Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html <comment><USER2> If Amazon had just quietly announced plans to expand to LIC without the "HQ2 Search" dog and pony show they almost certainly would still be here.

Google buys entire city blocks and nobody bats an eye. Turns out that publicly shaking down cities across the US tends to draw out the opposition.

More publicity = more scrutiny = more angry opponents of your business decision

<comment><USER3> Amazon's spectacle reminds me of Lebron's "The Decision". It's one thing to work out the details and make an announcement, but to purposefully turn it into a show about "What can you do for me?" instead of "Here's what I can do for you" made it not sit well with people.

Also, the pull-out letter also basically dumps the blame on state/local officials for not wanting Amazon, despite not all stakeholders being present at the table when discussions started.

<comment><USER4> I don't see it as a "what can you do for me". A lot of Amazon's interest were aligned with that of many New Yorkers. Both Amazon and most New Yorkers want to have a strong transportation system and a diverse economy that doesn't just rely on taxing bloated financial bonuses to pay for services. They also want New York to be an in-demand tech hub with a deep labor pool and be a place where people actually want to live. Cities should strive to be places where employers want to invest. We aren't talking about handing over duffle bags of money to Bezos. They agreed to offset some of NYC's exorbitant taxes and regulations that make this city hostile to many businesses. And supposedly the incentives were available to any employer of that size. The fact is that having a large Amazon hub in NYC would greatly benefit the city and its denizens

<comment><USER5> I'm of two minds on this issue, but: how can the city have good mass transit if there are no tax dollars to pay for it?

<comment><USER6> I'm under the impression that Amazon has never been a big taxpayer.

<comment><USER7> Their employees still pay tax though. With tech wages as high as they are it is probably non-trivial amounts.

I am not advocating for big businesses evading tax mind you. Just suggesting it would probably still be a boon for the state tax income if a bunch of tech wages migrated to the NY tax base.

<comment><USER8> And also make less demands on the social services

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> After being a resident of NYC for 30 years and seeing the city change and become a technology hub and just a financial center I think this is a real loss for NYC.

It would also be in Long island City which would provide a huge influx of new workers and move that neighborhood forward in development rapidly. The down side would be that it would push some residents and business owners out but this is simply a fact of life in NYC where on a long enough time line every undesirable neighborhood eventually become desirable simply because of increase in residents and increase in real estate prices. That would also conversely make adjacent neighborhoods more attractive.

As for the tax breaks those would eventually be off set and it would still be cheaper than the amount that was spent on a useless Subway line that took a decade and really added no real capacity where it mattered.

<comment><USER10> If you're talking about the 2nd Ave stub, yeah, it was crazy expensive but it's serving 200K passengers a day, alleviating crowding on the Lex (entire Lex is like 1.3m), and UES to Times Square is hella faster.

Anyway, for me it hinges on how much special treatment Amazon got, $100K in tax abatements per job seems excessive, but others say it was pretty standard, would have been a huge anchor tenant for NYC tech and LIC, so much smoke blown on both sides it's hard to say ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ .

If they want to sell and support AWS to bigcos in NYC they are going to need a major presence regardless, not sure how much sense it makes for their other businesses to have a big HQ in NYC.

<comment><USER11> $100k in taxes is maybe 6.5 yrs of a tech worker's state income (using 6.85% state income tax @ 220k/yr).

That's before other taxes, like property (directly or indirectly through rent), sales, etc.

They don't need 25k jobs to support AWS clients in NYC. It's not like they're supporting on-site installations.

<comment><USER12> Usually 1 job means 1 person-year worth of work. So 6.5 years of a tech worker would usually mean 6.5 jobs.

The jobs also tend to include things like construction workers, etc. So if you hire 500 people to build the place over 2 years that's 1,000 jobs created.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey, remember those Amazon insiders that bought property on the cheap?

"...Amazon employees are apparently eager to get a head start on the New York City real estate game.

Condo sales in Long Island City are soaring following the announcement that the Queens, New York, [a] neighborhood will host part of Amazon's HQ2, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to The Journal, one brokerage firm sold 150 units in four days last week — 15 times its usual volume — after Amazon announced plans to open a headquarters in Long Island City...."

[https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-buy- apartme...](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-buy-apartments- in-new-york-city-2018-11)

<comment><USER14> That was my first thought on seeing the headline as well.

However I think those buyers will still do just fine. I doubt very many people have lost money by investing in NYC real estate.

<comment><USER15> Depends if they can hold. A lot of speculators are going to have to take an L if they thought they were going to flip as Amazon ramped up. Especially if they took debt to do so.

<comment><USER16> The L only runs through Brooklyn

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So this was (IMHO) a shit show from go to whoa. The dog and pony show was a transparent shakedown where Amazon would still probably go where they were always going to go.

The whole splitting HQ2 I think showed this. Like it's not even an "HQ" in any sense of the word. It's just an expansion.

Also with talk of "25k jobs"... what jobs? Are we talking software engineers or warehouse workers? There's a difference.

I don't know the inner workings of this but it seems like Cuomo was the driver here with de Blasio on board. This was a missed opportunity. NYC needs several things from NYS that are politically unpalatable upstate. Top of that list is:

\- Property tax reform; and

\- Congestion pricing.

NYS grossly favours SFHs for property taxes. For example, a $3m brownstone in Park Slope I saw had ~$700/month in property taxes. A similarly priced apartment would have more like $1500-2000/month taxes. A $100m apartment would be taxed at ~$15k/month.

NYC has on several occasions tried to introduce congestion pricing on people driving in or into Manhattan (something I 100% support) but the efforts have failed as this is the jurisdiction of NYS and NYS has no interest in this (so far).

Why not frame this issue as NYC supporting these efforts to fix issues with NYC like these? The deal may have gotten much more traction were this the case.

So I understand the need for government intervention in large projects, say if Amazon were to build 8m sq ft of office space. Regulatory approval can be nigh on impossible.

That much office space is hard to find in NYC. I think Amazon missed the boat with Hudson Yards (probably the last place this would've been possible in Manhattan).

I agree with other commenters that the net effect of this is about zero. Amazon is trying to have a PR moment. They'll still expand in NYC as it suits their needs. They'll still get tax breaks like any large corporation in NYS/NYC would.

This really is just a corporate tantrum.

<comment><USER18> > what jobs? Are we talking software engineers or warehouse workers?

Workers with an average salary of $150,000, I think it's disingenuous to act like you don't know that but you're also an expert in property tax reform.

<comment><USER17> Pay one person a salary of $1m and you can pay 9 people $55k to average $150k. The average means nothing. Will there some site lead earning $20m/year bringing up the average?

<comment><USER19> 25,000 x $150,000 = $3.75 Billion dollars of new taxable income, regardless of how it is distributed.

<comment><USER20> Those billions aren't uniformly taxed: that's what they were pointing out.

<comment><USER21> Actually, those billions wouldn't have been taxed at all. That was part of the deal: Amazon gets all of the income taxes that are paid by their employees in the first ten years.

<comment><USER22> To be more specific, this part of the deal is called the Excelsior Jobs program. It rebates to Amazon 6.85% [0] of the wages earned by the company's employees, which effectively does mean that income taxes get paid out to Amazon (in reality, the income taxes paid plus a little more due to the NYS tax brackets [1]).

That being said, there's no city-level income tax rebate. Assuming the tax brackets currently in effect hold steady until the full 25k jobs promise was fulfilled, the city of New York would get ~3.8% of $150k * 25k jobs = ~$142.5 million/year once the 25k job mark is reached [2].

[0]: [https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program](https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior- jobs-program)

[1]: Note how the 6.85% bracket only applies to income above $215.4k; income above $1.08 million gets taxed at 8.82%; consequently Amazon will get more rebated than employees paid in income tax the vast majority of the time. See the second table of page 57: [https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/it201i.pdf#page=...](https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/it201i.pdf#page=57)

[2]: The ~3.8% is approximated based off of page 69 of [https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/it201i.pdf#page=...](https://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/current_forms/it/it201i.pdf#page=69)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Of all the places, why did NYC offer Amazon subsidies? NYC actually has too many good jobs for the amount of space...

I am also proud of my cantankerous fellow New Yorkers who fought this.

<comment><USER24> A clarification: NYC didn't offer Amazon subsidies. New York _State_ did. That's really the core of the tension - the whole deal was negotiated in secret then announced to the world as a finished product. That tends not to earn you goodwill with city politicians you deliberately excluded from the process.

<comment><USER25> My understanding was that Amazon was intending to use existing city programs to fund $1.3B of the $3B in incentives, most of that tied to the number of employees they hire to work in specific zones including LIC [1].

Why do they have to involve the city politicians in the decision-making process if they don't need any special treatment?

[1] "While New York City has not offered Amazon any direct subsidies, the company also plans to take advantage of two city tax breaks that will further sweeten the deal by nearly $1.3 billion.

One is the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, which offers businesses moving to certain parts of the city a tax credit of up to $3,000 per employee for 12 years. The program will benefit Amazon to the tune of $897 million, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

The other is the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program, which provides property tax abatements. It will be worth nearly $400 million to Amazon, Cuomo said."

([https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nys-amazon-deal- wha...](https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/nys-amazon-deal-what-it- holds-queens- company?fbclid=IwAR0pOqcCzmQkN2Wdt3i_7f9hCd_7JwylL0hGUuANN8hSk04lgorEmgCKfLk))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Google didn't need any dog and pony show or significant forms of corporate welfare (that we know of) to announce a doubling of their presence in New York.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/17/google- announces-billion-expansion-new-york-city/)

<comment><USER27> Doubling their office there still pales in comparison to the headcount projected for LIC. 7K max vs. 25k targeted for Amazon.

Amazon already has a presence in NYC.

<comment><USER28> Would be interesting to know how many employees Amazon currently has in NY. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's already in the thousands.

<comment><USER29> It is in the Amazon statement: "There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams."

Disclaimer, I'm one of those 5k. Currently I work from home 99% of the time because the office spaces Amazon has in NY aren't fantastic. It would have been nice to have a new headquarters building, but I'll still be enjoying working from home now I guess.

<comment><USER30> > There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and > Staten Island

How many of those are working in tech? When I interviewed at Amazon NYC in 2016, I think there were only around 100 software engineers there. Has it grown a lot since then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If Amazon hadn't turned this whole "HQ2" thing into a national drama they could have built a huge presence there without riling up so much backlash. Hopefully this ridiculous stunt is a lesson to them.

<comment><USER32> Unfortunately, I think they learned that cities will bend over backwards for them and offer up tons of free data and tax incentives.

<comment><USER31> <speculation> Honestly I think they had only a very few locations in mind when starting this "search" anyway, but wanted to frame it as this big, open-ended, national competition in order to wring the highest dollar amount out of their favorite spots. They were never going to take the risk of attracting workers to Tulsa, Detroit, or {insert other city in Middle America} over an existing large pool of talent in an attractive metropolitan area. </speculation>

<comment><USER33> While it is conjecture, I think this speculation is accepted relatively widely at this juncture. So given the farcical nature of the HQ2 competition, I think it's all the better that NYC doesn't bend to Amazon and allow them to dictate the terms at which they enter an already competitive labor marketplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I wonder how many Amazon employees sold their nice new condos in the last couple weeks.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503434](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18503434)

<comment><USER35> I wonder how many Queens residents sold their apartments/condos _before_ this news broke? Talk about timing. I know of one person who was drooling at this unexpected windfall and will now be very... sad.

<comment><USER36> Between this and the L train drama impacting Williamsburg, I wonder how much volatility the outer borough housing market can take.

Sure there has been a housing bubble there for a decade, and I'm certain there are some real estate insiders benefiting from this arbitrage, but this kind of dysfunction can't be good for the economy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as > planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and > grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

So this whole HQ2 thing ended up being a grand waste of everybody's time.

<comment><USER38> Not for those of us in the N. Virginia region. I'm celebrating the announcement as a double-down on our region

<comment><USER38> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17503917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17503917)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who lived in NYC for 5 years, I can't understand how anyone can not consider this a loss to NYC. Don't get me wrong I hate corporate welfare as much as anyone else and I have no desire to work for Amazon because it seems like a corporate sweatshop, but 25k jobs at an average $100k+ salary would've been a boon to the city, even despite the $3 billion in tax subsidies. The additional revenue for workers and taxes would've been a huge boost to the economy and would've more than paid for itself.

The jobs would've been in Long-Island City, which is basically a glass tower condo ghost town with practically no office/business presence. The subway for people commuting into LIC for work is probably currently fairly empty, so the subway could accommodate them. (The same cannot be said of the reverse. Commuting from Astoria, Queens or Williamsburg, Brooklyn into Manhattan for work during rush hour is horrible).

I agree that politicians need to do a better job of accommodating those who are displaced by gentrification. NYC housing costs are insane (as someone else mentioned we undertax single-family homes and $100m penthouses), the subway is failing, etc.

Perhaps the deal would've gone through had politicians better communicated how the $3 billion subsidy package was not just a handout to Amazon but would actually improve the city and the well-being of its residents.

But given the city's failure to build affordable housing (not the "affordable housing" buzzword where luxury apartments are subsidized to low income people who enter a lottery, but doesn't actually meaningfully increase affordable housing stock) and fix the subway, maybe the city isn't capable of managing itself and stemming the pitfalls of gentrification, and so the opposition was fired up by this awareness. It seems that so long as fundamental aspects of NYC like its subway system are managed by NY State, we will never see any meaningful change at anything more than a snails-pace. Perhaps NYC should be fighting for independence from NY State to be in full control of its own destiny rather than being at the mercy of politicians in Albany with a poor track record of attending to the city's needs. (sorry I got derailed there a bit, just a stream of thought)

<comment><USER40> > "maybe the city isn't capable of managing itself and stemming the pitfalls > of gentrification"

You seem to understand pretty well why some are not seeing this as a loss after all.

<comment><USER39> Yea, the more I research this, the more I realize that this is the crux of the issue. The residents have no faith that the politicians will stem gentrification.

The affordable housing crisis and congestion will only be further exacerbated. Your average Queens resident who's already barely making her rent will see rents skyrocket, forcing her to move out and further into the boondocks come lease renewal time.

I think the opposition reflects a dissatisfaction with the politicians/administrators who run their city more than a hatred of Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Not going to miss them. Local governments giving huge tax breaks in exchange for stadiums, businesses relocating never works out.

<comment><USER42> I have plenty of examples where it works out. The town I live in gave large tax breaks not too long ago and it's working well. Nearby, sports facilities were financed with balloted measures at the request of the public, sometimes in conjunction with the local ISDs who share the facilities. The vast majority are benefiting from this public/private economic cooperation.

<comment><USER43> I can offer a counterexample. In the city I live in, there have been several major tech companies that were given enormous tax breaks and other gifts in exchange for moving in. They'd move in, build their buildings and factories, and everything would look rosy for 3-5 years. Then they'd cut and run, leaving the city worse off than if it had never done the deal in the first place.

<comment><USER42> Yup, goes both ways. Assuming the companies promised more and underdelivered, your city's economic council should have written the contract-break into the contract. Or assuming the companies didn't promise that much, your city seems to either have done a deal aware of the potential of negative outcome (and accepted it) or did not do due diligence. But it doesn't discount the idea of economic incentives as a whole due to poor city planning in this case (or a gamble, whichever it was).

<comment><USER43> > it doesn't discount the idea of economic incentives as a whole

I never said it did.

However, if you really need to make a contract iron-clad in order to protect yourself (and good luck with that!), that's a very strong indication that the entity you're dealing with is untrustworthy and you shouldn't be getting into bed with them in the first place.

The problem with most major corporations (and particularly major tech companies these days) is that they are not trustworthy actors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> As much as the anti-gentrification politicians would claim a small victory, this is a loss for NYC and the future development / resilience of its economic base.

Cities will keep on losing this kind of battle until some form of government or policy arises to counter the power of corporations (which are de facto increasingly taking the role of governments). Under our current regulations and incentives, I'm actually glad to see Amazon flex its political capability and teach NYC a lesson in what happens when you let vocal minority dictate public policy. Let examples like this teach us how broken our laws are.

Note I am equally glad to see some day that government (federal, state) come up with policies that stop cities and states from undercutting each other to get a temporary revenue / population / popularity boost at the expense of giving away the farm just to get it (until you find out it wasn't worth it, and get to try and remember that at the next election). Or god forbid, actually create policies that in the long-term stimulate as many jobs as a corporation might in a single swoop.

<comment><USER45> Isn't this exactly the opposite? Amazon would have destroyed the general economy in NYC like they did in Seattle. This is the city ignoring the big corporation and listening to their people. NYC doesn't need Amazon. It needs to fix it's rail system.

<comment><USER46> And how do you fix the rail system? With money from... taxes... from well paid workers, for example.

I think a lot of people get so caught up in hating on tech workers and opposing gentrification they forget where the money comes from.

<comment><USER47> The average employee in that 25k cohort would need to be paying $12k worth of state taxes to NY _every year for ten years_ in order to recoup the $3B tax break figure.

<comment><USER48> Average $160,000 household income per employee = ~$14,000 per year in state + local income taxes. That's ~$8,500 per year just to the state in income taxes.

Include all taxes from 25,000 employees + their families (property taxes, sales taxes, etc), and it's a very likely $4.5 to $5 billion over ten years to state & local coffers from the employees.

And that's just the direct benefits. It excludes any taxes Amazon corporate would pay, such as property taxes on any real-estate they buy over that ten years. It also ignores the potential for additional expansion in that ten years (Amazon will more than double in size over that time, to half a trillion dollars plus in sales, I'd bet on more than 25k employees).

It would have easily paid for itself, which was actually never in dispute. People didn't like it regardless of the fact that it would have paid for itself. They disliked the idea of giving Amazon anything.

<comment><USER47> How do you figure that a family is paying more in property tax / sales tax than a _not_ family? Property size is a function of income, as is sales tax, and you've already included income in your calculations.

The other issue is that this is assuming literally all 25k employees would be new residents of NY. Assuming this is true (which it probably wouldn't be), that also means that the city needs to maintain infrastructure for at least 50k new residents (probably more like 75k assuming an average family size of 3). That's not an insignificant amount of new people who require public services.

Regardless, ($14k * 25k * 10 = $3.5B). Not that much more than the initial tax rebate, and not accounting for any additional costs to the city. Also assuming that the rate of tax-paying by employees remains consistent, and that they don't cut any staff in HQ2, which is far from certain.

As to:

      Property taxes on real-estate owned by AMZN

You realize any property that Amazon would purchase is already owned by someone, right? And that the current owner is already paying property taxes.

Amazon already has an office in NYC. If they want to expand in NYC they can. Amazon growing in NYC is not _at all_ predicated on the existence of HQ2. The only probable reason Amazon would continue to expand in NY specifically would be for _more tax breaks_. Which kinda defeats the argument that "Amazon will grow and we can collect more taxes".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 2018: _Billions in tax breaks to amazon will add thousands of jobs_

2021: _After hitting 2020 growth targets, Amazon quietly lays off 5000_

It's not like we haven't seen this before.

<comment><USER50> Have we? It seems like the number of employees has increased every year: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of- amazon-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/234488/number-of-amazon- employees/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> If these states are so flush in cash that they can give tax breaks, they should go to small business... not the richest guy in the world. Why should government intervene in in a free market and give one business a massive advantage over everybody else?

<comment><USER52> NY has multiple programs to attract small business:

[https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program](https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs- program) [https://esd.ny.gov/startup-ny-program](https://esd.ny.gov/startup- ny-program)

<comment><USER53> Wasn't the NY proposal to take $1.2 billion in Excelsior tax credits and give them to Amazon? And I think Start-Up NY is an Excelsior program?

I mean, I think it's great if there's now budget to increase support for small businesses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> 1\. $3B in "incentives" sounds like a lot, but would this have been a good investment? i.e. would the city and State have gotten a reasonable return in the long run?

2\. New York already has a lot to offer in terms of labor market, real estate for employees, and access to capital markets. Did Amazon really need incentives to want to be in NYC?

3\. No huge loss for either party. NYC doesn't need Amazon, and Amazon can make the little people dance for them somewhere else.

<comment> shaki-dora It isn't about the net loss or win for NY.

The problem with subsidies is that they needlessly cost money in a zero-sum competition between cities. It was always clear that Amazon would build somewhere. A race to the bottom competition over the exact location leaves everyone but them worse off than the alternative, which is coordinating to refuse to engage in it, like any sane economy like the EU does.

<comment><USER55> It's almost like there is a demand for Amazon to have a presence in the community.

<comment><USER21> Demand and price are not the same thing unless both sides have perfect information. The fact that Amazon ran a secret auction for their HQ2 compelled New York to overspend, for fear of missing out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The Allowance of a helicopter pad shows how tone deaf the proposal was. Never mind the safety issues of a helicopter flying over a heavily populated area, the noise of one was such an issue in Brooklyn that they banned any flights over land as a quality of life issue (other than police or news helicopters I think). They still come close enough to the land that they are a nuisance if you live near or enjoy the new publicly accessible waterfront areas.

EDIT: Apparently there were limits placed on 120 landings a year and it was on the waterfront campus mitigating some of the safety concerns. It was still a major concession given though that does nothing I can think of to add to the community.

</comment><comment><USER57> Surprise, backroom sweetheart deals between businesses and politicians are wildly unpopular.

And it was dumb for Amazon to seek out subsidies anyway. Amazon only needed one criteria to have a successful HQ2: A willingness to accommodate new housing demand. $3B in subsidies would be dwarfed by the increase in salaries from higher costs of living. If a city can allow housing to be built, and keep up with Amazon's hiring demand to keep housing prices flat, that alone would be worth far more than any city or state could ever hand over to Amazon in subsidies.

</comment><comment><USER58> I guess I didn't realize how many commentators here were New Yorkers. XD

Everyone's moving to more comfortable places with lower costs of living. NYC is not an attractive place for job candidates unless those candidates are already in NYC. Even companies with a strong presence in NYC are expanding in places like Nashville, Omaha, Dallas, Denver, etc. rather than in NYC.

At some point, New Yorkers ought to ask themselves why everyone wants to move to these nice midwestern cities.

<comment><USER59> Truth. I took a lower paying job in the midwest, and I can now save a lot more money, while also living a less stressful life. NYC is a really cool city and I enjoyed living there. But I "did my time".

I think more and more tech workers are going to wake up to the fact that while mega-city life can be cool, it's not the only way to live.

<comment><USER60> I'm not sure why tech workers think they're special. Almost everyone that moves to NYC for a good office job goes through this. Moving to a suburb or another city after age 35 is a stereotype. So is staying here and enjoying a DINK or single life (unless you have a lot of money!).

Job-wise, the NYC tech market is as good as ever.

<comment><USER59> This may shock you but we have cities out here. I live in one and walk to work. Not the suburbs. That being said, what is your overall point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> A bit disappointed. The narrative really turned on Amazon during this process. But I feel like every organization shops around for deals - Amazon was the first company to do it transparently and openly tell cities what they have or are missing. There was a real opportunity to bring tech industry to heartland cities.

In the end all they proved was this kind of stuff should just stay in the backroom. And good paying tech jobs stay on the coasts.

<comment><USER62> I would't feel too bad for Amazon. They are the ones that made it a big spectacle and dragged it out for far longer than necessary or wise.

<comment><USER61> I don't necessarily feel bad for Amazon - I guess I just hate how disappointing the result was. Transparency lost.

They likely could have avoided it if they had just selected one of the dark horses like Indianapolis or Saint Louis.

<comment><USER24> > Transparency lost.

The process was anything but transparent. "Cities' Offers for Amazon Base Are Secrets Even to Many City Leaders": [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/technology/amazon- headqua...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/technology/amazon-headquarters- hq2.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> [https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/update-on-plans- fo...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/update-on-plans-for-new-york- city-headquarters)

<comment><USER64> "We do not intend to reopen the HQ2 search at this time."

I wonder if this is to let some of the news cool, work behind the scenes with some of the previous offers, then surprise announcement down the road.

<comment><USER65> It has already been rumored that Dallas is working with them, still. The head of the initiative, from the start, has stated, "We have never ended talks with Amazon, they are still ongoing". That was as of earlier this week/last week.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As someone from the N. Virginia region I think this is a huge win for our region. And I think it will do great things to continue the grow the region's technical strength. I'm glad they can focus on building a single larger HQ and not two equal HQs, which always seemed odd to me anyways. NYC is not too far on the Acela line to DC. And this might spur development of more high speed rail or hyperloops or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER66> >> _We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time_. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville

Weird.

<comment><USER67> I'm not sure it is. There was always a suspicion that Amazon knew from day one they wanted to open a HQ in NYC—they just put on this show to get cities into a bidding war to provide the biggest tax break. I don't imagine the publicity around having NYC tax-payers subsidize the world's richest man's business dealings is positive.

<comment><USER68> Amazon also got a lot of free, confidential data on growth prospects from midsize to large cities all across the US, which would be useful for planning other facilities like warehouses and retail outlets like Whole Foods.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Amazon is being a huge diva. They enjoy public support and the deal was guaranteed.

I remain unconvinced that they care about local politicians' angry takes on their campus (who they probably expected to hate it in the first place).

</comment><comment><USER70> An unfortunate missed chance for NYC to diversify its tax base away from a dangerous reliance on the financial sector.

</comment><comment><USER71> NYC Subway is already falling apart. Fix that first! Less corruption, and get rid of de Blasio while we're at it.

<comment><USER72> Why would that be an either-or thing? I'd rather have Amazon here with no tax subsidies so that total tax revenue increases so that there's more money to fix the subways.

<comment><USER73> > Why would that be an either-or thing?

ask the state government, who's happy to give Amazon the tax break but not nearly so happy to fund the agencies running its largest city's transit.

<comment><USER71> This! They are deferring the inevitable time when the subway is no longer sustainable. Are we waiting for another Sandy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> A shame. As an employee of a Big N company in NYC, this would have provided upward pressure on my salary (even if personally I wouldn't want to go work for Amazon).

But I didn't like the big tax breaks, and as a taxpayer of the city I'm glad my money won't go towards subsidizing the expansion of one of the world's most valuable companies.

It's too bad Amazon wasn't willing to pay their fair share.

<comment><USER74> _As shame. As an employee of a Big N company in NYC, this would have provided upward pressure on my salary._

The fact that that's all you can think about ...

is exactly why people are starting to lose their love for Big Tech in general.

<comment><USER75> Yes that's all the poster can think about. If you refuse to read the next sentence.

<comment><USER74> I read it also but on balance he did say, after all -- "A shame".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I would have liked to have had Amazon become a bigger presence here in NYC, but I strongly disagreed with their tactics and use of a contest to facilitate a race to the bottom among municipalities.

</comment><comment><USER77> This reminds me of the asshole billionaires who shake down cities to get a free stadium for their stupid football, basketball or whatever team and have a bunch of regular people pay for their toy.

</comment><comment><USER78> I think this is more on the city and state government than Amazon itself. Of course Amazon was going to push for the sweetest deal they could get but Cuomo and DeBlasio bent the rules too far and the massive push back was justified, if I recall correctly the city council was going to use some really iliberal moves to get this tax package through.

NYC could've had Amazon, even with decent tax breaks, but the government just went too far without the support of its constituents.

</comment><comment><USER79> Some practical considerations that nobody talks about are 1) the 7 train that would have served Amazon's HQ2 location would be hard pressed to accommodate 25,000 additional riders. The 7 train is notorious for delays whenever there is in-climate weather - for at least the past twenty years the slightest precipitation knocks out the signal system and the segment connecting to manhattan shuts down every alternate weekend and whenever the weather is in- climate for maintenance. 2) housing in the area if at capacity so not sure where they think 25,000 additional people are going to live 3) schools in the area are over capacity so not sure where they think the kids of the 25,000 extra people were going to go. I've also observed that Amazon employees live in utter terror of being out of contact - I'm under the impression that missing a support call results in immediate termination - and there are numerous dead spots within the city and along commuter corridors where you will be out of contact for prolonged periods of time.

</comment><comment><USER80> So is this a boon for Northern Virginia or will something similar happen there?

<comment><USER81> This is the first time I'm seeing Nashville mentioned, so I wonder if they'll benefit somehow from this.

<comment><USER82> They'll never get 25k workers to relocate to Nashville.

<comment><USER83> Why not? Isn't it the new Austin?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> good riddance. This was a bad deal for NYC. 2-3 billion in corporate welfare to the richest man in the world who heads a company that made 10 billion in profits and paid ZERO federal income tax. Against all odds I suspect NYC will survive. Now that Cuomo has an extra 2 billion or so in his pocket maybe he can fix the transit systems that are the lifeblood of the City.

<comment><USER85> >Now that Cuomo has an extra 2 billion or so in his pocket maybe he can fix the transit systems that are the lifeblood of the City.

You actually think that's going to happen?

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> The big tech giants seem to be A/B testing different ways of opposing and working with the government. Sooner or later these tests are going to start showing they have more power than the government, and they will start ignoring laws because they are irrelevant to increasing whatever metric is important this quarter.

This may have already happened, it's really hard to say.

<comment><USER87> My current pet idea is that the Electoral College ought to be replaced with the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies. That way we could do away with the facade that presidential elections currently create.

<comment><USER85> That's actually not a bad idea. We've already proven that the American people do a terrible job selecting a president with the current Electoral College system, so letting the F500 CEOs select the President surely can't be any worse.

<comment><USER88> Whoa. Let's back up a bit. The DNC and the GOP do a terrible job finding qualified candidates that can do the job. The system is designed to elect the electable. We The People don't have much say in who the parties serve up, who is willing to run __, etc.

 __If the relentless (Media) attacks of DJT are an indication, there are few "outsiders" who are going to get involved in the future. And isn't that exactly what status quo'ers like the DNC and GOP want?

<comment><USER87> _If the relentless (Media) attacks of DJT are an indication, there are few "outsiders" who are going to get involved in the future._

Consider the possibility that he isn't being attacked. That his actions/statements are being reported on. That what you call an attack is indicative of the nature of the man. When you cause George Will to leave the party then....

<comment><USER88> George Will? He's part of the status quo that laid down the foundation on which Trump build his successful candidacy. That George Will? The old white blowhard? That failure is not Trump's fault, it's Will's & Co. But people like Will don't have the integrity to stand up and be counted. Instead, they use diversion and misdirection, and sadly people fall for that. Will left because he was embarrassed, embarrassed by his own incompetence. Trump was a convenient excuse.

My benchmarks are these:

1) The USA went to War in Iraq over over lie. Thousands died, gazillions were spent, etc. as a result of that lie. The Media barely noticed. People who believe Trump is the worst thing ever clearly never understood who and Dick Cheney was. Trump is a pussy cat compared to Cheney.

2) Not only did BHO renew the (so called) Patriot Act but he expanded its depth & breadth. The Snowden revelation also came to light on Obama's watch. Again, the Media barely noticed. Real journalists would find both of these troubling. Instead, BHO was our first BuzzFeed POTUS.

\--

I am by no mean a fan of DJT but the truth is nothing he has done to date comes close to either one of those. He's got __a lot__ of work to do to top either one of those. The Media is bending over backwards to discredit DJT because:

1) It's a favor to the DNC. It lets the DNC off the hook because ppl are too distracted to ask the DNC what should be asked. That is: "How negligent and incompetent do to have to be to lose to DJT? And what heads are going to roll for your debacle? We want names!!!"

2) The GOP doesn't like him either. He stepped in on their dance, made all their candidates look like the fools that they are, and made it to the Whitehouse. That's not how it works.

3) Neither party wants to see another outsider do what DJT did, and they will, by any means necessary, make sure it doesn't happen again any time soon.

4) Trump is good for the Media's business. They love the "outrage". They love the "controversy." As long as it draws eyes and clicks - cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-chaig - they're happy. The media finally discovered that giving Bush #2 and Obama free passes didn't help pay their bills. For the Mainstream Media DJT is like printing money.

That is the context. That's how W.DC operates.

<comment><USER87> _George Will? He 's part of the status quo that laid down the foundation on which Trump build his successful candidacy. That George Will? The old white blowhard? That failure is not Trump's fault, it's Will's & Co. But people like Will don't have the integrity to stand up and be counted._

George Will has been a solid conservative for decades and written numerous books lauded by conservatives. Consider the possibility that it was precisely his integrity that caused him to abandon the party. Perhaps it's possible that Trump represents a part of the party that a reasonable person with some sense of moral and intellectual consistency wants nothing to do with. How far right does the party have to go before you will question the state of affairs? Trump called Ted Cruz a liar. He implied Jeb Bush is a wimp. He implied that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly. He implied that Rand Paul is ugly. He said that McCain is a loser because he was a POW. He was a loser for getting captured. Trump agreed that his own daughter is a nice piece of ass. This was on the Howard Stern Show. How far does the man have to go to lose credibility in your eyes?

<comment><USER85> >Trump called Ted Cruz a liar.

To be fair, was he wrong? How many career politicians do you know that aren't liars, especially Republicans?

>He implied that Ted Cruz's wife is ugly.

Again, to be fair, I just did a google search and he's not wrong, IMO. Yes, it's in poor taste to make remarks like that, but Trump is a populist, so he's basically playing the "I call it like I see it" card, which gets votes from his base.

>How far does the man have to go to lose credibility in your eyes?

The things you're complaining about are _positives_ in the eyes of Trump voters. That seems to be the problem you're having with understanding. They don't want another regular politician; this is why populists come to power now and then. It seems to me that the biggest problem that both parties have, and is shown by your post here, is a completely inability to comprehend the appeal of someone like Trump to low-information, low-class voters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> I wonder if the victory for local organizers here will provide a model for anti-tech movements in other urban areas?

</comment><comment><USER42> I think this is fantastic for both as they don't deserve each other. Residents don't want a company getting breaks and Amazon wants breaks. Amazon has plenty of other places where the residents value them more and NYC has plenty of other companies to fill the coffers/employment.

<comment><USER27> Most polls had residents supportive of the move even with subsidies.

[https://nypost.com/2019/02/12/majority-of-new-yorkers- want-a...](https://nypost.com/2019/02/12/majority-of-new-yorkers-want-amazons- hq2-in-queens-poll/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Good riddance.

It irks me to no end that our system is set up to reward the largest and the wealthiest.

NYC should have prepared a package for Amazon and said "this is what we'll guarantee in breaks to small business owners if you come here".

I didn't even think it was a particularly bad deal all things considered, I just hate the idea.

Meanwhile, half of NYC and the country is wondering what NYC will do without 25,000 jobs. Or before that, wondering how the housing market could possibly bear it.

25,000 people, a ton of whom were already living in NYC (thats why they wanted to come) was going to be barely a ripple.

The whole thing was a sham. People were way overstating the affect it'd have, and NYC needs better subways, not more tech jobs (or both in conjunction).

<comment><USER91> NYC has 38,500 police officers.

I could give a shit about 25,000 potential AWS employees.

<comment><USER90> Exactly. I didn't understand what the big deal was from the get go.

In terms of impact on a regular residents life at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wonder how many people started real-estate speculation who might be hurt from this?

<comment><USER72> Who cares? If you indulge in speculation and then get hurt by it, well then, you knew the risks going in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> In 2016, I relocated from Silicon Valley to southern Rhode Island to build and reside in a new custom home. Over the next two years, I probably injected up to $1M into the local economy. I didn't expect or receive any special treatment from the local government. I didn't go to local officials and threaten to relocate elsewhere unless they gave me incentives, tax breaks, concessions, enticements, zoning variances, etc.

In my opinion, the type of special treatment that New York offered Amazon is fundamentally anti-democratic and just plain wrong.

</comment><comment><USER93> IMO, Corporates are not evil per se. How it is run, and by whom is the question. America was built on the progression and opportunity of both economical and social high fluency. Stepping on the breaks of the progress of the largest economy, doesn't only heart the US, it heart all the western economies which have trusted and followed that example. If the problem is that Amazon has made a mistake, punish the act and collect the taxes that should have been collected. Don't step on the neck of the economical progress, please.

</comment><comment><USER94> This move will keep more tech in SF and not in NYC, beyond just Amazon. For every Amazon we lose, we lose 50 startups to the valley. I can't believe NY politicians let this happen.

</comment><comment><USER95> This could be an interesting development for the DC metro area.

<comment><USER96> >We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

<comment><USER72> It's not clear to me how this comment is relevant. Northern Virginia _is_ the DC area, and if this cancellation means that all of the jobs that were previously slated to go to NYC will instead go to the DC area office, then that will have huge effects on DC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> "70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence"

Sounds like a negotiating tactic, to encourage residents in support of the campus to put pressure on their representatives in government.

The "politicians" are upset, because their constituents are upset. Amazon, attempting to turn the tables is an interesting tactic - sort of a reverse psychology. I wonder if it will work.

<comment><USER97> What negotiation tactic? They already withdrew their plan of building a HQ there.

It would be absolutely ridiculous and absurd if they decide to come back, just because the narrative between officials and constituents changed.

<comment><USER35> It certainly looks final, but that line struck me as odd. It's either a "final jab" as they walk out the door, sort of a message or lesson to other cities or regions, OR it's just a very hard-line negotiating tactic.

Honestly, them coming _back_ to NYC wouldn't be any less of a shit show then the process of them coming _to_ NYC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Union leader says Amazon had agreed to a framework of a deal with state and union officials to salvage plans for its NYC HQ a day before its cancellation - [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-14/amazon- wa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-14/amazon-was-holding- talks-wednesday-to-make-nyc-deal-happen)

</comment><comment><USER99> In a way this is good as we need to stop this race to bottom with government subsidies. Amazon should be expanding in NYC not because of some handouts, but because of the talent it has to offer. Also, Amazon's statement that they are not doing a HQ2 search really underscores what I always suspected - the dog and pony show is about maximizing handout for a natural increase in satellite office headcount

</comment><comment><USER100> My guess is they are using NYC as the hammer to get concessions from their 2nd choice that they've been negotiating with behind the scenes.

</comment><comment><USER101> I can't imagine this was simply due to a vocal minority that opposed the move. Instead, I'm more inclined to think that the powerful NY unions who were dissatisfied with the deal were seen as a long term threat: They represented a likely avenue to unionization of Amazon employees in NY that would, from Amazon's point of view, be a very dangerous precedent.

</comment><comment><USER102> I just don't understand why it's so hard to go build such a huge head quarters in a semi-big city that's close to a big one. They get all the benefits of having talent nearby, they get to use good enough infrastructure. Businesses definitely will flourish around, lots of people and companies would be moving into this city just because of the flourish

</comment><comment><USER103> The Davos crowd hates this news. And for that reason this is great news, and great news in general for clamping down on cronyism.

</comment><comment><USER104> I don't have a strong opinion one way or another.

I did however love the protester's signs:

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/02/14/nyregion/14nyamaz...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/02/14/nyregion/14nyamazon/14nyamazon- threeByTwoLargeAt2X-v2.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER105> Try to bulldoze your way through community politics in NYC and get your ass handed back to you, every time.

The only person who successfully circumvented NYC politics was Mike Bloomberg, and that was solely a result of his personal charity giving over $600 million in donations to different community orgs and non-profits over the course of his mayoral tenure.

</comment><comment><USER106> What needs to happen now is that we need to use the Commerce Clause to make it illegal for a company to cut this type of deal with a city or state in the first place. It just creates a race to the bottom where cities have no choice to subsidize corporate bottom lines with taxpayer money or else have businesses leave.

</comment><comment><USER107> Come to my town of Oshkosh, WI. We have some of the highest rates of drunk people.. I mean.. uh.. we have lakes!

</comment><comment><USER108> Question: What does everybody think this might mean for the Crystal City VA area (i.e. the DMV)? The article said they plan to continue on as planned.

Does anybody think that Amazon pulling out of NYC will make their impact on the DMV greater or would it probably be the same as if they had HQ2's both places?

</comment><comment><USER109> I wonder if Cuomo and De Blasio will try to save face by letting other companies bid on the space instead.

<comment><USER110> That'd be hilarious

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Not to get off topic, but given all the talk about climate change and rising oceans, the LIC selection always struck me as odd. Why dig in (with a HQ2) that's so likely to be compromised by storms, rising tides, etc.

Yeah. It sounds odd, but it's certainly not crazy / wrong.

</comment><comment><USER111> This will strengthen Amazon's hand in negotiations with any other region. Politicians in Virginia, Nashville, and elsewhere will say, "We don't want what happened to Long Island City to happen to us; let's capitulate more!"

</comment><comment><USER112> Amazon announcement: => [https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/update-on- plans-fo...](https://blog.aboutamazon.com/company-news/update-on-plans-for- new-york-city-headquarters)

</comment><comment><USER113> Hopefully seeing someone (even as well off as NYC is) push back against showering taxpayer dollars on a company of Amazon's stature will lead to a reevaluation of taxpayer subsidization for corporate relocation/expansion.

</comment><comment><USER114> In this story I am only sorry for people who bought up all the real estate around the future campus, ouch! Remember all the "insider trading" condo purchases, just before the announcement, that is going to hurt...

<comment><USER115> I saw leftie Twitter refer to it as "insider gentrification" which I thought was a hilarious and clever observation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> Loose, loose: Amazon would have won had they come to NYC without any subsidies but also NYC /NY would have won despite paying some subsidies.

But to save face, AMZN now has to pull out of NYC that has a great pool of talent.

</comment><comment><USER117> Interesting. I guess they estimated that the battle to retain the tax breaks wasn't worth the fight. I wonder if they'll continue to expand in Seattle, or wait a few years before putting HQ2 elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER118> I wonder if this means they'll expand the plans for the north Virginia hq

</comment><comment><USER119> This is the same thing that happened to the Mall of America many years ago. It was extremely welcomed, then opposition, and it got scaled down considerably and lost some benefits the state was offering.

</comment><comment><USER120> Its a sad day for NYC I think. The only exception to that is Queens, I agree its not great to put a corporate office there, it should have gone to Manhattan like every other big office building.

</comment><comment><USER121> > We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as > planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville

Wait, where'd Nashville come from? I thought the choices before were NoVa and NYC?

</comment><comment><USER122> Come to the Twin cities, plenty of land, lots of tech already, highly educated work force. Lots of lake houses and downtown is booming. Winter isn't that bad.

<comment><USER123> _Winter isn 't that bad._

Have you been there this year? It was -26F without the wind chill a couple of weeks ago.

Come for the cold weather and stay for the high taxes and high housing prices on the St. Paul side. Also, traffic is going to be fun on the west side for a couple of years.

<comment><USER122> Lol.. I live there. Polar vortex and all.. and that vortex impacted most of the country. The flip side is that houses are pretty cheap. You can buy in most brackets in almost any area you want to live in. Taxes aren't that bad. Cost of living is cheap. Summers are great.

<comment><USER123> Which side do you live on, the houses on the east side are up there. Taxes are that bad. I lived there for over a decade, and my family is still there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> I don't understand why these tech companies love building headquarters in areas where property prices are unaffordable even for their own high paid workers.

</comment><comment><USER125> They broke up with us on Valentine's Day. Heartless.

</comment><comment><USER126> I started to get that impression when I, as an east coast dev, started getting hit up by Amazon recently... for jobs in Seattle and SF. But not New York.

</comment><comment><USER91> There was a story in the past about AWS employees buying apartments in NYC before NYC was announced... I wonder what happened to those apartments?

</comment><comment><USER127> So what about the 25k jobs? I do notice uptick in hiring, AWS and engineering in the Denver area. But that could just be business as usual

</comment><comment><USER128> I wonder how many speculators bought property in NY based on this proposed move, and what happens next now that they leave.

</comment><comment><USER129> I wonder how the real investors who purchased Queens apartments are taking this. Those apartments tripled in price.

</comment><comment><USER66> So who are the 'State and local politicians who refuse to work with us"?

Ocasio-Cortez, Gianaris, van Bramer...?

</comment><comment><USER130> Good. Why do the good people of NYC need to be taxed just so their taxes can be given as corporate welfare to a large corporation that will then come and organize other New Yorkers' activities in such a way that money is siphoned out of the city?

If we want to create jobs, we don't need a giant corporation using our tax money to help organize this human activity. We can hire each other for our own local purposes.

If we want to keep NYC rich then we don't exploit the labor of the local population to send money out of the city.

The biggest US export by far is Dollars, ever since Bretton Woods they are in demand all around the world. We trade them for stuff others make. It has made Americans lazy and fat.

Do you really want jobs? Like race-to-the-bottom Amazon warehouse slave jobs? Is that the goal of humans? No. It's just fed to them.

Donald Trump said he'll keep the jobs in this country. Bernie said he'll keep the money in this country by preventing corporations and billionaires from offshoring it through loopholes.

I know which goal I'd prefer, if I wanted Americans to be the masters and not the slaves. (I happen to believe that money going to poorer areas is good, so I don't hold that nationalistic position - but if I did, I would want the money to stay, not jobs.)

</comment><comment><USER131> Ideology triumphs over reason.

Big loser here is New York City.

Amazon will get its tax break somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER132> Will this foretell how Amazon will punish NYC for its obstinacy?

</comment><comment><USER133> Where are they going next? Will that decision be a new contest?

</comment><comment><USER134> Totally anedcotal evidence, but the first 5 top level comments (make that 6 now) are all against Amazon for NYC.

Looks like we've reached our "Gettysburg" moment against corporate welfare. Terrible years of war still left, but the tide has turned.

<comment><USER135> It's very different because a large amount of NYC residents rent as opposed to own. To a resident that rents in NYC, Amazon moving in means they will have higher rents and less money on their pocket. It ends up costing many NYC residents actual money in rent to host Amazon, regardless of the subsidy. I think this one is a special case.

<comment><USER85> I don't see the problem here at all. If you have higher rents, that's because there's more demand for housing, and not enough affordable new housing is being constructed. Who controls that? Your local politicians. Who controls them? The voters who elected them, which is you if you live there. So you have no one to blame but yourself, and no cause to complain. You have the government you deserve.

<comment><USER136> That is a very shortsighted blame-the-victim mentality. You're conflating the power of the individual voter with that of the entire voting bloc. Besides, even if new affordable housing was constructed (which is getting harder and harder in nyc as people are being pushed further and further out geographically), it's not easy to just up and move, even in nyc.

<comment><USER85> Sorry, I have no sympathy for "victims" who have _all_ the power, and bring their misery on themselves. The voters have the power over their government, so if they don't like their government, it's their own fault. In the short term, sure, voters can be fleeced, and have to wait for the next election to choose someone else, but this kind of stuff isn't happening within election cycles, it's long-term.

As for "being pushed further and further out", that again is the voter's own fault for not voting better. They don't need to move farther out, they need to build more densely, and they don't do it. This is largely an American problem because for some reason, Americans associate dense residential areas with "slums" and think that only suburbs with McMansions with gigantic and useless lawns can possibly be "nice".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER137> NYC had brains enough to do the right thing. Why invite a monopoly that should not exist, and give it subsidies? (unless of course the governance is broken - and can not make the right decisions)

</comment><comment><USER138> No paywalls, or use of JavaScript (for that matter): [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/44](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/44)

</comment><comment><USER139> Austin here they come. <ducks>

</comment><comment><USER15> Good for NYC, good for Nashville.

</comment><comment><USER140> Victory!!! Now, wtf did we win?

</comment><comment><USER141> It's a negotiating tactic.

</comment><comment><USER142> Is there a press release or any statement from Amazon about this? Paywalled here (and would prefer a direct source anyway).

<comment><USER143> From Amazon

"After much thought and deliberation, we've decided not to move forward with our plans to build a headquarters for Amazon in Long Island City, Queens. For Amazon, the commitment to build a new headquarters requires positive, collaborative relationships with state and local elected officials who will be supportive over the long-term. While polls show that 70% of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project we and many others envisioned in Long Island City.

We are disappointed to have reached this conclusion — we love New York, its incomparable dynamism, people, and culture — and particularly the community of Long Island City, where we have gotten to know so many optimistic, forward- leaning community leaders, small business owners, and residents. There are currently over 5,000 Amazon employees in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Staten Island, and we plan to continue growing these teams.

We are deeply grateful to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and their staffs, who so enthusiastically and graciously invited us to build in New York City and supported us during the process. Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have worked tirelessly on behalf of New Yorkers to encourage local investment and job creation, and we can't speak positively enough about all their efforts. The steadfast commitment and dedication that these leaders have demonstrated to the communities they represent inspired us from the very beginning and is one of the big reasons our decision was so difficult.

We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

Thank you again to Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and the many other community leaders and residents who welcomed our plans and supported us along the way. We hope to have future chances to collaborate as we continue to build our presence in New York over time."

</comment></comment><comment><USER144> Well, now all those people who bought property ahead of the move will have to try and sell.

</comment><comment><USER145> Dallas is waiting yall.

</comment><comment><USER146> Good riddance

</comment><comment><USER147> Great news! The richest man in the world and his company should have to play by the same rules as the rest of business in New York. Gotta love New Yorkers for their no BS attitude.

</comment><comment><USER148> Good. One-off corporate subsidies are basically corruption and create an uneven playing field. Crony capitalism at its worst.

</comment><comment><USER149> This Amazon process has been complete shit for every idiot city who jumped on (my city included). I call the mayor's line here to leave messages about stuff like this every time it happens and say "see, you dummies this was a bad deal"

This has happened with Amazon, Casinos, GE, The Olympics, F1 racing... cities need to not be so fucking desperate to sell out their residents to the highest bidder.

I'd be more amenable to a property tax increase than any of this garbage.

</comment><comment><USER150> Good, Amazon shouldn't be getting any subsidies just for having their offices in a city.

<comment><USER151> Even if the city gets back much more in tax revenue?

<comment><USER72> No, because then it's a race to the bottom and all other companies start expecting these same deals (or even better), and eventually you do end up with a situation where the city does _not_ get back more in tax revenue.

It's simple negotiation; you may lose some money on that one deal, but you'll gain more in the end by not decreasing the value of all subsequent deals.

<comment><USER152> Or, you'll lose out on all the businesses that won't start or expand there because the baseline level of taxation is too unfavorable for the economy (in either sense of the word) that the city offers.

It's almost like taxing easily-moveable economic activity is a bad idea.

<comment><USER72> And yet there's a huge number of businesses that do have presences in NYC because the tax revenue funds all sorts of things that make NYC attractive to businesses that can't be gotten elsewhere.

A lot of what makes NYC great (like the 24/7 public transit system, the best in the country) costs serious money to operate. You need to get that money from tax revenue.

And businesses aren't actually easily-movable, not at all.

<comment><USER152> >And yet there's a huge number of businesses that do have presences in NYC because the tax revenue funds all sorts of things that make NYC attractive to businesses that can't be gotten elsewhere.

Most of which were present there because they set up a long time ago. The current environment makes it so that you pretty much have to get a discount to make it worth starting there, per the famous reddit comment:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/9wploz/ocasiocortez_bl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/9wploz/ocasiocortez_blasts_tax_breaks_for_amazon_says/e9mdind/)

>And businesses aren't actually easily-movable, not at all.

"Where they decide to locate new offices" is.

<comment><USER72> If that's true, then fix it for _all_ businesses, not just for Amazon. Amazon deserves the white glove treatment the least.

<comment><USER152> On that point, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER153> In addition to the pushback against the tax incentives, the cancellation of the L-Pocalypse made a massive expansion in LIC less desireable.

LIC was a perfect location to recruit folks whose easy commutes from Brooklyn to Google were going to be complicated.

</comment><comment><USER154> Amazon is making the right decision to pull out. Given the political opposition, flip-flopping from politicians who previously supported the deal, and activist fervor, there is just too much risk in committing to NY and NYC. The losers will be residents of NY and NYC. This would have been a huge win for them, with massive job creation and tax revenue increases well in excess of what it costs. That revenue could have helped improve services across the city.

Note that Amazon did not provide projections on economic impact or tax revenues or other aspects here. The city and state made those promises, based on economic analyses they commissioned (and likely used in their negotiations). It includes things like taxes from the additional jobs and businesses that will be created outside of Amazon.

All but $505m of the ~$3b in subsidies here would have come from programs that already existed in NY State and NYC (Excelsior, ICAP, and REAP). Would you give up $3b over 10 years (and just $505m above programs that are broadly available) to attract business that will provide an incremental $28B in new tax revenue and $186B in GSP over 25 years? That is a _tremendous_ ROI, the kind that typically does not exist in the market, and a $505m capital grant (the primary Amazon-specific concession) was a small price to secure it. The 9:1 return they projected on this deal was the best such program NY State and NYC would have ever run, and possibly the best such deal ever across the country. To put it into context, the Film Tax Credit program had a 1.15:1 ROI.

We can argue all day about whether the HQ2 search was a bluff or sham or whatever, but there is no reasonable claim to certainty here - and hence negotiation enters the picture to turn something uncertain (Amazon MAY come to NYC) into certain (Amazon WILL come to NYC).

Here are the quotes from the original HQ2 press release on the economic benefits:

> The construction is expected to create an average of 1300 direct > construction jobs annually through 2033. Overall, the project is estimated > to create more than 107,000 total direct and indirect jobs, over $14 billion > in new tax revenue for the State and a net of $13.5 billion in City tax > revenue over the next 25 years. The project provides a 9:1 return on > investment.

> According to an economic impact study by REMI, Inc., a world leader in > dynamic forecasting and policy analysis, the Amazon project will generate > over $186 billion in Gross State Product for the New York State economy over > the initial 25 years. REMI also projects over $14 billion in total new tax > revenue for the State (in 2019 dollars), with annual revenues growing from > $10.8 million in 2019 to nearly $1 billion in 2043. The City forecasts $13.5 > billion in total new tax revenue.

[https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-and-mayor- de...](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-and-mayor-de-blasio- announce-amazon-selects-long-island-city-new-corporate)

The ROI here is well beyond any other conceivable option. It is so large that even if projections of a 9:1 ROI are way off, it would be a big win. Also, most of the subsidy to Amazon is not an up-front lump sum. Rather, most of it takes the form of credits for prior actions. For example, they would get tax credits for job creation in the prior year incrementally, based on what they actually delivered.

Taking all this into account, this would have been a super safe path to greater tax revenues, which would have improved the city/state as a whole. I hope as a next step Amazon considers cities in other parts of the country, away from blue coastal cities. Economic revitalization across a broader slice of the political/ideological/cultural spectrum can only be a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER155> Bezos practicing his pullout game sooner than I thought

</comment><comment><USER156> amazon should be pulled from all of of their projects...

</comment><comment><USER86> So massive amounts of corporate welfare and blatant handouts aren't enough? AFTER doing that, we're also supposed to play nice and continue to say good things about the most massive, powerful corporation in the world or else they will just take their ball and go home?

This whole thing is beyond stupid, no aspect of this model works for anyone. Just stop.

</comment><comment><USER157> Good riddance! NYC is already overcrowded. Let's build some subways to non- hipster neighborhoods first, then we can talk about adding more office space.

</comment><comment><USER158> This is really tragic and foolish. The taxes generated will far far outweigh the tax incentives offered. The local city politicians _reversed_ their positions because they didn't get to bring up their pet projects in the negotiation phase. There is absolutely _no reason_ why the city couldn't use new revenue to protect low income residents from dislocation. It's not a corporate scam -- this is real economic progress for a city with a 43% poverty rate.

<comment><USER159> I find it amusing to watch the political class eat its own on this one.</comment></comment>


'The West' is, in fact, the world's biggest gated community - <AUTHOR> https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/walled-world <comment><USER3> If "The West" is a gated community, how is it that so many countries are managing to join "The West"? Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore used not to be "Western" countries. Central and Eastern Europe, same thing.

I've never seen a gated community that was this easy to join. Just reform your country's institutions, decide to start caring about economic freedom and other basic liberties, and you're basically there.

<comment><USER4> Are you using "The West" as a synonym for "developed country"? Compare [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Cultural_definit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Cultural_definition) with [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Economic_definit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#Economic_definition) .

> Cultural definition: In modern usage, Western world refers to Europe and to > areas whose populations largely originate from Europe, through the Age of > Discovery's imperialism

> Economic definition: The term "Western world" is sometimes interchangeably > used with the term First World or developed countries, ... It is also used > despite many developed countries or regions not being Western (e.g. Japan, > Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao), and therefore left out > when "Western world" is used to denote developed countries.

Minor point: Hong Kong has never been a country.

Regarding "Just reform your country's institutions", many countries still struggle with the effects of European colonization, while the European profited immensely.

As one example, it's hard to care about economic freedom "and other basic liberties" when the US helps the UK overthrow your democratically elected government in order to put a dictator in place, in order to protect Western oil interests - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) .

<comment><USER5> I don't know all the European countries, but I'm pretty France didn't make any money from its colonies.

<comment><USER4> None from slavery and sugar? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_colonial_empire)

> As the French empire in North America grew, the French also began to build a > smaller but more profitable empire in the West Indies. ... France's most > important Caribbean colonial possession was established in 1664, when the > colony of Saint-Domingue (today's Haiti) was founded on the western half of > the Spanish island of Hispaniola. In the 18th century, Saint-Domingue grew > to be the richest sugar colony in the Caribbean.

No money from Asia? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Indochina)

> The principal reasons why French settlement did not grow in a manner similar > to that in French North Africa (which had a population of over 1 million > French civilians) were because French Indochina was seen as a colonie > d'exploitation économique (economic colony) rather than a colonie de > peuplement ...

> Funding for the colonial government came by means of taxes on locals and the > French government established a near monopoly on the trade of opium, salt > and rice alcohol. The French administration established quotas of > consumption for each Vietnamese village, thereby compelling villagers to > purchase and consume set amounts of these monopolised goods.

[https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/french-colonialism-in- vi...](https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/french-colonialism-in-vietnam/)

> Indochina became one of France's most lucrative colonial possessions. ... > The real motive for French colonialism was profit and economic exploitation. > French imperialism was driven by a demand for resources, raw materials and > cheap labour. The development of colonised nations was scarcely considered, > except where it happened to benefit French interests.

Or, [https://portside.org/2014-02-06/france-forces-africa-pay- col...](https://portside.org/2014-02-06/france-forces-africa-pay-colonialism)

> When Sékou Touré of Guinea decided in 1958 to get out of french colonial > empire, and opted for the country independence, the french colonial elite in > Paris got so furious, and in a historic act of fury the french > administration in Guinea destroyed everything in the country which > represented what they called the benefits from french colonization. ...

> Sylvanus Olympio, the first president of the Republic of Togo, a tiny > country in west Africa, found a middle ground solution with the French. ... > agree to pay an annual debt to France for the so called benefits Togo got > from french colonization. ... the amount estimated by France was so big that > the reimbursement of the so called "colonial debt" was close to 40% of the > country budget in 1963. ... On January 13, 1963, three days after he started > printing his country own currency, a squad of illiterate soldiers backed by > France killed the first elected president of newly independent Africa. ...

> It's such an evil system even denounced by the European Union, but France is > not ready to move from that colonial system which puts about 500 billions > dollars from Africa to its treasury year in year out. ...

> Former French President Jacques Chirac recently spoke about the African > nations money in France banks. Here is a video of him speaking about the > french exploitation scheme. He is speaking in French, but here is a short > excerpt transcript: "We have to be honest, and acknowledge that a big part > of the money in our banks come precisely from the exploitation of the > African continent."

Etc.

<comment><USER5> Regarding portside, that's totally not a biased source "Our mission at Portside is to provide information that empowers the left". And with some unsourced informations that's laughable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sure has a lot of immigration from outside the West for a gated community [1]. On the other hand, non-Western countries have near-zero Western immigration, or even inter-continental migration among themselves. So much so that, when viewed with a granularity on the scale of an India, China, or North-/Sub- Saharan Africa, they're nearly perfectly homogeneous, in _stark_ contrast to the "closed, gated" West.

[1] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the- us-...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will- become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/)

<comment><USER4> "Gated community" doesn't mean there's no population exchange. After all, the initial population in a new gated community area may be zero.

Instead, I think a better metric is the number of people who move to X vs. those who want _and can afford_ to move to X, but are prevented because of a non-reciprocal policy by X.

(I'm fine with some restrictions - nearly all countries have some restrictions; Svalbard, Norway being one of the rare exceptions. The above is a hand-wavy way of trying to not get stuck on that detail. The main point is that free movement of people/labor should be like the free movement of money/capital.)

Think back to Jim Crow era US. Blacks may want to move to region of town but not allowed by deed restriction. While whites could move to the few areas of town "red-lined" for blacks, with no legal prohibition. They didn't - <USER2> the opposite, in a process known as "white-flight."

(Some blacks, particularly wealthy ones, could also move out, as well as black people who were employed as help for white families.)

So, just because non-white regions have near-zero white immigration doesn't mean that they are "closed, gated" and the the white areas are not. Which suggests that your interpretation isn't a useful way of understanding what "closed, gated" means.

There's also the physical dimension. Quoting the text:

> At the end of the Cold War, there were just 15 walls separating countries > from each other. Now there are at least 70 walled borders worldwide. Since > the fall of the Wall, thousands of miles of steel and concrete walls have > gone up on international borders.

<comment><USER6> > those who want and can afford to move to X, but are prevented because of a > non-reciprocal policy by X.

It's easy to have open borders if hardly anyone takes advantage of it, so looking at reciprocity isn't very relevant. Faced with rising immigration, non-Western countries tend to adopt restrictions as well (see NPR link on Brazil).

Furthermore, China will only grant citizenship to ethnic Chinese, whereas the West takes in many Chinese immigrants, so in this case, the non-reciprocity is in the other direction. A quick search failed to turn up what restrictions other non-Western countries have, but there's no lack of border walls - a few random examples from every non-Western continent:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-installs-laser- wall...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/india-installs-laser-walls-border- pakistan-n564051)

[https://www.seeker.com/why-india-is-building-the-longest- bor...](https://www.seeker.com/why-india-is-building-the-longest-border-wall- in-the-world-1501495427.html)

[https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/will-pakistans-wall- work/](https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/will-pakistans-wall-work/)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/11/13/chinas-b...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2016/11/13/chinas- building-a-wall-any-lessons-for-trump)

[https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/16/184524306/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/16/184524306/brazil- looks-to-build-a-10-000-mile-virtual-fence)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/22/western- sahara...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/22/western-sahara-wall- morocco-trump)

<comment><USER4> "Faced with rising immigration, non-Western countries tend to adopt restrictions as well"

Sure. The article itself mentions "Not all border walls are between the First World and the Rest of the World." and uses as examples the wall between India and Bangladesh (your #2 link) and Moracco's Berm (your #6), so clearly it wasn't making the point that the West was the only gated community.

My point was to argue that your definition doesn't seem a reasonable as it doesn't really apply to actual gated communities, much less the metaphorical comparison used here.

Other interpretations may be more valid, and demonstrate the incorrectness of "'The West' is, in fact, the world's biggest gated community", but I don't think yours does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I'm not mistaken Singapore and Bermuda have higher average incomes than the US and Europe. On the other hand the people of Costa Rica, Uruguay and Chile for example are mostly pretty happy with their circumstances as are other middle income countries that are not kleptocracies. China too is coming up fast in terms of income if not democracy. Hard to argue that it's not a gated community too even if the gate is bi-directional in this case. Overall this looks like a cherry picking exercise.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was sad they seem to be talking about a literal wall.

Not sure it has meaning or is even useful to know other than for sci-fi.

Even if you could politically take down [B. The Australian Defense Force (ADF)], which you can't, approximately no one came through anyway... and once in they are now behind the wall.

Compared with, The West seems to have a wall of language and culture that's hard to break. Don't underestimate the value of fully understanding Game of Thrones.

This you can change.</comment>


Mailtrain Newsletter #8 – Bundled MTA - <AUTHOR> https://mailtrain.org/archive/rJayV7kh/EysIv8sAx/SklBfpME?track=no <comment><USER3> I've been using mailtrain in a business context (not talking about buy in newsletters) for a while now and I purely love it! It's fast, reliable and the ui is perfectly organized.

What I still miss is simple Email functions like adding attachements and CC receipients. This sounds rediculous, but the missing CC has been keeping us off from using mailtrain in a lot of campaigns where simply other people where important to be informed about replies.

Still I suggest anyone trying out mailtrain as it is super simple to spin up. I love seeing it getting new releases, thumbs up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Attachment support was added just today, see the related blog post: [https://mailtrain.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/attachment- suppor...](https://mailtrain.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/attachment-support-in- mailtrain/)

I don't really get what you mean by the CC recipients. Could you create a new issue in the Mailtrain issue tracker in Github and describe what you would like to have [https://github.com/andris9/mailtrain/issues](https://github.com/andris9/mailtrain/issues)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the lazy, has anyone done any cost analysis?

I've used Sendy (self-hosted php, but non-free licence) before, and that is tied to just Amazon SES.. but this has a few options.

<comment><USER5> I also use Sendy: one with Amazon SES and one with a more dodgy local Postfix server. I am quite happy with it, but the feature missing in sendy is Segmentation. How does this compare?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mailtrain allows you to create segments over exact or relative matches eg. "all users where signup date is after 7 days before today" or "users who have custom numeric field value between 1 and 10". There's not too much documentation about it but you an find some from the Wiki [https://github.com/andris9/mailtrain/wiki/Relative-date- rang...](https://github.com/andris9/mailtrain/wiki/Relative-date-ranges-in- segments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a question for Amazon SES users. Do you need to submit the "Request a Sending Limit Increase" form to send emails to domains you don't own? Can it still be free? I just want to send 3-4 emails a day from my vps and my home router.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone with any experience with this product? I've got a lot of users who want to use Mailchimp, but we run a very restrictive SPF/dmarc and we will not include any 3rd parties.

This might be a good solution for self-hosting our own.

<comment><USER8> The biggest value Mailchimp provides is _deliverability_. They spend a lot of time working with ISPs to maintain the reputation of their IPs to make sure their mail ends up in the inbox and not the spam box.

You can't self host that.

The mailing list features themselves aren't much different than anyone else offers.

<comment><USER7> I would argue that they absolutely fail in that regard. The default behavior from the service seems to be "impersonate" the user - any corporation that runs an SPF has to choose to either allow (tolerate) or deny it.

<comment><USER8> Well yes that's how SPF was designed. Of course if you have an SPF record they will fail (and so will anyone else) if you don't allow them. That's kind of the point of SPF -- to prove to everyone else who you trust to deliver mail for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How advanced is the segmentation in mailtrain? Can it segment lists like (ListA + ListB) - <USER2>

We're currently using Interspire Email Marketer and the segmentation feature is quite limited.

</comment><comment><USER10> 503 Service Unavailable?

<comment><AUTHOR> It was that damn Apache that could not handle any load. Killed it and exposed Node.js directly instead of proxying through mod_proxy, should be fine now

<comment><USER11> In my experience this is due to an Apache default configuration that probably seemed reasonable when introduced but in practice can really screw you. Basically it caches and serves only the 503 for something like 3s to prevent the application it's proxying from getting kicked while it's down/flapping/starting. So the end result is that even if your app is only occasionally returning 503s for a small subset of users everyone gets to enjoy them for several seconds every time one is encountered. Fun stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a really small box (512mb) that runs everyting and on a normal day it does not have any issues but when the requests from HN started coming in Apache used up all the RAM. I stopped Apache and started Mailtrain from command line in a screen session to listen directly on the web ports (so once it's out from the HN frontpage I can reboot the VPS and everything gets back to normal settings). So far it has been running smoothly with the server RAM usage in a constant 50%, no fluctuations [https://cloudup.com/cokRbDpMIuw](https://cloudup.com/cokRbDpMIuw)

<comment><USER11> Yeah that's a pretty tight fit. Can't say I have much experience doing that all on one small box outside of local dev stuff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>