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Originally posted by RealPlayer:

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Originally posted by jon-nyc:
The biggest detractors were those who controlled the local land use process. They (correctly) saw the fast track deal as a lost opportunity for political graft.

Can you go into a little more detail? I don't know how city stuff gets done, so am interested to know.

Developers in NYC generally need lots of permissions or waivers that don't have to be granted. Those are typically granted in exchange for a bunch of concessions. Some could reasonably be considered pro-social, the one you often hear touted is requiring some public accommodation as part of the project, say a playground or a certain number of below market housing units.

Informally there are many other stipulations, promises to give contracts and jobs to friends of the city council member, etc. Trump excelled at this sort of thing.

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Informally there are many other stipulations, promises to give contracts and jobs to friends of the city council member, etc. Trump excelled at this sort of thing.

On the Waterfront ...

Not only did this bypass the process for this project, but it probably represented such a huge percentage of the developable area in the district that it dried up patronage opportunities for years to come.

Again, the NYTimes latest editorial strikes the right tone, imo. Cuomo and DeBlasio acted too secretly without local involvement, and Amazon is a bully. The fact that they turnaround and leave in a huff highlights their entitlement attitude.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...amazon-new-york.html

Just an observation: Amazon.com seems to have made the decision to pull out very quickly. Not that that's wrong. It just seems like most other companies would hang on to a major decision of that magnitude a while longer before giving up. But then again, those other companies are not Amazon.com.

Someday we’ll get more of the story, I hope. Who knows what Gianaris had hit them up for.

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But the scarier news for places like New York is the evidence that an Amazon-type influx might not be beneficial at all.

Probably not better off without you if you were reasonable, but certainly not worse off without you as welfare queens. So tough cheese!

https://www.vox.com/policy-and...celed-housing-impact

That’s weak sauce from Vox. As just one example:

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if you work in a restaurant or cut hair or clean houses or drive a cab, you’ll probably end up worse off.

That isn’t analysis, it’s a conclusion, and a foolish one at that.

It seems pretty obvious that more Amazon-level workers would mean more people eating at restaurants and taking cabs. How does that make restaurant workers and cab drivers worse off?

(It doesn’t.)

It’s an odd argument Vox makes. There’s no economic development that you couldn’t apply this argument to.

“We don’t want to reduce unemployment, it will exacerbate the housing crisis and put more strain on the subways”


There’s certainly some logic to it, but it’s logic that is easier to appreciate if you’re the Vox employee and not the unemployed guy.

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:

It seems pretty obvious that more Amazon-level workers would mean more people eating at restaurants and taking cabs. How does that make restaurant workers and cab drivers worse off?

It is worse off for the low-skill, low-income service workers when the influx of high-skill, high-income workers cause the cost of living (e.g., housing, transportation) to rise faster than the income boost for the low-skill, low-income group.

It would be easer to fix the subways with the $27B in tax revenue this deal would have brought in.

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Originally posted by Axtremus:

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:

It seems pretty obvious that more Amazon-level workers would mean more people eating at restaurants and taking cabs. How does that make restaurant workers and cab drivers worse off?

It is worse off for the low-skill, low-income service workers when the influx of high-skill, high-income workers cause the cost of living (e.g., housing, transportation) to rise faster than the income boost for the low-skill, low-income group.

Yes. But it's not a "when", it's an "if". And the "if" has to be analyzed to explain why it's a likelihood. Was it? Or was it just stated as a conclusion with no analysis?

Moreover, the people most likely to be hurt are NOT the ones Vox described. They are the people who do not provide localized consumer services.

According to Axios:

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Polls showed wide support in the area for bringing Amazon to Queens, even as some residents feared rent increases.

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It is worse off for the low-skill, low-income service workers when the influx of high-skill, high-income workers cause the cost of living (e.g., housing, transportation) to rise faster than the income boost for the low-skill, low-income group.

Maybe. That's indeed one plausible static outcome of the shock. There are many other potential outcomes in the short run that work in the other direction. And there are long run dynamic changes under which it's hard to find any losers. Yet many people latch onto one possible scenario to justify the status quo, and lefties can be as conservative as righties (and often more so).

As Jon notes, the ways in which an enlarged tax base are spent can go a long way toward reducing the size of the loser groups. Better schools, for instance, can have important and persistent intergenerational effects.

Yet even without considering truly long run issues (like 15 years or more), any shock to the system can cause people to react in ways that create advantages that counterbalance the losses. Here's a great example:

Trade Shock Caused Higher High School Completion Rates

Areas where Chinese imports created the biggest losses for locals also experienced significant increases in high school completion rates.

I would imagine that a "shock" like Amazon's entry might change incentives in the local labor market that would help many of the "losers" who might (emphasis on might) have to pay higher rents.

Will any significant shock like this benefit everyone? Probably not. So ...

In a more rational and compassionate world, that would be the proper role of government. Make utilitarian decisions that achieve the greatest good for the greatest number, and do what you can to shelter the losers from downside effects.