Desperate Mayors Compete for Amazon HQ2

[Chris]

A lesson is crony capitalism.

[Common]

Amazon will build nowhere they dont get it just about for free.

Many many decades ago Newark NJ screwed itself, it had the best water anywhere on the east coast to produce beer, its actually springwater fed from a HUGE artesian well in the middle of a gigantic watershed.

Brewerys needed the newark area back then to produce good beer but they told Newark officials, eh we will only come with big concessions on property costs and taxs. So Newark gave them tax free status for 20 yrs then increased it gradually over decades more.

Now all the brewerys are gone except budwieser who keeps renewing its free gimmees to continue to stay.

[Chris]

Well, the HQ will bring with it a lot of jobs. That's why cities are competing.

[Kacper]

Well, the HQ will bring with it a lot of jobs. That's why cities are competing.

Depends on the details of what they demand. It will be a massive draw on the electrical grid. It is one thing if they have to invest a lot in grid upgrades to service them. It will be another if they give them electric at or below costs because that will shift the costs onto the utility consumers in the area. My city made concessions on electric rates to a bunch of corporations for basically all manufacturers in the area, and surprise surprise,everybody else's electric rates have gone up noticeably. It is an off-book perpetual subsidy that amounts to an effective added tax for everybody with a light bill so IKEA can keep manufacturing crap furniture for less.

[Chris]

Depends on the details of what they demand. It will be a massive draw on the electrical grid. It is one thing if they have to invest a lot in grid upgrades to service them. It will be another if they give them electric at or below costs because that will shift the costs onto the utility consumers in the area. My city made concessions on electric rates to a bunch of corporations for basically all manufacturers in the area, and surprise surprise,everybody else's electric rates have gone up noticeably. It is an off-book perpetual subsidy that amounts to an effective added tax for everybody with a light bill so IKEA can keep manufacturing crap furniture for less.

Most definitely it will cost the taxpayers a lot. Thaty was basically the argument in San Antonio, as I understood it, the city wanted to gove Amazon all sorts of breaks but the county stepped in and said the benefits in jobs don't outweigh the cost to taxpayers.

SA has experience with Toyota who built a plant here years back. Toyota got a lot of breaks. It may not have paid off.

[Ethereal]

Every Democrat state and city in the country is begging Amazon to locate its next HQ in their backyard and they are all offering Amazon gigantic tax breaks as an incentive.

The depth of their hypocrisy and dissonance is cosmic.