Yeah, but the point is that Columbus, Indy, etc. don't stand a chance of actually getting picked. They're just being used as leverage to get Boston/NYC/DC to play ball.
I agree. I think Amazon cares a lot more about logistics and future growth than the specific tax incentives being offered.
The prevailing claim that Amazon has already chosen and is trying to extract better incentives seems wrong to me. If that was the case Amazon could have approached ~5 cities from the start with a plan for each and put a far stronger competitive pressure on them.
I think what this is really about is getting the cities to do the leg work of the research and initial planning process. Amazon wasn't going to put together 200 initial site proposals and 20 more detailed ones. By letting the cities make the proposals Amazon can look at far more potential sites than if they had done the research internally.
IMHO the biggest issue for some of the smaller cities is attracting talent. Good luck getting top notch twenty-something engineers to move to Indy when all of their buddies are in SF, NYC, Boston, etc. Guess I'll eat my words if HQ2 ends up being in the midwest, but this seems like an insurmountable hurdle for the little guys.
Indy has Rose Hulman and Purdue, both of which pump out pretty good software engineers. Are they on par with the SV types? Maybe not, but you're not paying them 300k either.
For what it's worth, I live in Indy and I get emails from Amazon every week trying to get me to work somewhere fairly close to here (like Detroit).
University of Illinois has top notch CS grads too, pretty close to Indy. Seems like the most likely reason they made the list.
Indy also has underrated infrastructure - having to host the massive event that is the Indy 500 every year has given the city experience in dealing with large influxes of travelers.
The cities that don't get chosen, yes. But the thinking is that Amazon has already secretly picked a city years ago (Let's say Washington, DC) who was not originally planning to offer any tax breaks.Then they make a this big show that's basically The Bachelor, causing every city to fall over themselves to offer tax breaks. Once 200+ cities offer tax breaks, then Washington, DC feels compelled to "bid" like everyone else, unknowingly sweetening a deal that has already been "made."
Don't know why they wouldn't. Indy is a major interstate highway and air transport hub. FedEx has a big operation at Indianapolis. Columbus less so, but it's less than an hour away and directly connected by interstate. Both have affordable housing, generally low cost of living, and business-friendly government.
Not the guy who you commented to, but I'm guessing he thinks it's due to the talent pool they can recruit from by locating in a large metropolitan/suburban area.
Right. Not to mention in the case of Columbus you have 60,000 students, proximity to other large cities, room for growth, a nice little airport ripe to be ruined by heavy business traffic, and it's the state capitol. A company like Amazon can come into Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, or Columbus and basically dictate what they want - we want this land, we want this infrastructure, we want these flights at the airport - and it can all be accommodate with great benefit to the city as well. The only real downside to either of those three cities, aside from needing a few more tech workers or maybe more public transportation investment, is that they aren't "cool". It's not cool to have low cost of living and no interesting geographic features with mediocre weather.
People who think Amazon is going to set up shop in NYC or LA or something are delusional.
And if their odds really are slim, wouldn’t the rational choice for Columbus to make be to offer tax breaks?
Like, why is the actor that is Columbus concerned at all if they put some sort of pressure on Boston/NYC/DC?
(I think HQ2 will be Columbus or Denver).