#hq2

[ohreigen]

Happy Birthday Tsukishima Kei ☆ September 27th

[ka-steve]

This City Hall, brought to you by Amazon

A review of some of the bids to woo Amazon’s HQ2 to other cities and states shows it’s not all about the money. In some cases democracy itself is a bargaining chip.

Example: Chicago has offered to let Amazon pocket $1.32 billion in income taxes paid by its own workers. This is truly perverse. Called a personal income-tax diversion, the workers must still pay the full taxes, but instead of the state getting the money to use for schools, roads or whatever, Amazon would get to keep it all instead. “The result is that workers are, in effect, paying taxes to their boss,” says a report on the practice from Good Jobs First, a think tank critical of many corporate subsidies.

[probablyasocialecologist]

States are less and less able to govern firms of the power and scope of Amazon, even collecting taxes in any meaningful sense; Amazon will pay $0 in federal income tax on a profit of $11.2 billion in 2018. This means regions, cities, whole countries participate in a unique twenty-first century race: Who among them can self-impose the most “structural adjustment,” become the most “business-friendly,” provide the most compliant workforce, the most complacent, controlled citizenry? New York City “won” just such a race. Once this set of conditions was reserved for the decolonizing world, imposed through institutions of global governance, and sometimes enacted by force. But the chickens have come home to roost, and now even in “the metropole”—even in the still vital imperial centers like the United States—the force of fully unfettered capital is felt.

Ajay Singh Chaudhary, The Amazon Drama

[thenychaiku]

[courtenaybird]

'How can anyone be surprised? We competed successfully, made a deal and spent the last three months trashing our new partner.' The reception Amazon received sent a 'pretty bad message to the job creators of the city and the world.'

Amazon’s Retreat on New York City Headquarters Followed Unexpected Backlash | NYT

[continuations]

The Lesson from the Amazon HQ2 Fiasco

No matter whether you think Amazon HQ2 in New York was a good or a bad idea, it is worth considering how terrible the execution of the whole affair has been. It all started with the way Amazon conducted the search for the new location. Making a bunch of cities compete in a secret bidding contest may strike some people as brilliant but was always a terrible idea. Didn’t anyone at Amazon think: “Hey we are one of the world’s most valuable companies, run by the world’s richest person and so asking cities to give us massive concessions is not going to look good?” Apparently not, or at least not anyone who dared say it or had any real pull inside the company.

I should be quick to point out that’s not actually all that surprising. Success tends to beget that kind of failure mode where eventually everyone is so bought into how everything a company does is obviously good and awesome and everyone else in the world will surely see it the same way (just look at Facebook if you want another example of that). Still it is a failure to “read the room” of epic proportions.

And what about New York City? Similar story. Nobody thought about the optics? At a time when riding the MTA is testing everyone’s patience (never mind the debacle around the L train) and when the city is experiencing its worst affordable housing crisis in decades, didn’t anyone go: we need to really sell how this deal will be broadly good for New York, and not just for people in tech whose salaries have been growing faster than anyone else’s? Any near-term HQ2 concession should have come with commitments to take a meaningful portion of long-term tax revenue gains and use them to address transportation infrastructure and affordable housing.

There are a lot of lessons here. And none of them will be learned by simply accusing the other side of not getting how economics works. This is all about misunderstanding where we are on the perception of tech companies and their role and responsibility with regard to the polarization of society.

[dailybehbeh]

Behbeh

[nyc-urbanism]

Amazon’s HQ2 Coming to NYC? It is being reported that after a year-long search Amazon has chosen two locations for its new 50,000 employee #HQ2 headquarters; Long Island City, Queens and Arlington, VA. Last week #NYC announced $180 million in infrastructure spending in #LIC including #transit, housing, job creation, parks, and sewer upgrades. With subways and schools already packed, this new spending plan from the city will crucial if #Amazon plans to house 25,000 new employees in the neighborhood. What do you think about Amazon moving to LIC? Where should H2Q go? (at Long Island City) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp2g92KlHij/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1hwz3z1bqjhn5