US Politics

How many jobs does Amazon guarantee to the city that gives the incentives?

I used to work for Starwood resorts and their corporate office was at White Plains, New York. Then, Stamford city in CT offered them a tax free facility for 4 years to move their IT and Corporate HQ. Starwood took it and moved their center to Stamford, moving a workforce of nearly 1500 people while creating other non-skilled jobs such as transportation, catering etc. also, the original location was a rundown waterfront area which the city invested in improving it. That entire zip code is now a reasonable corporate HQ with restaurants and offices. Marriott acquired Starwood, so I'm not sure now if they will move to Washington DC, but there is some merit in cities attracting corporations with tax incentives. There is always a desperate city out there trying to attract talent and workforce.
 
Eboue said:
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That makes no sense at all, the workers still pay the right amount of tax.

What the government does with the tax they collected is up to them and a completely separate issue.

If they think paying Amazon to be there does more for their city than building schools and hospitals, that's their prerogative.
 
What makes this story even worse is that Chicago and the state of Illinois are struggling financially and have racked up massive amounts of debt.
 
Eboue said:
the government is not a separate entity. it answers to us. it is absolutely not their prerogative.
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Like I said, you can disagree with what they do with the tax they collected, but that is not the same as
"The workers paying taxes to their boss".
 
Eboue said:
however you want to dress it up they are literally giving a portion of their income back to their employer
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The city government is giving a portion of THEIR income to those staff’s employer.
 
Eboue said:
the city government isn't a thing that earns money through bake sales. it exists to serve the people
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We are going round in circles. The city government wouldn’t receive said tax from Amazon employees if Amazon wasn’t based in the city.
 
Cal? said:
We are going round in circles. The city government wouldn’t receive said tax from Amazon employees if Amazon wasn’t based in the city.
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Because obviously if Amazon didn't employ them they'd all be unemployed. Like they all were before Amazon monopolised virtually every area of the consumer market and thousands of independent shops existed by having no employees.


The very fact it's Amazon is what makes it so ridiculous. A company actively trying to employ as few humans as possible is being rewarded by getting to keep the income tax of the employees they do hire. No wonder this trickle down economics stuff such a roaring success for everyone.
 
Pexbo said:
Because obviously if Amazon didn't employ them they'd all be unemployed. Like they all were before Amazon monopolised virtually every area of the consumer market and thousands of independent shops existed by having no employees.


The very fact it's Amazon is what makes it so ridiculous. A company actively trying to employ as few humans as possible is being rewarded by getting to keep the income tax of the employees they do hire. No wonder this trickle down economics stuff such a roaring success for everyone.
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Aye, pretty much economic blackmail you could argue. "Give us more money or we'll feck off" means citizens will get less money invested in them because big businesses will leave them unemployed otherwise.
 
adexkola said:
Chasing companies wanting tax breaks is a race to the bottom. They'll whore themselves out and leave for the next sucker willing to offer more.
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Agreed. And apparently this trend isn't bad enough on an international scale, countries feel the need to have it domestically too.
 
adexkola said:
Should be left to the voters of their constituencies, not the general public/media.
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The problem with that notion is the constituents cannot do anything until 2020, when the next senate election takes place.

In recent polling, more of his constituents want him to resign compared to wanting him to stay on.
 
senorgregster said:
He needs to go before damage is done. Differentiate from whatever the current GOP is
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I agree because he seems to be admitting a level of guilt however I am worried about the precedent it sets. The right has already mastered the art of misinformation in the form of fake news and you only need to look at Nunes "investigation" into Russia (nonsense story about Hillary and Uranium One). It sounds like Stone is aware of a GOP push to bring up a load of stories about Democrat representatives committing sexual abuse.

I think that's what we are going to see in the run up to the elections next year - an absolute flood of stories of Democrats assaulting women in the past. How many will stick will remain to be seen but while most GOP voters will vote for an abuser over a Liberal, I think Democrats could see a percentage of people put off voting at all.
 
Pexbo said:
I agree because he seems to be admitting a level of guilt however I am worried about the precedent it sets. The right has already mastered the art of misinformation in the form of fake news and you only need to look at Nunes "investigation" into Russia (nonsense story about Hillary and Uranium One). It sounds like Stone is aware of a GOP push to bring up a load of stories about Democrat representatives committing sexual abuse.

I think that's what we are going to see in the run up to the elections next year - an absolute flood of stories of Democrats assaulting women in the past. How many will stick will remain to be seen but while most GOP voters will vote for an abuser over a Liberal, I think Democrats could see a percentage of people put off voting at all.
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The democrats can avoid this by not nominating creepy old men.
 
Fergies Gum said:
The problem with that notion is the constituents cannot do anything until 2020, when the next senate election takes place.

In recent polling, more of his constituents want him to resign compared to wanting him to stay on.
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It should go through the Ethics Committee. Otherwise, he can be impeached from office, like any other federal official. The difference is that it is done procedurally.
 
Silva said:
The democrats can avoid this by not nominating creepy old men.
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No it can't be avoided. That's the point. Nominating a middle aged woman in Hillary didn't avoid a story about her running "a peado ring run out of a NY Pizza place" did it?

The 2018 elections are going to be like the 2016 Election, only worse because it's going to be so many more people up for election. It's going to be fake news central and whether anyone is guilty of anything will mean nothing.
 
Eboue said:
people pay income taxes on the basis of using them to better the community, not to give cash to a multibillion dollar company
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And maybe they think that having Amazon in their city betters their community?
 
I think in this case it's best for the Democrats to tell him he'll be facing a strongly backed primary challenger if he doesn't step aside.
 
Pexbo said:
No it can't be avoided. That's the point. Nominating a middle aged woman in Hillary didn't avoid a story about her running "a peado ring run out of a NY Pizza place" did it?

The 2018 elections are going to be like the 2016 Election, only worse because it's going to be so many more people up for election. It's going to be fake news central and whether anyone is guilty of anything will mean nothing.
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I doubt anyone who was going to vote for her believed that story.
 
Cal? said:
And maybe they think that having Amazon in their city betters their community?
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They've not really got much of a choice when it's either giving their money to Amazon or be fecked over by unemployment.
 
Ubik said:
I think in this case it's best for the Democrats to tell him he'll be facing a strongly backed primary challenger if he doesn't step aside.
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Yeah, anyone alleged in this sort of thing should ideally be standing aside immediately unless they're alleging complete innocence. Nothing but more negative media headlines can really come from this so long as Franken remains.
 
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