[thaumasiotes]

> Imagine if the project was given the 5 billion tax dollars handed to Jeff Bezos instead of a measly 4.5 million...

The $4.5 million is money New York has to spend out of revenue. Spending it lowers the amount of money New York has.

Neither of those is true of $5 billion in tax incentives. Look at the cash flow.

[14]

We have Bill Gates I think he is probably one of the best chances we have to make some positive real change here on earth. At least I think he genuinely cares. I am remaining cautiously optimistic that some great human somewhere will solve the worlds problems. That some day someone will produce food not for profit but just to help feed the world. And repeat that same sentiment for anything we sell. I do not know how one would replace a capitalistic market but I think it has truly failed humanity.

[selimthegrim]

Why a single point of failure?

[exitcode00]

Who cares where it comes from. Tax payers are out 5 billion does it matter how?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Who cares where it comes from

The city gave away $5 billion in tax breaks to ensure billions more in tax revenues. The deal was tax-positive. What those extra billions get spent on is up to us.

The Amazon thing is a massive red herring. Yes, it’s distasteful. But it’s also tiny. Giant political deals are being struck in Albany right now—Amazon is a distraction.

[chii]

> The deal was tax-positive

i'd like to see evidence of that. Amazon could've have still chosen new york for the HQ building. There's plenty of incentives already.

Therefore, only if there's reason to believe that amazon won't have built it in NY would the 5 billion tax break have been worth it.

[abtinf]

I believe the point of the gp is that the money isn’t coming from anywhere. No one is out $5B. There is no budget line item you could point to that identifies the expenditure “$5B for Bezos”.

[dtech]

It still lost income. That money could have gone to New York, or another city, or another country. Instead it remains with Amazon.

[adventured]

That's only true if somebody else wasn't going to give them a big deal. Your premise requires a scenario where all cities work together to specifically avoid Amazon getting a deal, rather than any of them competing. All it takes is one city to breach that and start offering incentives, then it all folds.

Short of implementing a federal law against it, there is no scenario where cities were not going to compete to lure Amazon. Fortunately no such federal law exists, which enables cities great leeway to compete for both citizens and businesses, through tax and regulatory structure, incentives, zoning laws, et al.

If I'm Detroit and I want to rebuild my collaped city, one great way to do that is to forgo some purely theoretical new near-term taxes - which you're not actually getting anyway because businesses don't want to move there - and offer up incentives such as tax breaks for businesses to go there instead of somewhere else. For a place like Detroit, that also means jobs, luring population to rebuild the tax base, rebuilding the housing stock, rebuilding the small business base that services that population, and so on.

[chii]

> Short of implementing a federal law against it, there is no scenario where cities were not going to compete to lure Amazon. Fortunately no such federal law exists

i would say that's unfortunate rather than fortunate.

Cities competing for businesses is a net loss to the tax payer. If a business is to build a new HQ or invest, they should do it on the merits of their business needs and general condition applicable to all businesses.

If a particular company gets an unfairly good treatment, then it's very anti-competitive for other businesses. Why should tax payer shoulder any burden for a private business specifically, rather than building general infrastructure that benefits all businesses?

> If I'm Detroit and I want to rebuild my collaped city ... offer up incentives such as tax breaks for businesses

that would be great - if it was a general tax break, rather than a tax break targeted at specific companies that others can't gain access to.

[cataphract]

Exactly. Thankfully in Europe, some of these deals can be deemed illegal state aid and the companies forced to give back the money they saved on taxes, if the state given advantage distorted the trade between Member States.

[armenarmen]

> Cities competing for businesses is a net loss to the tax payer.

Sure, if the taxpayer exists as an abstract concept. Not when the Taxpayer is a sandwich seller near the new company’s office. Or when the Taxpayer is given a new job at the company. Or when the Taxpayer is the family that can now rent out its mother in-law unit more easily

[dtech]

It's bad for the cities as a whole because it's a zero sum game, if you attract a company with tax cuts that's a loss on some other city

The EU does this better. EU courts can deem a tax break state aid and require the company to pay back taxes. This disincentives states competing against each other on tax revenue.

[thaumasiotes]

To the extent that the taxes impose a deadweight loss, competing tax incentives are a positive sum game, not a zero sum game.

[exitcode00]

It's all semantics - I don't understand why people want to defend a multi-billion dollar corporation, but, lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe.. if they really cared for the city.

All these corporations do with their profits and tax-incentives is hoard them overseas and spend them on stock buy-backs.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/2018-record-stock-buybacks-...

[autokad]

> "lets say, that NYC didn't write off 5 billion to Amazon. Could the city have budgeted more for the failing subway and nasty harbor given that they received more in taxes? Maybe"

You do realize NYC is not collecting less taxes because Amazon came? If Amazon goes to another city, they collect 0. if Amazon gets a tax break, they collect 0. now you could argue that Amazon provides some sort of extra burden on city resources, though they would also collect more taxes from the employees and other services rendered.

[atq2119]

The problem with that logic is that you're predetermining your conclusion by picking the baseline that you're comparing against.

You pick your preferred baseline, fair enough. But since we're talking about a discriminatory tax break here, it's perfectly reasonable to choose as baseline a world without discrimination. And in that comparison, NY de facto pays the 5 billion or whatever it is. Of course, this is also choosing an ultimately arbitrary baseline for comparison.

You can ping pong this discussion indefinitely because there is no absolute, divine baseline to compare against.

[autokad]

No. There is no discussion, the answer is absolutely no.

NYC is not PAYING 5 billion dollars. they are simply not taxing it, therefor you can not say 'what else could they have used this money on instead'.

Its like me hosting a website for many charging 100$, and one person comes to me and says they will pay me 0$ but do other stuff, but otherwise they will not use my services. I can not say 'gee, if I charged them 100$ I could do these other things with the money', because I am not paying them 100$ to use my site.

[ricardobeat]

It’s not semantics. The tax write-off comes from new tax revenue. You simply do not have it otherwise. It is not taken off an existing budget.

Argue as much as you want about corporate motives (and I agree with you on incentives being not ideal, even though Amazon doesn’t “do” profits), it has no bearing on how tax write-offs work.