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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

While parent (and others) may be attempting to revise history, I think this outcome is probably for the best.

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.

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> Whatever growth occurs in NY will be organic. Not government-subsidized hyper-growth which can throw things out of whack.

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.

> 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.

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

Man... the misinformation is so stunning. They don't NEED bargaining power because these tax deals were done through programs that already existed in New York. The overwhelming majority of the money involved in this requires you only meet the eligibility requirements.

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.

Then why has Google announced a major expansion in New York City without making a show out of it? Did anyone protest about Google adding more than 7,000 jobs to the area? Amazon has clearly failed here to offer something everyone would be happy about.

I thought Google didn't receive any subsidies for opening in NYC?

I don't think your confidence is justified. Having a lot of smaller employers might be more stable and less disruptive than one big one.

Predicting the future is hard and counterfactuals are tricky, so we may never know which choice was better.

> There's no way to turn this into a positive here.

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.

It wasn't a giveaway, it was a discount. If I sell cars for $30,000 each, and you negotiate me down to $25,000, have I given you $5,000 ? No.

If they were going to buy the card for $30K anyway if you didn't discount it, yes. Even if they weren't going to buy the car without the discount, but someone else would likely come along and buy it for $30K, then still yes, you would have given away $5K.

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.

And even if they could that's more money into Big Tech oligopolies. Not something we really need to be supporting.

>There's no way to turn this into a positive here.

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.

No, people recognize that the standard is bribery and corruption.

>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...

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.

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