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In reply to the discussion: Ocasio-Cortez backs campaign to primary fellow Democrats [View all]JonLP24
(29,322 posts)Some are influenced by lobbyists much more on the Republican side. Do you agree money in politics is a problem?
Being anti business let's talk about specific policies and their impact. Take the Amazon sweetheart deals AOC criticized.
These articles are by a non partisan economist.
Amazon Subsidies And Sports Stadium Subsidies Are Each Terrible In Their Own Special Way
If you didnt already get enough links to read from todays weekly news roundup, and didnt hear enough of my thoughts on Amazons $4 billion payday as it compares to sports subsidies, Ive elaborated on my thoughts at length in an article that just went up this morning at Deadspin. Some sample takeaways:
Jeff Bezos will be getting more public cash than any single sports venue, but at least hell be employing actual full-time workers, so the cost-per-job ratio wont be as dismal as in sports deals (though its still probably pretty bad).
Just like weve seen in sports deals, here are tons of hidden costs to the Amazon agreements, from infrastructure slush funds paid for with public tax dollars to federal tax shelters set up by Donald Trump that will cover Amazons New York headquarters, even though they were supposed to be for impoverished areas and Long Island City is decidedly not.
As in many sports deals, Amazons subsidies will evade most public oversight (in New York, anyway), and were arguably unnecessary at this level given that the company, like sports teams, undoubtedly ended up locating in the market that it wanted to anyway.
Or if you want to skip to the ending: The Amazon deal is ultimately another step in the legitimization of government by extortion, where the nations richest men can withhold job creation as a condition of not having to pay taxes, or commute without a helicopter. But go read the whole thing, its way more entertaining than the bullet-point summary above, or at least way more packed with pop-culture references.
http://www.fieldofschemes.com/2018/11/16/14287/amazon-subsidies-and-sports-stadium-subsidies-are-each-terrible-in-their-own-way/
https://deadspin.com/amazons-ransom-vs-stadium-deals-which-is-worse-1830467603
So when Amazon announced on Tuesday that Jeff Bezos would be building two new headquarters in New York City and the Virginia suburbs of D.C.and collecting $4 billion in tax breaks plus a pair of helipads as part of the bargainit set off alarm bells all over. (Nashville will kick in another $100 million to land a smaller Amazon base with the Monty Burnsesque moniker Operations Center of Excellence.) Elected officials and residents from Amazons targeted New York neighborhood of Long Island City greeted the news with a protest rally, while the New York Post ran a front-page illustration of a moneybag-clutching Bezos above the headline Queens Ransom.
The Amazon bidding war has been conducted in a fashion more than a little reminiscent of sports stadium shakedowns: Declare your team (or company) a free agent that is ready to move wherever it likes, then wait for local elected officials to scurry for any much public cash as they can stuff into unmarked briefcases. Its not quite fair to say that sports team owners taught their non-sports brethren the rules of the extortion gamehe first big wave of corporate subsidies came in the 1980s, as car companies and computer chip plants realized that Reagan-era cuts in federal development aid to cities were leading desperate mayors to open their city treasuries to any passing private company. But Bezoss Amazon sweepstakes, like the one conducted by Elon Musk for a Tesla factory before that, clearly owes a debt of gratitude to the biannual Olympic circus, which in turn learned from the sports team owners who have collectively extracted tens of billions of public dollars for stadiums and arenas in recent decades.
The futility of trying to boost your citys economy by throwing money at pro sports is well-established, even if it hasnt always sunk in with elected officials (after all, theyll be long out of office when the final bill comes due). But does the same calculus hold for other corporate sweetheart deals? After all, many of the arguments that economists point to as reasons why sports subsidies are pointlesslocal sports spending cannibalizes money that would be spent elsewhere in your city anyway, the prime beneficiaries are a few rich folks who wont spend much in your local economy, the jobs created are mostly low-wage and part-timedont hold true for a corporate headquarters employing as many as 25,000 full-time workers at a projected average salary of $150,000 a year. Is spending billions to land Amazon a better deal? Or just a different breed of boondoggle?
Lets do a side-by-side comparison:
How much will it cost? While the final numbers are still being calculated, it looks like Amazon will rake in around $3 billion from New York, and up to $1 billion from Virginia. Thats way spendier than any single sports venue in historythe new Yankee Stadium holds the current record at $850 million in state and city costs, with the Atlanta Falcons and Las Vegas Raiders right behind.
https://deadspin.com/amazons-ransom-vs-stadium-deals-which-is-worse-1830467603
The article goes back and forth with sports subsidies (which are bad deals for cities) that both politicians tend to support because fans want their sports teams which is why the NFL shakes down cities for sweetheart deals which is what Amazon did.