[yawboakye]

Amazon isn't taking money from the government. They're getting a relief of $3 billion IF they fulfill their promise. I'd take 25k-40k jobs for my people over $3 billion in taxes any day. As the director quoted the governor, the best social program is still a job.

[spamizbad]

Many companies in New York create jobs for the state. Some even more than Amazon, and generate even greater amounts tax revenue.

Are they too entitled to tax relief?

Amazon is a tremendously successful company. You start handing it tax breaks and you begin walking down the path of making it a government-sanctioned monopoly.

[graeme]

In this case, yes. $2.5 billion of the $3 billion amazon was getting were credits open to any company.

The letter addresses this, they're "as of right" credits open to all.

[zaroth]

This is what detractors of the deal keep saying. You can speculate on the organic growth rate of the NY economy all you want. But at the end of the day, there are 25,000 - 40,000 jobs which definitely won’t be coming to Long Island City now.

[joshuamorton]

That's not obviously true.

The land is still there. Other companies could use it. Unless everything Amazon might have purchased goes totally undeveloped, the impact is less than the 25k jobs.

And given the time horizons involved, I'd take that bet.

[zaroth]

Anyone else who proposes to develop at the scale that Amazon was proposing, would likely be achieving similar tax incentives as to what Amazon was offered. Particularly since the terms of the deal were made public, that becomes an anchor point for any similar discussions.

There is no question that organic growth will eventually create 25,000-40,000 jobs. But the net present value (NPV) of that future job creation is significantly reduced after applying the discount. So even the same number of jobs is not a comparable economic impact.

[ec109685]

So the state should have been happy to give 26B in subsidies then? They could bank the 1B and have 25k to 40k jobs.

The math isn’t as clear as you are making it out to be. Google or companies like it will change their investment whether amazon is there or not.

[zaroth]

I’m not sure if it was a typo on your part, or you might be misinformed of what the actual deal was that was struck. From TFA;

“Amazon was to build their headquarters with union jobs and pay the city and state $27 billion in revenues. The city, through existing as-of-right tax credits, and the state through Excelsior Tax credits - a program approved by the same legislators railing against it - would provide up to $3 billion in tax relief, IF Amazon created the 25,000-40,000 jobs and thus generated $27 billion in revenue. You don't need to be the State's Budget Director to know that a nine to one return on your investment is a winner.“

The crucial point is that there is no cash to bank! The politicians statements that the “money could have been better spent on xyz” was a lie.

The deal was to reduce taxes on future revenue if and only if Amazon met specific (lofty) investment and job creation requirements.

”Make no mistake, at the end of the day we lost $27 billion, 25,000-40,000 jobs and a blow to our reputation of being 'open for business.'”

[pas]

NYC tech scene is still booming, Google et al. is still on a hiring spree there.

[prepend]

The letter says the next biggest company deal with jobs was 1,000 people. So no, there aren’t many other compnies bringing 25k jobs. Especially ones with average incomes of $150,000.