Newark is an Amazon Finalist
People railing against Amazon are really railing against the progression of technology and commerce. Teachout and Kim have nothing useful to add in this regard unless they have some proposals to reverse the ongoing concentration of jobs and money in urban areas leaving rural areas increasingly marginalized yet relatively powerful politically.
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
The authors need to connect the dots for me a little better. They don't define the resulting "serfdom" of sharing data nor do they explain how "hundreds of jobs COULD be lost" for every job created by an HQ2 - it doesn't make intuitive economic sense.
By all accounts, it's not the small, local merchants Amazon is "squashing", it's the national mega chains like Circuit City, Sears, Borders, etc. Frankly, I found the article's predictions fairly laughable. At least the article mentions that Amazon actually fosters the truly small merchants by giving them a platform upon which to reach a broader customer and distribution channel.
If archived, check out what DiBlasio had to say about Amazon on yesterday's Brian Lehrer's "Ask the Mayor" segment on WNYC. Obviously that was much more fact and data-based than the opinions of a law professor and state assemblyman who obviously haven't analyzed the bid and potential economic effects top-to-bottom.
bub said:
I am concerned about Amazon's power and behavior but this article gets pretty hysterical and I don't mean in the ha ha sense. It's credibility was shot, for me, as soon as it described the "terrible" waste of time of poor public servants "laboring" to pitch their town to Amazon. Boo hoo. Why downplay it as merely "terrible"? How about "tragic"?
And how about the observation that when a big company brings a large number of jobs to an area, it leads to a rise in home prices there. Shocking if not downright fascistic, no? Are they suggesting that if a "nice" company moved to LIC, housing would become more affordable?
Please.
I thought that too.
I thought it was over-the-top to say Amazon conducted a "brutal campaign" against a corporate tax in Seattle.
To me "brutal campaign" should be used in the context of Bashar al-Assad, ISIS, etc, not corporate lobbying.
tjohn said:
People railing against Amazon are really railing against the progression of technology and commerce. Teachout and Kim have nothing useful to add in this regard unless they have some proposals to reverse the ongoing concentration of jobs and money in urban areas leaving rural areas increasingly marginalized yet relatively powerful politically.
The progress of technology isn't synonymous with environmental and social progress, so I don't think it's illegitimate point out the negatives of e-commerce in general or Amazon in specific.
My reaction isn't based on NYC+NoVa versus a rural area though, it's based on NYC+NoVa versus less triumphant cities that have more slack in their housing markets and need economic boosts.
I don't have the information Jeff Bezos had, but I wonder why Amazon couldn't succeed in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Cleveland.
It's not like America has no examples of really sterling corporate citizenship.
For instance Ford right now is spending hundreds of millions to refurbish the old Michigan Central Station and make that part of Detroit a thriving urban area again.
To me, Ford is being an excellent American corporate citizen. Amazon? Not so much.
Runner_Guy said:
The progress of technology isn't synonymous with environmental and social progress, so I don't think it's illegitimate point out the negatives of e-commerce in general or Amazon in specific..
I was looking for a value-free way to describe the progression of technology and commerce. It is pretty clearly a double-edged sword leaving winners and losers.
lanky said:
By all accounts, it's not the small, local merchants Amazon is "squashing", it's the national mega chains like Circuit City, Sears, Borders, etc. Frankly, I found the article's predictions fairly laughable. At least the article mentions that Amazon actually fosters the truly small merchants by giving them a platform upon which to reach a broader customer and distribution channel.
True.
The local merchants being squashed are due to huge commercial landlord rent increases. There's story after story of empty store fronts and merchants still trying to hang that stated its the very high rents.
Amazon is the bigger shark eating the smaller sharks - big box store, chains, malls - that were eating the "mom and pop" stores long before ecommerce and the internet became big.
There's also class privilege at work underneath this veneer of concern about mom and pop. The winners of the economy can afford to pay the premium necessary to subsidize little shops in cute downtowns and gentrified city neighborhoods. Poorer people need ugly Walmart, Amazon and the like.
tjohn said:
People railing against Amazon are really railing against the progression of technology and commerce. Teachout and Kim have nothing useful to add in this regard unless they have some proposals to reverse the ongoing concentration of jobs and money in urban areas leaving rural areas increasingly marginalized yet relatively powerful politically.
We should separate e-commerce and amazon. They are not the same thing:
- e-commerce is just another new technology that makes things more efficient (like the invention of the steam engine, automobile, etc.). There is no point resisting it, any more than there was a point resisting some of these other revolutions. You just need to adapt. When automobiles were introduced I am sure a lot of horse-carriage related jobs disappeared, but a lot of other jobs appeared (in fact now we think that manufacturing-line workers in a detroit car plant were the embodiments of the golden days of the american middle class). There is nothing bad about progress and change.
- amazon is just a company that happens to dominate the e-commerce industry for now. In itself they may be a company that operates in an ethical way, or a company that operates badly, I don't know. But it is just another company, and history would suggest that their domination of this particular industry will not last forever (it never does).
They are not the same.
gerritn said:
tjohn said:We should separate e-commerce and amazon. They are not the same thing:
People railing against Amazon are really railing against the progression of technology and commerce. Teachout and Kim have nothing useful to add in this regard unless they have some proposals to reverse the ongoing concentration of jobs and money in urban areas leaving rural areas increasingly marginalized yet relatively powerful politically.
They are not the same.
- e-commerce is just another new technology that makes things more efficient (like the invention of the steam engine, automobile, etc.). There is no point resisting it, any more than there was a point resisting some of these other revolutions. You just need to adapt. When automobiles were introduced I am sure a lot of horse-carriage related jobs disappeared, but a lot of other jobs appeared (in fact now we think that manufacturing-line workers in a detroit car plant were the embodiments of the golden days of the american middle class). There is nothing bad about progress and change.
- amazon is just a company that happens to dominate the e-commerce industry for now. In itself they may be a company that operates in an ethical way, or a company that operates badly, I don't know. But it is just another company, and history would suggest that their domination of this particular industry will not last forever (it never does).
I'm genuinely curious as to how Amazon behaves badly. If it is the notion of "monopolistic behavior", which is typically characterized / defined by higher prices and/or inferior product, Amazon is actually delivering the opposite.
lanky said:
gerritn said:I'm genuinely curious as to how Amazon behaves badly. If it is the notion of "monopolistic behavior", which is typically characterized / defined by higher prices and/or inferior product, Amazon is actually delivering the opposite.
tjohn said:We should separate e-commerce and amazon. They are not the same thing:
People railing against Amazon are really railing against the progression of technology and commerce. Teachout and Kim have nothing useful to add in this regard unless they have some proposals to reverse the ongoing concentration of jobs and money in urban areas leaving rural areas increasingly marginalized yet relatively powerful politically.
They are not the same.
- e-commerce is just another new technology that makes things more efficient (like the invention of the steam engine, automobile, etc.). There is no point resisting it, any more than there was a point resisting some of these other revolutions. You just need to adapt. When automobiles were introduced I am sure a lot of horse-carriage related jobs disappeared, but a lot of other jobs appeared (in fact now we think that manufacturing-line workers in a detroit car plant were the embodiments of the golden days of the american middle class). There is nothing bad about progress and change.
- amazon is just a company that happens to dominate the e-commerce industry for now. In itself they may be a company that operates in an ethical way, or a company that operates badly, I don't know. But it is just another company, and history would suggest that their domination of this particular industry will not last forever (it never does).
For one, It's known as an extraordinarily difficult place to work, from executive levels down to warehouse personnel. For the latter, pay isn't particularly high, and conditions are pretty grueling (long hours lifting, and so on). I'm less critical of the HQ2 process. Many cities applied, no one was forced to. Maybe it could have been done more discreetly, without the media hype, but again, what editor or producer was forced to write a story?
apple44 said:
For one, It's known as an extraordinarily difficult place to work, from executive levels down to warehouse personnel. For the latter, pay isn't particularly high, and conditions are pretty grueling (long hours lifting, and so on). I'm less critical of the HQ2 process. Many cities applied, no one was forced to. Maybe it could have been done more discreetly, without the media hype, but again, what editor or producer was forced to write a story?
I assumed the same, based on the reports of the past few years, lack of an adequate number of bathrooms in warehouses, corporate employees being told that in most work places one could either "work long hours, work hard, or work smart, at Amazon, 2 out of 3 of those isn't good enough..." I cited those reports to LankyWife who countered with examples of local and other people she directly knows who work for Amazon and Amazon subs who enjoy their jobs. I guess one would be hard pressed to find a workplace where there are not disgruntled workers. Additionally, where one chooses to work is, by and large, voluntary.
I know someone who works there and is quite happy (and advancing within the company). This is a person without a college education and is ESL.
Runner_Guy said:
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?
I had a few thoughts on this.
First, anti-urbanism, of which anti-NYCism is just the most prominent example, since NYC is our most prominent city, is at least as old as the country. The fight over the Gateway tunnel is just a more recent chapter in a very long national argument -- see, for instance, the fights over national improvements in the first decades of the 19th century. On the merits, I think it's pretty clear Hamilton, Clay, and their successors had the better of it -- and NYC can thank Dewitt Clinton for acting on this. I think most other American cities are fully aware of these lessons too, and they're not the ones impeding projects like gateway -- the same short sighted anti-urbanists opposing new trans-Hudson train tunnels are also opposing municipal wifi in Chattanooga, light rail expansion in Denver, bus rapid transit in Atlanta, etc...
Second, I agree that geographically decentralizing the Federal bureaucracy is worth considering -- and you're not the first one I've heard make that argument. Power and wealth naturally concentrate, and it takes conscious, dedicated efforts to counter that and make sure the benefits of economic success are fairly shared. I think something like, say, having DOL in Detroit, as you suggest, is one concrete way to help counter that natural concentration -- no anti-DC or anti-urbanism required.
As for the specific question of Amazon in LIC -- I think on balance it's a net positive for NYC. In the same way, on the macro scale, that it's good to see more development outside NYC and DC, on the NYC-specific scale it's good to see major growth outside Manhattan and Brooklyn. I lived in Astoria for several years (adjacent to LIC), and even though more and more development was always happening in LIC, it never quite seemed to gel. Having NW queens become firmly established as an additional major economic hub would be a positive development. The problems of affordability, ensuring equitable growth, etc of course still persist, but that's not specific to HQ2 moving to Queens; rather, those are thorny questions we have to wrestle with when dealing with any economic development.
PVW said:
Runner_Guy said:I had a few thoughts on this. ...
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?
As for the specific question of Amazon in LIC -- I think on balance it's a net positive of NYC. In the same way, on the macro scale, it's good to see more development outside NYC and DC, I'm on the NYC-specific scale to see major growth outside Manhattan and Brooklyn. I lived in Astoria for several years (adjacent to LIC), and even though more and more development was always happening in LIC, it never quite seemed to gel. Having NW queens become firmly established as an additional major economic hub would be a positive development. The problems of affordability, ensuring equitable growth, etc of course still persist, but that's not specific to HQ2 moving to Queens; rather, those are thorny questions we have to wrestle with when dealing with any economic development.
After I wrote that initial post I thought about the Amazon decision from an environmental perspective and in that sense, Amazon's decisions to go to Crystal City and LIC are laudable because a very high percentage of workers will walk, bike, or take public transportation to work. Many Amazon employees might decide they don't need to own a car, which is also itself environmental.
Having more jobs at transit nodes makes each city's public transit system slightly more economically viable or even profitable, since ridership will increase much more than marginal costs will. Crowding is uncomfortable, but it means that the PT operator is making money.
Amazon's decisions to locate so close to PT will strengthen pro-PT arguments elsewhere because advocates can now point to prominent examples of huge job infusions happening where PT was available.
I wouldn't say that e-retail in general is environmentally friendly due to how it increases cardboard usage and waste, nor would I agree that Amazon's decision is anything to celebrate socially since it's wealth accumulating around existing wealth, but I think environmentally it's something to be happy about.
Runner_Guy said:
Amazon's decisions to locate so close to PT will strengthen pro-PT arguments elsewhere because advocates can now point to prominent examples of huge job infusions happening where PT was available.
I wouldn't say that e-retail in general is environmentally friendly due to how it increases cardboard usage and waste, nor would I agree that Amazon's decision is anything to celebrate socially since it's wealth accumulating around existing wealth, but I think environmentally it's something to be happy about.
One thing I'll call out here where I suspect we differ -- IMO a key component of addressing the problem of wealth accumulating around existing wealth is redistribution via taxation. I don't think simply spreading the engines of wealth around is enough (and in many cases I think is a bad idea -- I favor investing in urban infrastructure beyond our superstar cities, for instance, but purposely withholding investment in a NYC or DC is something I strongly oppose) -- the output of wealth engines also needs addressing.
Jeff Bezos getting ever richer because NYC being an amazing wealth engine is not something I have problem with. Jeff Bezos not seeing his taxes increase commensurably, and those taxes not being redirected to benefitting those left out of the increase in wealth, I have a big problem with. (And, it goes without saying, the NYC slumlord-in-chief signing legislation to increase taxes on the middle class to cut taxes on the uber-wealthy is beyond unconscionable).
Runner_Guy said:
I wouldn't say that e-retail in general is environmentally friendly due to how it increases cardboard usage and waste,
Maybe my faith in end consumers' recycling is naive, but a great deal of corrugated fiberboard is recycled. There is a large, mature and robust market for recycled fiberboard.
bub said:
Amazon is the bigger shark eating the smaller sharks - big box store, chains, malls - that were eating the "mom and pop" stores long before ecommerce and the internet became big.
There's also class privilege at work underneath this veneer of concern about mom and pop. The winners of the economy can afford to pay the premium necessary to subsidize little shops in cute downtowns and gentrified city neighborhoods. Poorer people need ugly Walmart, Amazon and the like.
Over half of all employed people work for small businesses. That's not class privilege, it's a fundamental fact of our economy. If you don't support small businesses, you are undermining the entire economy. Large corporations don't have enough jobs to employ everyone.
"In Superstar Cities, the Rich Get Richer, and They Get Amazon: New York and Washington are leaving the rest of the country behind. Companies like Amazon explain why."
This article gets into why I have mixed feelings about Amazon's choice to go to Crystal City and LIC.
---
Although Amazon's decision makes me sad because it's going to increase spatial inequality, I don't think the federal government should organize economic policy to favor certain metro areas over each other. The federal government can try to foster economic growth in poor communities if it can devise impartial criteria and it should support practical infrastructure everywhere, but to try to help one metro area over another could never be done fairly and would encourage inefficiencies.
(Decentralizing the federal bureaucracy is entirely different though from picking and choosing winners for private sector growth. Decentralization I strongly favor, as long as relocated federal jobs go to places where they might help create urban synergies.)
One quote from the story notes that Amazon's decision was very rationale. What measures -- by cities, states, private entities, or others -- do you think could have been taken, or could be taken going forward, to make cities outside of the coastal megalopoli a rational choice for companies like Amazon?
I'm not sure where this assumption about the continued domination of N.Y. and D.C., or the coasts in general, comes from. I just looked at a list of the fastest growing U.S. cites and they're all "out there." No N.Y. or D.C. or any other usual suspect on the list. Texas alone is a monster of growth.
This looks like the official announcement of Arlington and LIC.
Amazon talks a lot about PT infrastructure, but is very candid about the value of the tax incentives.
Will New York Resist the Urge to Give Amazon Literally Everything It Wants?
A day before last week’s midterm elections, when Amazon’s choice was still up in the air, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo made headlines begging Amazon to site its second headquarters in the state. “I’ll change my name to Amazon Cuomo if that’s what it takes,” said Cuomo, as reports surfaced about Amazon potentially moving in to Long Island City.
The next day, though, Democrats won control of the state Assembly and state Senate. Now, prominent Democrats in those chambers have slammed the idea of New York offering taxpayer subsidies to the online retailing giant. And one lawmaker wants the legislature to decide between giving Amazon taxpayer largesse or addressing the state’s student debt crisis.
Giving tax breaks to corporations should be illegal. It's not only crazy but economically counter productive. States compete with each other and the one who screws over local taxpayers the most wins.
drummerboy said:
Giving tax breaks to corporations should be illegal. It's not only crazy but economically counter productive. States compete with each other and the one who screws over local taxpayers the most wins.
It was Newark and NJ that offered the biggest incentives to Amazon; $5 billion from the State, $2 billion from Newark and we didn't win. Then again, NJ and Newark's taxes are among the country's highest in the first place, and non-tax costs are in the national top 10, hence the need to offer bigger incentives just to be competitive.
I would like to see smarter usage of tax incentives where there would be stricter scrutiny of location-specific incentives. NJ has many incentives for "urban transportation hubs" that go to businesses in towns that are neither urban nor transportation hubs of any kind. If the point of this subsidy is to get more people to take PT to work, then why aren't major suburban transportation hubs like South Orange and Summit included?
http://www.njeda.com/web/pdf/GrowNJ_UTHMunicipalityList.pdf
NJ also has incentives for "distressed cities" that includes Hoboken, Montclair, and Jersey City.
https://www.njeda.com/pdfs/ERG_GrowNJ_DistressedMunicipalities.aspx
One analysis of the beauty contest is that it was rigged. Amazon knew it wanted D.C. and N.Y.C.. Or maybe just one of those and the split came later.
Anyway, by holding the contest, the cost in benefits became an auction that forced the chosen cities to bid more than they might have if chosen outright.
Winner: Amazon.
Losers: Taxpayers in chosen cities and taxpayers from states and cities that paid to prepare promotional studies and media in order to enter the competition.
Amazon episode and the extortion from sports team owners for new stadiums.
Similar or different? In some cities, voters have nixed referendum for new stadiums. We paid for the Newark Bears and Devils. If the Jets and Giants decide they need new digs, should we pay? What about the Rutgers stadium and Big 10 fiasco?
Runner_Guy said:
drummerboy said:It was Newark and NJ that offered the biggest incentives to Amazon; $5 billion from the State, $2 billion from Newark and we didn't win. Then again, NJ and Newark's taxes are among the country's highest in the first place, and non-tax costs are in the national top 10, hence the need to offer bigger incentives just to be competitive.
Giving tax breaks to corporations should be illegal. It's not only crazy but economically counter productive. States compete with each other and the one who screws over local taxpayers the most wins.
....
I think yer missing the point - that being that it should be illegal. Localities competing with other localities by bribing companies makes no sense no matter how you look at it.
This is just another grift in our quickly deteriorating capitalist economy.
drummerboy said:
Runner_Guy said:I think yer missing the point - that being that it should be illegal. Localities competing with other localities by bribing companies makes no sense no matter how you look at it.
drummerboy said:It was Newark and NJ that offered the biggest incentives to Amazon; $5 billion from the State, $2 billion from Newark and we didn't win. Then again, NJ and Newark's taxes are among the country's highest in the first place, and non-tax costs are in the national top 10, hence the need to offer bigger incentives just to be competitive.
Giving tax breaks to corporations should be illegal. It's not only crazy but economically counter productive. States compete with each other and the one who screws over local taxpayers the most wins.
....
This is just another grift in our quickly deteriorating capitalist economy.
Sorry. I completely sidestepped your point that tax incentives should be illegal, to make a different point about tax incentives, which is that NJ's own tax incentive system is unfair and irrational elements. Since I have never read an article in NJ's media about how geographically unfair NJ's incentives are, I thought it would useful to people on this thread to see how Hoboken and Montclair are "distressed cities" and Salem City is an "urban transportation hub."
Although I hold many hopes of my own which are politically unrealistic, I can't imagine Congress passing and a president signing a law to make incentives illegal. This isn't something I hear a lot of people in Congress demanding and we all know that even if something has majority support in Congress it might not become law anyway.
On the other hand, NJ's legislature is functional compared to Congress, so expecting reform of our own tax incentives isn't a fantasy and there is a gubernatorially-appointed commission right now that is examining our own tax incentive system.
Also, NJ's incentives are unfair because they pick and choose winners and losers between different towns and the lists of eligible municipalities are politicized. NJ's incentive system would be defensible if it only worked to foster growth in bona fide distressed cities (eg Paterson, Camden) or only worked to foster growth in bona fide transit hubs (eg Newark), but that isn't the reality.
The fact that businesses in South Orange and Maplewood wouldn't be eligible for any tax incentives is probably one reason we have difficulty attracting office development.
Phila. Inquirer reports that N.J. was offering $7 Billion in benefits to Amazon. The company was going to be allowed to KEEP the income tax from their employees for 25 years.
What the ****?
When are our legislators gonna put a stop to this ****?
Mila? John? Richard? Anyone?
Formerlyjerseyjack said:
One analysis of the beauty contest is that it was rigged. Amazon knew it wanted D.C. and N.Y.C.. Or maybe just one of those and the split came later.
Anyway, by holding the contest, the cost in benefits became an auction that forced the chosen cities to bid more than they might have if chosen outright.
Winner: Amazon.
Losers: Taxpayers in chosen cities and taxpayers from states and cities that paid to prepare promotional studies and media in order to enter the competition.
Bingo. It was rigged and they got special information not available to anyone else.
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I am concerned about Amazon's power and behavior but this article gets pretty hysterical and I don't mean in the ha ha sense. It's credibility was shot, for me, as soon as it described the "terrible" waste of time of poor public servants "laboring" to pitch their town to Amazon. Boo hoo. Why downplay it as merely "terrible"? How about "tragic"?
And how about the observation that when a big company brings a large number of jobs to an area, it leads to a rise in home prices there. Shocking if not downright fascistic, no? Are they suggesting that if a "nice" company moved to LIC, housing would become more affordable?
Please.