I wrote and deleted a couple of posts trying to say what P*D said so eloquently.

Or, +1.

quote:

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.

Come on out to Seattle and I'll introduce you some of the thousands of homeless people, many of whom have full time jobs but are living in cars or, if they're lucky, RVs on side streets, because they have been squeezed out of affordable housing. Entire neighborhoods have been leveled to build dense "luxury" apartments for amazon employees (and a few other tech companies). Rents have gone up over three times more than the national average.

Amazon has even leveled the largest private homeless shelter north of downtown -- promising to replace the floorspace someday when new buildings are completed.

Then there's the extreme overburden on infrastructure. Roads and buses are slammed. Businesses around amazon buildings are either pushed out or amazon demands that they cater to their employees, demanding they stay open late into the night when business falls off to near zero after 5:00.

Sure, they have brought employment, mostly for people moving here for jobs, not for natives. But there is at least as much negative impact on the city as positive.


As far as the homeless issue goes, the Seattle City Council enacted a "head tax", a small tax on each employee to raise money to address the problem. (No, I have no idea what they planned to do with the money.) amazon bullied the City Council into killing the tax.


There was a great bit on Business Insider yesterday about all this, but I don't see it on their web site.

pj - is this it?

https://www.businessinsider.co...f-amazon-hq2-2017-12

quote:

Originally posted by well-tempered gardener:
pj - is this it?

https://www.businessinsider.co...f-amazon-hq2-2017-12

Yes. Thanks.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
It would be easer to fix the subways with the $27B in tax revenue this deal would have brought in.

Or not. Projects like this are notorious for overstating the possible benefit without fully considering the down side.

A better deal would be to fix the subways with the $5 Bil you charge Amazon in permit and infrastructure fees.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
It would be easer to fix the subways with the $27B in tax revenue this deal would have brought in.

Or not. Projects like this are notorious for overstating the possible benefit without fully considering the down side.

A better deal would be to fix the subways with the $5 Bil you charge Amazon in permit and infrastructure fees.

Or, as it stands, you can fix the subways with the $0 in permit and infrastructure fees that Amazon will actually be paying.

If you no longer have to worry about an influx of 25,000 new citizens the current budget should cover subway repairs just fine.

Hahaha. Forgive him, folks, he’s not from New York.

The system is in a state of emergency. There was even a 60 minutes episode about it a couple of months ago.

Did Jon just declare national state of emergecy? Can he do that?

Hahaha

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Hahaha. Forgive him, folks, he’s not from New York.

The system is in a state of emergency. There was even a 60 minutes episode about it a couple of months ago.

People in California don't believe in subways. Or trains.

From a blog comment:

quote:

You know what Amazon should have done to divide and reduce opposition to the Queens expansion? They should have made one of the conditions of the expansion that Cuomo and the state promptly fix some key subway lines.

There are a lot of suggestions like this and a lot of them make sense. A little negotiation might have gone a long way toward making the deal work.

Seems no one wanted to do that, which makes Jon's theory sound the most plausible.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
The system is in a state of emergency. There was even a 60 minutes episode about it a couple of months ago.

From what I've heard, taxes in NYC are very high and should generate sufficient revenue to maintain the infrastructure. For whatever reason, they don't.

If they can't get by on what they already receive I don't see how giving the opportunity to waste an additional $27 B (over 10 years) will make the situation any better.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
The system is in a state of emergency. There was even a 60 minutes episode about it a couple of months ago.

From what I've heard, taxes in NYC are very high and should generate sufficient revenue to maintain the infrastructure. For whatever reason, they don't.

If they can't get by on what they already receive I don't see how giving the opportunity to waste an additional $27 B (over 10 years) will make the situation any better.

The structure of the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) is an unholy mess. You can read about it here: https://www.city-journal.org/h...-runs-mta-15281.html and more: https://ny.curbed.com/2017/7/2...drew-cuomo-joe-lhota