Newark is an Amazon Finalist
If you fly United, it’s much better after the remodel of Terminal C. Lots of direct flights and TSA precheck makes it pretty painless.
Klinker said:
I would love it to be Newark but EWR alone is enough to drive companies away. Would you fly through EWR is you had a choice?
I'll take Newark any day over JKF and LaGuardia.
PetuniaBird said:
If you fly United, it’s much better after the remodel of Terminal C. Lots of direct flights and TSA precheck makes it pretty painless.
Klinker said:
I would love it to be Newark but EWR alone is enough to drive companies away. Would you fly through EWR is you had a choice?
yahooyahoo said:
I'll take Newark any day over JKF and LaGuardia.
Me too! My wife and I moved from Maplewood back to Manhattan in 2013, and we still prefer EWR. Getting there is easier than LGA, and LGA is hopeless. I don't think it will be better when the renovations are done. We've been to both recently.
Newark doesn't even make my top 6 worst U.S. airports: JFK, LGA, LAX, Miami, Atlanta, O'Hare.
yahooyahoo said:
I'll take Newark any day over JKF and LaGuardia.
PetuniaBird said:
If you fly United, it’s much better after the remodel of Terminal C. Lots of direct flights and TSA precheck makes it pretty painless.
Klinker said:
I would love it to be Newark but EWR alone is enough to drive companies away. Would you fly through EWR is you had a choice?
Matbe they should collectvely bargain instead of offering the richest company in the world lots of free stuff.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/22/amazon-headquarters-shortlist-hq2/
nan said:
Matbe they should collectvely bargain instead of offering the richest company in the world lots of free stuff.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/22/amazon-headquarters-shortlist-hq2/
Very interesting. It wouldn't work, though. Nothing would prevent another city outside the 20 "finalists," who are not part of the pact, to swoop in with massive incentives and lure Amazon away from the group of 20.
Amazon has more money than anyone else in the world. They don't have to choose the lowest bidder.
nan said:
Amazon has more money than anyone else in the world. They don't have to choose the lowest bidder.
Of course they don't have to. But they will.
nan said:
Amazon has more money than anyone else in the world. They don't have to choose the lowest bidder.
Amazon's Board of Directors is running a business. They're responsible to the Company's owners.
When the Company's owners, decide that profit is not at the top of their to do list, I expect the Board to respond to the owners' wishes.
With regard to the collective bargaining thing; a nice thought, until the bidders started offering incentives.
Had the Professor come up with the idea before the bidding war started, his argument might have impressed me some (on a theoretical level).
But let's go to real math. Using Newark as an example, what are the City and State likely to gain from locating HQ2 in Newark?
TomR
They are going to make huge profits. That is not even a question. If it was only about who gives them the best deal they would have decided already. Collective bargaining is what unions use to keep from getting screwed over. It's a good idea. Doubt they would even think of doing that, but they should.
Amazon has no profits. Essentially every penny they earn is plowed back into the business. If they leave money on the table here, that’s money they’re not investing in the business.
I don't think it would only be "best deal" from the city. They have to decide if the location is the best for employees, both the ones there now and for the employees they want to add to the company. Is it a place to which they can entice the talent they're looking for, for example. The "best deal" is an incentive where other factors might be close. If Newark is a "better deal" compared to NYC, then they can take the Newark deal and can get other NYC advantages without locating in NYC.
As for the "collective bargaining" analogy, I don't think that applies. Union workers bargain together for the jobs that will go to all those workers. Here, there's only one "prize", and Amazon isn't going to spread the HQ over more than one new city.
nan said:
They are going to make huge profits. That is not even a question. If it was only about who gives them the best deal they would have decided already. Collective bargaining is what unions use to keep from getting screwed over. It's a good idea. Doubt they would even think of doing that, but they should.
I think it's the highest bidder.
shoshannah said:
nan said:
Amazon has more money than anyone else in the world. They don't have to choose the lowest bidder.
Of course they don't have to. But they will.
It sounds like northern Virginia is going to get Amazon, specifically Crystal City.
good. let them suffer the consequence rather than NJ.
It was always going to DC.
You’ve got to hand it to Amazon, though, by making half the country offer crazy incentives it pressured those in the DC area to put up money when it wasn’t really necessary.
We already have Amazon in NJ - Exit 8 on the Turnpike. The crime is that we have square miles of warehouse roofs without solar panels.
tjohn said:
We already have Amazon in NJ - Exit 8 on the Turnpike. The crime is that we have square miles of warehouse roofs without solar panels.
I’m not so sure about that. If there were solar panels on Amazon’s roof, who do you think would have paid for them? Hint: not Amazon.
NJ can’t get its bridges to open and close properly. I suspect Newark finished closer to 20th than 1st in this bake-off.
Smedley said:
NJ can’t get its bridges to open and close properly. I suspect Newark finished closer to 20th than 1st in this bake-off.
apparently Newark was top 5:
well then I’m sure Amazon’s return visit to Newark was delayed by the Portal Bridge being stuck and that sunk their chances.
Smedley said:
well then I’m sure Amazon’s return visit to Newark was delayed by the Portal Bridge being stuck and that sunk their chances.
Chris Christie -- The gift that keeps on giving.
It was a giant corporate shakedown. Amazon did not need money from any city/county/state to set up a second headquarters. Every politician is so desperate to say they brought new jobs to their constituency they are willing to give away more than those jobs will produce.
yahooyahoo said:
It was a giant corporate shakedown. Amazon did not need money from any city/county/state to set up a second headquarters. Every politician is so desperate to say they brought new jobs to their constituency they are willing to give away more than those jobs will produce.
It absolutely does seem that way. Isn't Amazon one of the most successful and wealthiest companies right now?
Dow Jones is reporting that Amazon is going to split its 2nd headquarters between 2 cities - 25,000 employees in each city.
NY Times says no and makes some good observations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/opinion/amazon-new-york-business.html
Tom_Reingold said:
NY Times says no and makes some good observations.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/09/opinion/amazon-new-york-business.html
I agree that Amazon.com is a s****y company and I'm proud that I haven't personally bought anything from them in three years, but if New Yorkers like Zephyr Teachout and Ron Kim think this is bad, can you imagine how bad it is from the perspective of the cities that tried to get Amazon, needed the jobs, needed Amazon's spending power and now have nothing to show for it, other than that they wasted millions promoting themselves?
Let's say we agree with Teachout and Kim that Amazon destroys more jobs than it creates and wages unfair competition against other businesses, at least Amazon is going to be paying 25,000 people in Queens to do exactly that. (although Amazon isn't solely a retailer anyway).
Those Amazon employees might work for a huge corporation, but they aren't going to buy everything from their employer and are going to support small businesses in NYC at least a little. NYC is a winner. It's everyone else who is a loser.
Amazon's decisions to go to northern Virginia and NYC is about the saddest thing that could happen from a national perspective. I would not be shocked if at some point in the future if anti-NYCism and anti-DCism become more stronger, that this development is considered a reason why.
G-d, I hope that the rest of the country doesn't decide to punish NYC by not funding the Gateway tunnel and other needed projects, although I think it's high-time that we started decentralizing the federal bureaucracy from the DC area. Why the hell can't the Department of Labor be in Detroit?
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I agree, but I'll add that even if cities & states didn't offer incentives it doesn't mean that taxes (and non-tax cost of living) wouldn't play a role in Amazon's decision making.
If there were no incentives offered, then Amazon would take into account the regular tax climate. It would see that Dallas, Austin, Raleigh, and Denver have pretty low taxes, New York City, Chicago, & Newark have very high taxes, and the other cities are somewhere in between.
One reason NJ and New York offer so much in corporate tax incentives (or "corporate welfare" if that's your mentality) is that they have such non-competitive tax structures in the first place.