I guess Amazon pulled out of the project halfway through, since for the last ~2 years there's been a half-finished building just sitting there completely abandoned in our town center.
My hope is that more towns learn from your experience and don't tolerate this nonsense anymore.
Another funny story was that some substack writer (whom I forget sorry) noticed that Bill Ackman subscribed to their substack and used a 30% off coupon ha ha.
While the company he was the founder of passed over a trillion dollars in market cap.
You know what else helps social cohesion?
One person NOT being able to effectively rig the economic and political landscape because they were outsized beneficiaries of it.
You know what also helps social cohesion?
Someone who realizes that they've got more than enough money, and realizes that they don't have a life-or-death need for more, and is happy to pay their taxes.
>(and why shouldn't they?)
Because they've literally got billions of dollars, and the tax credit system was not designed with extreme outliers in mind. "Oh jeeze, I'm just a billionaire, woe is me, I'm not eligible for a $2k tax refund, the world will end".
> Someone who realizes that they've got more than enough money, and realizes that they don't have a life-or-death need for more, and is happy to pay their taxes.
Sure. And the best way to make that happen is to make a tax system that feels fair to everyone.
> Because they've literally got billions of dollars, and the tax credit system was not designed with extreme outliers in mind. "Oh jeeze, I'm just a billionaire, woe is me, I'm not eligible for a $2k tax refund, the world will end".
Why shouldn't they be eligible? If we think giving $2k to those who have children is in the public interest (and I do!), it's still in the public interest when it's a billionaire.
Edit: also you need to pay the loan back, and the income to pay it back is taxable. You can die with an outstanding loan, but i’m sure bezos lenders will structure the loan to make sure they get most of their money back.
Bezos probably has an army of banks, private lenders, and private capital connections to effectively have a lifetime of loans against his Amazon shares.
It's a pyramid scheme, except the guy at the top actually has the money and collateral.
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) by Thomas Frank goes into this in part of it. While a bit repetitive (because history) the book is quite good.
fyi since you may not have ever seen it spelled before it's milquetoast
The state and localities did a good job structuring incentives so everything was tied to milestones, some of which Amazon ended up not hitting. My recollection is that NY was offering to give a lot more away, which helped fuel the backlash, but don’t quote me on that.
It also helped in VA that Crystal City has been a commercial wasteland for many years thanks to DoD decentralization. A lot of offices moved down to Fort Belvoir and surrounding areas, leaving Crystal City with a lot of vacant office space. Nothing was being “lost” by Amazon coming in.
Local real estate agents put “HQ2” in their listings for a few years but it didn’t matter much because homes near Crystal City were already super expensive.
Given that a supermarket abandoned that location, and Amazon never opened on their either, perhaps that location or the lease price simply doesn’t work for a grocery store?
Wondering what the municipality’s responsibility there wrt zoning.