New Yorkers Are Unhappy With Amazon's New Headquarters

AlphaAtlas

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After a long, public, and heated bidding process, Amazon finally settled on New York City and the D.C. Area as locations for their new headquarters last month. While New York allegedly fought tooth and nail for the bid, Common Dreams points out that many council members, assemblymen, and regular citizens aren't happy with the deal. They claim that Amazon, a company with a $811 billion dollar market cap that makes 10s of millions of dollars every day, doesn't need a $500 million cash grant and other breaks from the city to build the headquarters. Various politicians have some heated words for the company, claiming that they are "not a good partner," and that they have already dragged down Seattle with expensive lobbying campaigns and rising home prices. Thanks to TheCommander for the tip.

Huseman, Amazon's vice president for public policy, noted that 5,000 New York workers are already employed by the company at a fulfillment center on Staten Island-but as the hearing was underway those same employees were publicizing their effort to unionize, citing long hours, insufficient breaks, and safety concerns on the job.
 
Reminds me of Fiat holding Toledo hostage with Jeep Manufacturing. They basically forced Toledo to assist in paying for the new Wrangler assembly plant, by threatening to just close the existing plants down and move manufacturing elsewhere. Lo and behold toledo bent over backwards to keep production (and jobs) and they still moved a portion of manufacturing outside of the city regardless.
 
You know I always hear high and mighty gamers and PC enthusiasts claiming they're taking a stance and won't support such and such, but went it really comes down to it only our representatives have the boldness to truly "Vote with their wallet" every single time regardless of whatever stance they take publicly and faux outrage they blare to the media.
 
The NFL has taught them well. Threaten a walkout and the communities will subsidize your profitable business.
QFT! Tampa Bay Bucs and Devil Ray here in my area threaten to pullout if they didn't get their stadiums paid for by taxpayers.
I tired of these large companies wanting free money while most small businesses pay for their own locations.
 
After a long, public, and heated bidding process, Amazon finally settled on New York City and the D.C.
Haha. Bezos had planned those locations before his elaborate data mining scheme ever began--cities actually tripping over themselves to give him mountains of their proprietary data. Other than the advent Facebook it's probably one of the best socially engineered hacks ever.
 
QFT! Tampa Bay Bucs and Devil Ray here in my area threaten to pullout if they didn't get their stadiums paid for by taxpayers.
I tired of these large companies wanting free money while most small businesses pay for their own locations.

I think the city of Arlington gave nearly 1 billion to Jerry Jones to put Jerry World there...

How many local jobs and tax revenue does that generate vs the Amazon HQ for half the price? Seems like a good deal comparatively.

Of course a dumpster fire seems pleasant compared to a landfill fire too so that's not saying much.
 
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After a long, public, and heated bidding process, Amazon finally settled on New York City and the D.C. Area as locations for their new headquarters last month. While New York allegedly fought tooth and nail for the bid, Common Dreams points out that many council members, assemblymen, and regular citizens aren't happy with the deal. They claim that Amazon, a company with a $811 billion dollar market cap that makes 10s of millions of dollars every day, doesn't need a $500 million cash grant and other breaks from the city to build the headquarters. Various politicians have some heated words for the company, claiming that they are "not a good partner," and that they have already dragged down Seattle with expensive lobbying campaigns and rising home prices. Thanks to TheCommander for the tip.

Huseman, Amazon's vice president for public policy, noted that 5,000 New York workers are already employed by the company at a fulfillment center on Staten Island-but as the hearing was underway those same employees were publicizing their effort to unionize, citing long hours, insufficient breaks, and safety concerns on the job.

"Not happy with it." TOUGH SHIT NEW YORK CITY! You guys are the ones that elected these guys in and you do not like what they are doing? EAT IT!

Edit: Hint, just a slight bit upset because no matter what the rest of the state chooses, NYC always seems to make the ultimate choices for the rest of the state. (I live in the Buffalo, NY area.) ;) :D :)
 
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I'd take Amazon over the Foxconn "deal" Wisconsin has going.

Apparently I can't be unhappy about it though since the voters in my state voted in the Governor that signed it, which surely means everybody in the state voted for him. :confused:
 
I think the city of Arlington gave nearly 1 billion to Jerry Jones to put Jerry World there...
How many local jobs and tax revenue does that generate vs the Amazon HQ for half the price? Seems like a good deal comparatively.

The issue is the same in both instances. Communities are subsidizing very profitable businesses for doing what they were planning on doing all along. Amazon was always going to put a HQ in New York - Its the media capital of the world and Amazon wants content for its Prime Video service. Of course the DC area was getting a HQ -- its the lobbying capital of the world and they need to be there. The whole pantomime was just a tactic to wring concessions out of them.
 
The issue is the same in both instances. Communities are subsidizing very profitable businesses for doing what they were planning on doing all along. Amazon was always going to put a HQ in New York - Its the media capital of the world and Amazon wants content for its Prime Video service. Of course the DC area was getting a HQ -- its the lobbying capital of the world and they need to be there. The whole pantomime was just a tactic to wring concessions out of them.

I agree on this ^^^^. Another thing to consider is how much free data the 238 cities in the US and Canada handed over on infrastructural plans, demographic data and information about future investments to Amazon.

[url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriapavlova/2018/11/08/in-amazons-competition-for-hq2-was-data-the-ultimate-goal/]Victoria Pavlova[/url] said:
While Amazon tends to bill itself as an online retailer, we tend to often forget that the company’s business model actually hinges on gathering, packaging and reusing data – primarily data about its users and their shopping habits, speech patterns (via Echo devices), pop culture tastes (via Prime Video) and much more. With the contest for HQ2, however, Amazon gathered a treasure trove of demographic, infrastructural and investment data, without having to do much beyond announcing its intentions. Data which was handed over by some cities’ administrations in an effort to attract the retailer’s business. While the likelihood is that Amazon will simply retain this information and use it for further expansion plans, nothing prevents it from using it to improve the targeting of its services and boost e-commerce revenues, plan new Whole Food locations and any manner of ways that benefit the business beyond just future HQ plans. All of this is, however, speculation at this point.
 
Don’t have the time to look into myself at the moment but I’m wondering what concessions might be being made by Austin for the new Apple complex that’s planned for their city.
 
I read an article about how housing prices sky rocketed. The mom & pop shows where saying they would have to relocate when their lease is up do to the cost.
I used to work for a company with headquarters on Long Island. Only the executives live nearby - the rest of the folks (software developers/project managers/etc) would tell me how they would spend a few hours commuting every day. I was offered a job at HQ - it came with a 30% raise and a bonus (think it was a few thousand, don't remember). It sounded great until I looked up the cost of living. I would have been making "net less" with that deal. I suppose there were more promotion opportunities, but no thanks. No regrets. (the company had many mass firings since then - I would likely have been killed in the cross fire eventually)
 
QFT! Tampa Bay Bucs and Devil Ray here in my area threaten to pullout if they didn't get their stadiums paid for by taxpayers.
I tired of these large companies wanting free money while most small businesses pay for their own locations.
San Francisco actually told the 49ers no, so they moved south to Santa Clara, now Santa Clara is dealing with the lovely broken promises of multi-billion dollar organizations and what they do for the city... they're still called the San Francisco 49ers though. Although SF did lure the Golden State Warriors across the bay, so who knows... maybe the 49ers were just being too fucking greedy (most probably).


Various politicians have some heated words for the company, claiming that they are "not a good partner," and that they have already dragged down Seattle with expensive lobbying campaigns and rising home prices.
How many high end jobs does Amazon actually provide for the Seattle area? Less than 1%? Less than 0.1%? Now I'm talking actual high end jobs, not working in a warehouse jobs. Yeah, I call bullshit of the highest level with these high tech firms being the reason why housing prices are going up. It's a trend that I see here in San Francisco and the entire bay area, "high salary jobs all over the place!" yet so many people who want to live here with not "high salary jobs" ... while yeah you'll hear about the incidents of "Google workers" (because protestors don't fucking know the names of any other companies) overbidding on houses, but whatever so 25 people did that to some relatively nice Victorian houses in a nice part of the city, you think someone bidding up a house in Pacific Heights is the reason why in the ghetto ass Bayshore housing prices are high? Look at how many people complain about housing prices instead of trying to get away from them, this is a demand created problem and it's not just "Google workers" that are making the demands.
 
QFT! Tampa Bay Bucs and Devil Ray here in my area threaten to pullout if they didn't get their stadiums paid for by taxpayers.
I tired of these large companies wanting free money while most small businesses pay for their own locations.

Stadiums and the such should never be paid for by the public. Period. That shit has got to stop.
 
Everyone wants tech companies. It’s crazy what they’ll offer you. Just as you’d be crazy not to take it when it’s on offer. Of course they didn’t need it, but Jeff is famously tight and is going to take every cent he can get.

Same shit with the economic development zones in India and China, its a free hit for the companies and the government is just banking on economic benefits to leave them in the black when it plays out.
 
Stadiums and the such should never be paid for by the public. Period. That shit has got to stop.

At least they have teams in. One of the states in australia is spending $2bn to knock down and rebuild a 50k and a 70k seat stadium, both twenty odd years old (so modern) and neither has a major sports team. They just use them for finals and $200 a ticket concerts.
 
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