Re:It Started With a Jolt: How New York Became a Tech Town
by vonmoltke on Friday February 22, 2019 @04:19PM
(#19229214)
See, that's the thing. Talking about the $3B in credits like it was all a special deal for Amazon hides the scope of these programs and blocks those conversations on what limits (if any) they should have. You won't see widespread support for limiting these programs arise at all if the people who would support it don't realize that they are hanging out waiting for the next huge corporation to come along and take advantage of them without the self-important bullshit Amazon pulled.
I (and many others I've spoken to) don't have a problem with the idea of economic subsidy to support businesses moving to NYC, but objected to a company the size (and success) of Amazon doing so. I can imagine there would be widespread support for a move to limit these programs to smaller startup companies, and maybe we'll even see some local politicians propose that.
But there's a city/state issue here. Few people would object to Amazon creating a massive HQ and 25k jobs in Albany, even if they would in NYC. So any answer would have to take that into account too.