, so those employees get food stamps. Walmart makes enough profits to pay those people the equivalent value in food stamps, but they don't. It can be said that the government is giving Walmart some amount of money because Walmart's profits are higher because of the food stamp expenditure.

The federal government is not sending money to Walmart via a bank transfer, but there is an exchange of money taking place.

Now think about this in terms of city services. Twenty five thousand employees would not pay enough taxes to make up for what they use in city services combined with what the organization uses. Certainly not 3 billion dollars worth. In that sense, the 3 billion dollars could be seen as NY basically paying Amazon to give 25K professional class people jobs. There are other social side effects that are hard to assign a dollar value to.

Does that make more sense? No one is saying that money would come from no where. It helps if you assume for a moment that your ideological opponents are actually smart people who aren't just deluded, but that they have an interest that is actually in opposition to "your side".

Real estate is a finite resource. NYC isn't some dying rust belt town, someone will setup shop where Amazon planned to, and they will pay taxes that Amazon thought they shouldn't have to pay.

When there are hundreds of towns in the US able to offer tax breaks to get companies to relocate you're never going to persuade everybody to not defect. It would be nice if there could be some enforceable agreement put in place but as far as I can tell US federalism prevents that.

Wouldn't you rather existing NYC residents build new companies to make it a tech center?

You're just letting the giant school bully take over your neighborhood for below market value (due to the massive tax breaks) and declaring "Look! We're a tech center!"

Why don't you think existing NYC residents would want to work at Amazon?

> below market value (due to the massive tax breaks)

I don't see how "below market value" follows from "massive tax breaks". Are you implying that the standard tax rate is somehow determined by the market? Because it's not, and "market value" is whatever the market is willing to pay for it. Unless they have someone other than Amazon offering the same benefits for less, then Amazon offer was market value.

Because they're essentially paying: market value - value from future tax breaks discounted to current value

It's not mainly Bezos. It's mainly investment/index funds - entities that that hold people's saving and retirement accounts.

The stock is down 0.61% today. Effectively flat, especially in a well diversified retirement account. It’s still up 2.8% WoW

The point stands — it's taking money out of the pockets of NYC residents, and delivering it to AMZN shareholders.

Playing Devil's advocate, these were tax cuts on new jobs and business. And even with that the income to the city coffers would be greater even in the short term.

Tax cuts/credits are not taking money of NYC residents. Actually the residents will get less money than if the deal was made. I hope this is obvious.

It is clearly not obvious: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19163755

Would the tax breaks eventually be offset? Amazon paid zero federal tax for the last two years running. They're experts at tax avoidance. I don't see any reason to assume they wouldn't do the same in NY.

All new employees would've paid income and sales taxes.

But it's also not the case that the increase of "income and sales tax payers" for NY would be zero without Amazon, so the benefit would have to take that baseline into account. It's not an easy calculation, and there are reasons beyond pure money as to why you wouldn't want an Amazon HQ.

all people who would qualify to work at Amazon getting 150k per year are already working somewhere making something close to that. this was not going to change employment rate or boost income taxes. this was going to drive housing prices, especially rent thru the roof though.

> all people who would qualify to work at Amazon getting 150k per year are already working somewhere making something close to that. this was not going to change employment rate or boost income taxes. this was going to drive housing prices, especially rent thru the roof though.

Those people might not currently be in NYC, and they might have moved to NYC to work for Amazon. NYC would have received more income tax revenue if high earners moved there from somewhere else.

At least one of the following would have to be true for that to follow: new people would have to move to NYC specifically for Amazon (or to fill vacancies created by people leaving other companies to work at Amazon), or otherwise-unemployed people would have to become employed because of Amazon, or the people taking Amazon jobs would have to be paid more than they otherwise would. None of these would be guaranteed, though. Unemployment in NYC is already low, and there are significant impediments to moving to NYC unrelated to hiring (high cost and limited availability of housing, for instance). It might well be that the same people would end up employed regardless, just at Amazon instead of elsewhere, and other employers would just have higher vacancy rates. These same people would then produce less total revenue for the city/state because more of the taxes they would have been paying regardless would go to subsidizing Amazon.

How much increase in tax revenues will NYC get now that they’ve scared off their expansion? NYC is not responsible for Amazon’s success and is not entitled to a share in their revenue via taxes.

Claiming that they are simply because they want to expand and hire into their market does not result in successful outcomes for either party.

> new people would have to move to NYC specifically for Amazon (or to fill vacancies created by people leaving other companies to work at Amazon)

This has certainly been true for Seattle, fwiw.

It has, but is almost undoubtedly slowing as Seattle becomes more expensive and housing becomes more scarce (in other words, as it becomes New York-like). Massive inbound migration was possible because pre-Amazon, housing in Seattle was comparatively plentiful and cheap.

Seattle has a housing crisis because it has large amounts of the city with extremely restrictive residential zoning and refuses to compromise. They have large areas where multi-tenancy housing can't exists. Additionally, in the US everyone believes housing is not a depreciating asset. There is a reason Tokyo is the largest city in the world while being significantly cheaper to live in then similar cities.

Of course. This is true of New York as well, especially outside of Manhattan. I, too, would prefer a regulatory environment that allows for denser construction. None of that changes the fact that the regulatory environment is what it is, and as a practical matter it limits the extent to which people are able to move to either city to work for Amazon.

At least NYC has New Jersey next door, the densest state in the union: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/most-densely-populated-u... But I hope NYC will still work to fix this problem.

All of that wouldn't cover what Amazon would end up costing the area.

> Amazon paid zero federal tax for the last two years running

Not paying Federal income tax isn't paying no taxes. Also, the "zero federal tax" meme is popular among the Bernie Sanders crowd, however, much of Amazon's credits were due to paying stock-based compensation. In 2017, they paid out almost a billion dollars in stock compensation -- compensation for which recipients are taxed -- and taxed at a higher rate than the equivalent funds would have been taxed if retained by the company since such compensation is taxed as ordinary income -- not only are federal income taxes due, but also social security and medicare taxes. The point is that $917 million in stock compensation was written off against Amazon's income, but that $917m likely yields roughly $250 million in federal tax revenue , while if that were taxed as company income, it would yield roughly $110m given the historical effective tax rate paid by Amazon.

Essentially this: If Amazon didn't exist, the US government would be far worse off in terms of tax revenues, despite Amazon paying "zero" taxes. An intelligent view of the situation wouldn't look at "federal taxes paid" by the entity of Amazon, but their total tax revenue impact on the United States government -- including their state and local, and taxes paid by their employees. If you wanted to be more intellectually honest about Amazon and taxes, you'd also include the tax impact of everyone that profits as a result of Amazon. There's also the impact at the consumer level -- the price of products is the sum of all of the inputs used to produce, market and deliver that product. If you raise the price of any of those inputs, prices necessarily increase. Let's say we increase the taxes of Amazon -- that means that their "Hefty Garbage Bags" are now selling for more money, but that also means that competitors selling Hefty Garbage Bags can also raise their prices. Essentially corporate taxes have the same market-wide effect as a tariff -- raising prices for everyone. Who gets harmed most by higher prices for consumer goods? It isn't the "rich." It's the poor and middle class. Lower prices for goods helps the economy far more than the equivalent amount collected in taxes due to deadweight loses.

That subway line is actually quite useful and has pretty high ridership

I just don't understand the logic of politicians such as Ocasio-Cortez. Amazon HQ was going to bring 25,000 high paying jobs to the area, providing growth and opportunities for her constituents.

Her argument against is that the Amazon HQ would further gentrification and she was appalled by the government subsidies. So she'd rather limit new growth, prevent new jobs, and stifle wealth to prevent luxury condos and Starbucks from going up? Make no sense, she is literally preventing her constituents from moving up the economic ladder.

the whole argument of left is flawed.

she's anti status-quo but are unwilling to sacrifice short term for it.

basically her dream case scenario is to tax amazon 5B and then invest 3B it to bring them to Queens.. and then rake the returns going forward. In what fantasy world would that ever play out?

Gentrification is the opposite of people moving up the economic ladder - it's the influx of more affluent residents.

So you really think Amazon was only going to hire people that already had wealth. It's not possible that somebody making $50k a year, could land a great new position at Amazon making $150k? Cortez is shooting her democrat constituents in the foot, and living up to her affiliation of democratic-socialist.

That's not what happens though. Amazon would be recruiting people from Ivy League schools, big consulting firms, other large tech companies.

Disagree, this constant propagation of rigged system or unfair game is not accurate. I know lots of people who came from very little and were able to work themselves up to economic success. In fact many of the people on the Fobes list came from poor upbringing and backgrounds.

And vastly more of them are not on the Forbes list.

People have done studies on income mobility and inter-generational income mobility. The studies say that it's getting worse, not better.

Yes, people can move up/down, but most don't, and it's happening less over time.

Going from the top, Jeff Bezos himself and Warren Buffet both grew up in middle class environments. Bezos worked at McDonalds as a short order cook while Buffett while young was notoriously hard working and frugal. Buffett would take his paper route earnings (mere dollars) and invest in stocks.

Anyway, I don't have the resources and time to go through the entire Forbes list, but I suspect there are a lot more people than most would believe and perhaps like to acknowledge from middle class or "lower" class environments.

Do I really need to explain anecdotes vs data?

Income is a strongly inherited trait. Look at this absurdly linear plot in section 2: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/01...

The only deviations from pure correlation are that the extremely poor and rich are EVEN MORE likely to be extremely poor or rich.

The US (I assume you're talking about the US) intragenerational mobility is actually quite strong, meaning people have the ability to impact their own economic outcomes if they choose, or in other words, the American dream (TM). Decreased intergenerational mobility in the US is actually a function of decreased fraction of families earning below 100k, meaning, less people by fraction in the lower and middle class as they've pushed up into the upper >100k tier.

Probably better to measure by where people are on the income distribution than above/below arbitrary points like 100k.

Most of the research I've seen uses quintiles as a proxy for "class".

If you look downthread, I've linked some that disagrees with you re: USA vs other anglosphere countries.

> Amazon would be recruiting people from Ivy League schools, big consulting firms, other large tech companies

Amazon is not that pedigree-driven, most people I know who work there went to decent mid-ranked but not Ivy League level schools. Wall Street (front office) and big consulting firms are literally pedigree driven to the point where they often only recruit on Ivy League campuses, Amazon and most other big tech companies are more egalitarian caring more about the tech interview than your diploma.

Actually no, gentrification causes existing homeowners to increase their property values. It literally gives the existing community the opportunity to move up the economic ladder.

Yes and NYC is known for the many home owners and lack of renters.

Sounds like it'd be good for landlords, I'm not sure about the person living paycheck to paycheck to make rent.

_Only_ if the existing community is _also_ the existing landowners. This is not always the case, often you have a large renting population. These renters only see there costs go up, not their assets.

With that in mind, NYC is probably the worst possible place for that since almost nobody owns their own property there, it is mostly all rented out by multi-millionaires.

Increasing property value shows up on the balance sheet and the only way to access it is to sell the property and leave, or take on debt.

Increasing property values also mean increasing property taxes, which show up in expenses and are due every year whether or not you have the money to pay them.

Does taking out a home equity line to pay your taxes sound like a good idea to you? Me neither, and that's why rising property values are often not welcomed by residents who are not already financially well-off.

This does not even get into the impact on renters, who might face being evicted so a property owner can sell, or rents rising faster than their wages.

> Actually no, gentrification causes existing homeowners to increase their property values.

Property values are not necessarily wealth. It is entirely possible to gentrify existing homeowners out of their homes despite increasing their property values -- this moves homeowners down the economic ladder.

Yes, selling their house technically puts fresh cash in their pocket, but only by drastically increasing their cost of living and by making them search for new housing (which by definition will have to be somewhere cheaper than their current neighborhood, since by definition they can no longer afford their current one).

All of this is usually a large net loss in total wealth, despite the sale of their property. Owning a gentrifying home gives you the illusion of wealth building, but if you live in that home, it's really just lifestyle inflation until you sell out.

None of the above is a hypothetical, either. That is an accurate description of how real-world Gentrification usually plays out in Midwestern/Flyover USA today.

Where in your mind would the affluent residents live?

Do you think there are 25,000 high skilled workers in new york sitting around waiting for Amazon to show up? No, those workers are in high demand. So the only option is too pull from outside the region further driving up the cost of housing. Its pure numbers. What about the low skill jobs? Amazon doesn't employ cleaners and other low skill workers. They contract those jobs out, so the low skill employees see no benefit from working at Amazon anyway. Even if we pretend that Amazon can only employ native new yorkers, there aren't enough to go around. So they'll be taking jobs from other organizations, like small businesses, who can't afford to compete with Amazon.

So, what's the benefit to new york? Yea, there are 25000 new jobs. But the choice isn't 25000 jobs or no jobs. Its 25000 jobs with amazon and some number of jobs from other businesses. Other businesses will employ those high skill workers because there aren't enough to go around.

> Amazon doesn't employ cleaners and other low skill workers. They contract those jobs out

Is this any different from how other companies do it?

> they'll be taking jobs from other organizations, like small businesses, who can't afford to compete with Amazon.

How many small businesses in LIC are competing with Amazon for business/workers? Does LIC even have tech jobs? I lived in NYC for 5 years working in tech, and I don't recall ever interviewing for a tech job in LIC.

> So, what's the benefit to new york?

25,000 jobs with $100k+ salaries. I get that there aren't enough native native New Yorkers to fill the jobs, but since when is NYC not a city of transplants? Amazon or not, this is already the state of things, and I don't see that changing. I mean LIC is already a ghost town of glass luxury residential apartment towers.

> the choice isn't 25000 jobs or no jobs. Its 25000 jobs with amazon and some number of jobs from other businesses. Other businesses will employ those high skill workers because there aren't enough to go around.

Is there a strong demand to build out jobs in LIC matching the 25k that Amazon would've? I'm not being facetious, genuinely wondering. I only went to LIC a few times, and my impression was that it seemed like a ghost town of glass luxury residential apartment towers. I don't recall seeing a thriving office/commercial center. Seems like everyone just commutes into Manhattan to work.

Literally tens of thousands of students graduate each year from NYU (16K alone) and other colleges in the area. You're right that skilled workers don't sit around waiting for jobs to show up. They'll go to where the jobs are, which for tech still largely means the West Coast. And I say that as a NYC resident and tech entrepreneur. The tech scene in NY is weak, and non-existent across the river in LIC. Having an Amazon HQ in LIC would have been a great anchor around which to build a stronger startup scene: If your startup fails, hey, there's always Amazon to fall back on (instead of just the financial sector).

But I'm sure the students are actually grateful that they were spared from Amazon and living close to home, and that the Bay Area residents will continue to welcome each new batch with open arms!

As someone who worked as a software engineer in NYC for 6 years ~5 years ago, I couldn't disagree more strongly with your claim that the tech scene in NY is weak. It's second only to Silicon Valley when it comes to tech jobs.

It's second, but I do think it's weak relative to the size of the city and the unfulfilled potential of what it could be.

The NY metropolitan area is ~20M people, but it's clearly much weaker when it comes to tech than the bay area at only ~7M people (I'd say, a magnitude less in number of tech startups alone), and somewhat stronger than the Boston metro area at 4M but not significantly so. Having lived in all three (and now living in Manhattan for 4 years), I don't think for example there is significantly more tech meetups (maybe even less?) or startups (definitely numerically more, but not of better quality) than in Boston, while by numbers alone it should be a whole magnitude greater.

Seattle would like a word with you ;)

For the new grads, you're still getting tens of thousands of people moving out of campus housing and into the non-subsidized market, so it hardly seems different that bringing people from out of state.

So the ability for your own constituents children to stay in their own home state given choice and opportunities is now equivalent to Amazon bringing in 25K out-of-state employees. Gotcha. That is about as direct a FU from the "I got mine" boomer crowd and politicians that nixed this deal to the next generation as you can get.

So then, colleges are the problem, and they need to downsize, so that there are fewer grads?

AOC’s logic is very straight forward. She wants to take money from you and I through massive taxation and redistribute it to her low income constituents through massive social programs. Don’t let her “soak the rich” bait and switch rhetoric fool you, the middle class always pays for new government spending.

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