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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So no, that's NOT the choice to be made. That choice is something you've pulled from nowhere.
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?
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.
That's more like what they were going to do.
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".
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/nyregion/new-york-subway-...
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.
Increasing density isn’t going to make subway lines cheaper by the way.