[boomka]

I don't know who you are referring to as NYC, but citizens of USA as a whole are worse off. Pitting one USA municipality against another to extract subsidy for what Amazon would do anyways is just another mechanism for wealth transfer from the poor to the rich.

[longerthoughts]

> just another mechanism for wealth transfer from the poor to the rich

I'm not sure this type of competition is a great thing for citizens, but is this really a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich? Doesn't most tax revenue in the US come from the rich, meaning they're covering most of the bill? In that case it would be more like wealth transfer from rich people to rich companies with some of that wealth making its way back to a subset of rich people and companies (i.e. investors).

I'm sure there are secondary effects impacting the poor but I'm not sure it's as simple as mean rich people reaching into the pockets of the poor - there's not enough money there for it to be a compelling strategy.

[boomka]

> but is this really a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich? Doesn't most tax revenue in the US come from the rich, meaning they're covering most of the bill?

Doesn't matter where tax money came from, that part we are not changing. What changes is where that money goes. It could pay for schools, Medicaid, homeless shelters. Now there is going to be less of that, as we are building a helipad for Bezos with some of that money instead.

Which is why it's a wealth transfer towards the rich.

[longerthoughts]

> It could pay for schools, Medicaid, homeless shelters

Yes, it could, but that doesn't mean it would in the absence of the incentive for Amazon. I didn't see any indication in the article that this would be paid for by reallocating funds from social programs or education. Has NY indicated how they're funding the incentive elsewhere? If this isn't known, how can you confidently say it's a transfer of wealth from poor to rich?

To be clear, I absolutely think there are probably more socially responsible things to do with the money, but there's a difference between opportunity cost and exploiting NY's poor to build Bezos a helipad.

[Tyrek]

Just go another level deeper - this was tax money that would otherwise go towards city programs that would disproportionately benefit the poor. The end result is a transfer from the poor to Amazon's shareholders (and possibly may result in a net benefit to NYC)

[longerthoughts]

>this was tax money that would otherwise go towards city programs that would disproportionately benefit the poor

Where did NY indicate that they're reallocating money from those programs?

[JumpCrisscross]

> to extract subsidy for what Amazon would do anyways

I don't think they would. Big infrastructure in New York is expensive, financially and politically. Without Amazon's pressure, there is no way the new campus would have been developed, hooked up and approved as quickly as it has been.

[krschultz]

No way? Google will have nearly as many employees as Amazon in NYC and as far as I know they didn't get special subsidizes.

[boomka]

They said they would build somewhere. The only question was which USA city.

[walshemj]

The same argument could be made for the USA by individual states having different income and sales taxes.

That's just as bad as Irelands tricks helping to avoid taxes due in the UK and other eu states

[jopsen]

Well, it's hard to know the details.. But in the EU these kinds of incentives are generally illegal. As they are anti-competitive.

Which is also why we see the EU go after Ireland and require that they collect taxes from Amazon :) I recall Vestager starting to get the ball rolling a few years ago.

[sokoloff]

Companies negotiate tax treatments of contemplated activities all the time ahead of time with individual EU member states.

https://www.duijntax.com/en/advance-tax-rulings-negotiations as just one example reference I could quickly find.

[chrisseaton]

It's not just money is it? It's also things like infrastructure they'll provide?

Could that possibly make Amazon more efficient, and so employ more people who spend their salaries and so on, creating a net gain for the whole US?

[munk-a]

This is a pretty weak point, essentially "Lets give that guy money, he might do good things with it, he's done good things with it in the past." except instead of being a personal investment this concerns tax payer money being funneled to a private corporation.

They'd be much better spending that money on their neglected public transit or their neglected public housing...

[chrisseaton]

> They'd be much better spending that money on their neglected public transit or their neglected public housing...

But some cities were suggesting that! They were going to invest in infrastructure, knowing that the extra income from Amazon in the area would pay for it. It was not a zero-sum game.

[boomka]

All of that would be true in any other location. One could argue other locations actually need such infrastructure more. Amazon was not hiding the fact that they would build HQ2 anyways, and in USA. There was absolutely no need to donate them taxpayer money for it. And if you do, then taxpayer should own the infrastructure, with Amazon paying for use.

[chrisseaton]

No I mean that the competition may have motivated cities to create better offers of infrastructure to compete. If they all sat back and said 'well Amazon will have to go somewhere we won't bother making any effort' that may not have happened, and Amazon would be less efficient and the whole country would earn less.

For example some cities were proposing building things like extra train stations, which benefit everyone, and aren't something Amazon could have done privately.

[jopsen]

There is a difference between building public infrastructure and giving tax-exemptions..

Public infrastructure is available to all.. why can't the public finance it without Amazon?

[chrisseaton]

> why can't the public finance it without Amazon?

Cities may have been hoping that with Amazon moving into a region they would have extra tax receipts which would enable spending they would not have been able to afford before.