I think Amazon going to NY is a good thing for a couple of reasons. It should be good for NY and it should be good for America if elected officials recognize just what happened here. Ironically, Jeff Bezos may end up the loser here.
Amazon going to NY city is good for the city because it creates jobs. Before there are the jobs with Amazon, there will be construction jobs building the Amazon location. Then you can bet there will be other growth around that area creating more construction work.
There will be jobs for people to clean and maintain Amazon's building and any new surrounding buildings. There will need to be jobs for people filling the vending machines in the Amazon building. When the Amazon employees get tired of eating out of the machines, they will need restaurants and delis and pizza places.
The jobs story doesn't stop there. Amazon ships stuff - a lot of stuff. That means trucks and cars and planes and trains. Those require people to run them and they require people to maintain the infrastructure to make them possible.
People having jobs create two positive benefits for Government. First, these will mean higher tax revenues for NY City and State. Second, as Ronald Reagan once said - the best welfare program is a job. A person with a good job will not need entitlements - so both NY State and NY City, both with very generous programs, should spend less on Welfare, Unemployment, Medicaid... etc.
Now that takes care of NY City and NY State. How does this help America as a whole? Answer - it proves a point that I hope all elected officials start to realize. Did any city or state in America that wanted Amazon's jobs contact Amazon to say "In order to get you to come here, we're going to raise taxes." Did any city or state say, we're the best place to do business because our corporate taxes are the highest of any industrialized city in the world? Did they say we want your jobs so much we're going to increase regulation and make it harder for you to do business?
The answer to all those questions is "No." New York won the Amazon jobs by offering a boatload of incentives, including massive tax incentives to a company that one news report said paid $0 in corporate taxes last year to the US Government.
I think anyone who looks at the Amazon situation now has to agree that the way for America to win jobs in the international market place is to lower corporate taxes and reduce unnecessary government red tape (key word being unnecessary). Of course, that means also saying that what President Trump has been doing - cutting taxes and reducing regulation is good and is in fact largely responsible for the upturn in our economy. A tough pill to swallow for many but if you're being honest, that's the only lesson to take away from the Amazon lottery that just happened.
(Side note: Smart Republican officials should start right now promoting that message and pointing out that Democrats Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill DeBlasio obviously understand that point based on how much they gave away to Amazon).
Which is a nice segue into my final point - the big loser here could end up being Jeff Bezos. Already people in the media are asking "why is NY giving billions of dollars to the richest man in the world." I saw one article that pointed out the reason Amazon is moving to NY is because Amazon needs the pool of talented people in NY and then raising the question of why isn't NY charging Amazon to come here (answer - see my earlier point about the lesson America needs to learn about how you attract businesses).
Just by doing this deal, Jeff Bezos' name will be tarnished. But that's only the beginning. NY is a major media center with 4 print newspapers, multiple magazines, multiple local TV stations, and network news hubs for CBS, ABC, and NBC.
Amazon was exposed by the Allentown Morning Call for making employees work in severely overheated warehouses one summer. But because it was the Morning Call that story did not gather much steam. Amazon has been criticized for not giving people long enough breaks to make it from their work station to bathrooms far away. More recently Amazon is being criticized for changing their pay structure and rooking long time employees out of some very nice annual bonuses that were coming their way.
What happens when they treat people like that in New York City? How long do they stay the darling company? How long until people are saying Jeff Bezos made his riches by treating his workers like crap?
Despite the criticism now of the deal by New Yorkers, I think they will ultimately be glad this deal happened and I think Jeff Bezos is going to regret it very much.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post so he can censor those stories in Northern Virginia but he cannot contain the New York media. Ask Harvey Weinstein who was able to get NBC to shut down Ronan Farrow but was unable to prevent Ronan Farrow from jumping to the New Yorker and getting his story run there.
Note: I have no comment on Amazon's simultaneous move to Northern Virginia because I don't know enough about that area other than to wonder how that will impact an area with ridiculously bad traffic already (which isn't to say I am an expert on NY).
Amazon going to NY city is good for the city because it creates jobs. Before there are the jobs with Amazon, there will be construction jobs building the Amazon location. Then you can bet there will be other growth around that area creating more construction work.
There will be jobs for people to clean and maintain Amazon's building and any new surrounding buildings. There will need to be jobs for people filling the vending machines in the Amazon building. When the Amazon employees get tired of eating out of the machines, they will need restaurants and delis and pizza places.
The jobs story doesn't stop there. Amazon ships stuff - a lot of stuff. That means trucks and cars and planes and trains. Those require people to run them and they require people to maintain the infrastructure to make them possible.
People having jobs create two positive benefits for Government. First, these will mean higher tax revenues for NY City and State. Second, as Ronald Reagan once said - the best welfare program is a job. A person with a good job will not need entitlements - so both NY State and NY City, both with very generous programs, should spend less on Welfare, Unemployment, Medicaid... etc.
Now that takes care of NY City and NY State. How does this help America as a whole? Answer - it proves a point that I hope all elected officials start to realize. Did any city or state in America that wanted Amazon's jobs contact Amazon to say "In order to get you to come here, we're going to raise taxes." Did any city or state say, we're the best place to do business because our corporate taxes are the highest of any industrialized city in the world? Did they say we want your jobs so much we're going to increase regulation and make it harder for you to do business?
The answer to all those questions is "No." New York won the Amazon jobs by offering a boatload of incentives, including massive tax incentives to a company that one news report said paid $0 in corporate taxes last year to the US Government.
I think anyone who looks at the Amazon situation now has to agree that the way for America to win jobs in the international market place is to lower corporate taxes and reduce unnecessary government red tape (key word being unnecessary). Of course, that means also saying that what President Trump has been doing - cutting taxes and reducing regulation is good and is in fact largely responsible for the upturn in our economy. A tough pill to swallow for many but if you're being honest, that's the only lesson to take away from the Amazon lottery that just happened.
(Side note: Smart Republican officials should start right now promoting that message and pointing out that Democrats Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill DeBlasio obviously understand that point based on how much they gave away to Amazon).
Which is a nice segue into my final point - the big loser here could end up being Jeff Bezos. Already people in the media are asking "why is NY giving billions of dollars to the richest man in the world." I saw one article that pointed out the reason Amazon is moving to NY is because Amazon needs the pool of talented people in NY and then raising the question of why isn't NY charging Amazon to come here (answer - see my earlier point about the lesson America needs to learn about how you attract businesses).
Just by doing this deal, Jeff Bezos' name will be tarnished. But that's only the beginning. NY is a major media center with 4 print newspapers, multiple magazines, multiple local TV stations, and network news hubs for CBS, ABC, and NBC.
Amazon was exposed by the Allentown Morning Call for making employees work in severely overheated warehouses one summer. But because it was the Morning Call that story did not gather much steam. Amazon has been criticized for not giving people long enough breaks to make it from their work station to bathrooms far away. More recently Amazon is being criticized for changing their pay structure and rooking long time employees out of some very nice annual bonuses that were coming their way.
What happens when they treat people like that in New York City? How long do they stay the darling company? How long until people are saying Jeff Bezos made his riches by treating his workers like crap?
Despite the criticism now of the deal by New Yorkers, I think they will ultimately be glad this deal happened and I think Jeff Bezos is going to regret it very much.
Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post so he can censor those stories in Northern Virginia but he cannot contain the New York media. Ask Harvey Weinstein who was able to get NBC to shut down Ronan Farrow but was unable to prevent Ronan Farrow from jumping to the New Yorker and getting his story run there.
Note: I have no comment on Amazon's simultaneous move to Northern Virginia because I don't know enough about that area other than to wonder how that will impact an area with ridiculously bad traffic already (which isn't to say I am an expert on NY).
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