Isn't this exactly the opposite? Amazon would have destroyed the general economy in NYC like they did in Seattle. This is the city ignoring the big corporation and listening to their people. NYC doesn't need Amazon. It needs to fix it's rail system.
Amazon would not even have been one of the top 20 employers in the city and finance would still be the most important economic sector by far.
It would have been a big deal for LIC, but not for NYC.
I think a lot of people get so caught up in hating on tech workers and opposing gentrification they forget where the money comes from.
It’s become very stylish to rage against corporations. I wish people would take a more rational point of view. We shouldn’t be hating on successful businesses for fun.
Edit: also, I’m not sure, but isn’t the $3B a reduction in taxes Amazon would have paid? So it’s not like NY had that money to begin with. It’s jist a reduction in what they would receive.
Ref: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/amazon-...
Include all taxes from 25,000 employees + their families (property taxes, sales taxes, etc), and it's a very likely $4.5 to $5 billion over ten years to state & local coffers from the employees.
And that's just the direct benefits. It excludes any taxes Amazon corporate would pay, such as property taxes on any real-estate they buy over that ten years. It also ignores the potential for additional expansion in that ten years (Amazon will more than double in size over that time, to half a trillion dollars plus in sales, I'd bet on more than 25k employees).
It would have easily paid for itself, which was actually never in dispute. People didn't like it regardless of the fact that it would have paid for itself. They disliked the idea of giving Amazon anything.
The other issue is that this is assuming literally all 25k employees would be new residents of NY. Assuming this is true (which it probably wouldn't be), that also means that the city needs to maintain infrastructure for at least 50k new residents (probably more like 75k assuming an average family size of 3). That's not an insignificant amount of new people who require public services.
Regardless, ($14k * 25k * 10 = $3.5B). Not that much more than the initial tax rebate, and not accounting for any additional costs to the city. Also assuming that the rate of tax-paying by employees remains consistent, and that they don't cut any staff in HQ2, which is far from certain.
As to:
Property taxes on real-estate owned by AMZN
Amazon already has an office in NYC. If they want to expand in NYC they can. Amazon growing in NYC is not at all predicated on the existence of HQ2. The only probable reason Amazon would continue to expand in NY specifically would be for more tax breaks. Which kinda defeats the argument that "Amazon will grow and we can collect more taxes".
Seems like an clean net positive for the city even viewed in the shallowest of accounting terms. This doesn't include the positive network effects of encouraging the future growth of Amazon and other tech companies in the area.
What if Amazon decides they only need 10k employees in "HQ2" after 5 years?
Better bird in hand than two in the bush.
NY needs to focus on improving infrastructure now, which is the only guaranteed thing that will promote growth in the long term. And to do that, NY needs to be 1. less corrupt and 2. not give giant tax breaks to corporations that already have offices in the city.
Yes, maybe Amazon HQ2 will be a net positive 10 years down the road, but NY should focus on fixing its broken subway system and other structural issues so that the city can actually support 10 Amazons in 10 years. And HQ2 literally did the opposite of that (increasing ridership while decreasing revenue in the short term is not how you improve infrastructure, surprisingly).
And like other commenters pointed out, the state still makes money through payroll taxes, sales tax, property tax, etc.
I agree that the politicians should have made it more clear that the additional tax revenue would be used to fix urgent problems like the failing subway, poverty, etc.
When someone says it's destroyed, they mean it's gentrifried or exclusionary, not benefiting everyone equally. That's certainly true. Economically the fact is Seattle has been an epic boom city for two decades now.
Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway also don't benefit everyone equally. 99.9% of the world can't live there, few of the planet's 7.5 billion people are welcome. It turns out that all nice, affluent places are aggressively exclusionary, without exception.