Re:The Path Amazon Rejected
by pseudolus on Sunday February 17, 2019 @01:34PM
(#19185960)
I think the general consensus was that New Yorkers genuinely wanted Amazon to come to NYC but just didn't want the city and state to pay anything. The optics for subsidies were particularly horrible - the richest man in the world obtaining billions of dollars on behalf of a company with one of the largest market capitalizations in the world. How do you overcome that? Timing is everything and had Amazon's offer been on the table 4-5 years ago the outcome would probably have been different. As it is, since 2008 there's been a festering resentment of companies and while tech companies escaped a lot of that resentment resent issues with Facebook and Google have tarred the entire sector.
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The tax break argument always seemed like a red herring to me. I live in NYC and was excited for Amazon coming but most of my friends were against it mostly out of a vague “stick it to the system” mentality. Somewhat ironic since most of these friends are in households earning in guessing around/in excess of 250k. Not one of these people gave a moment of thought about city or state budgets/deficits before and it is unlikely they will do so again.