[icelancer]

> Why is it morally better to get 100% of nothing than to participate in a project with incentives that give you 9 times return plus create 24-40k jobs?

Because people who rail against deals like this take zero responsibility for any of the consequences. It's all of the fun moral policing and none of the downside. It's great to be an activist.

[bilbo0s]

In fairness, the real reason, at least in NYC...

is that they never end up in a situation where they get 100% of nothing. Google and Amazon have thousands of jobs in NYC, and they will move thousand more there in the future. For these people in NYC, they don't know the consequences of not having loads of places to work. For them, it really is a situation of "Heads we win! Tails we win slightly less!".

[afiori]

Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief

[speedplane]

> Well if Amazon could not find 25k employee in the given time they would not receive the 3 billions in tax relief

The problem of the deal wasn't the mechanics, it was how it was sold to the public. A competition putting cities against cities, negotiated without any public input, a large tax break to one of the richest companies in the world, choosing already popular cities rather than really investing in a newer one. Amazon could have definitely closed this deal if they pitched it properly.

[afiori]

Maybe, but as it is pointed out many times here and in the open letter this was basically a replay of Brexit. another commenter said that his mom believed the city would give amazon 3 billions up front. the public approved of the deal, the only demographic to disapprove was the internet.

70% of local residents approved of the deal. that is a lot.

[bobthepanda]

I'm skeptical of any polling for the issue, mostly because polls have huge issues with data collecting and getting a representative sample, particularly on things like local issues.

Depending on

* how the question was framed ("Do you think the second headquarters of Amazon will be a positive?" vs. "Do you think the deal with Amazon will be positive?" vs. "Do you think tax breaks for Amazon are good?")

* how informed the voter was required to be; people are notoriously uninformed and uninterested about anything that isn't a presidential election

* how residents were contacted (was it a landline poll? mail? survey on the street? online? because these all have different populations to be accounted for)

* who counts as a valid resident for the survey? someone who lives in Buffalo? someone who lives in Westchester? someone who lives in Manhattan? someone who lives in Flushing? etc.

Polls predicted that AOC would lose her race, and that clearly didn't happen.

[graycat]

Yup. To get attention the activists want their shocking stories told, and to get eyeballs and ad revenue the media wants shocking stories to tell.

See my more general response along these lines in

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19236564