Hacker News Reader

Comment by notyourloops | Hacker News Reader

What happened to New York?

We decided it was ridiculous to offer $1.5 billion in incentives when we would never recoup that, so we protested.

Amazon paid no federal taxes last year (https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/16/amazon-p...), and probably would have figured out how to pay little corporate state tax. At the promised level of 25,000 jobs with an average $150,000 salary, the city (but not the state) would have only seen an extra ~$150mil in income taxes.

There's lots of ways to run the projections and factor various costs/benefits, but few of them would have resulted in a 10x improvement in the offhand estimates.

It was a bad investment for the city the same way most sports stadiums are.

So what is the city doing with $1.5 billion that you freed up?

Nothing, because it's not actual money that they have. It's money that Amazon would have owed had they moved there that they would have given back.

Massive protests, many headlined by Rep. Ocasio Cortez.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/08/politics/amazon-backlash-alex...

Backlash was certainly loud, but Amazon could have made things work even without all of the subsidies they received. This is entirely me speculating, but I wonder if Amazon feared that NYC workers might eventually organize or be organized, given the political rhetoric and the framing of the backlash. Amazon has a legendary fear of unionization.

> Backlash was certainly loud, but Amazon could have made things work even without all of the subsidies they received. This is entirely me speculating, but I wonder if Amazon feared that NYC workers might eventually organize or be organized, given the political rhetoric and the framing of the backlash. Amazon has a legendary fear of unionization.

Aren't the workers primarily knowledge workers? In a place like New York where developer jobs grow out of the concrete I don't think there could be legitimate fear of unionization.

Not really mentioned in the article. As someone who moved from NoVA to New York during the HQ2 search, these are my thoughts: New York's plan was more direct subsidies and tax breaks, less infrastructure and schools. Much more unpopular with the locals (who wouldn't benefit as much). And the locals let them know. Because Amazon made everyone operate under NDA they had no chance to build the public support that would be necessary to support such largesse.

By locals, you must mean NYC at large. The actual residents of Queens and the Bronx supported the deal.

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1096137477188976646

I mean the people who would have to pay the taxes to subsidize Amazon, so the city and state at large, yes.

> I mean the people who would have to pay the taxes to subsidize Amazon, so the city and state at large, yes.

Interesting that you characterize the entire state as "locals" given that some parts of New York can take several hours to get to by car from the city.

They canceled it due to the backlash. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queen...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com