Good article. It clearly spells out the numbers. Many people still think that driving away 40,000 jobs was somehow a good idea. Democrat havens NY/NJ/CT are up to their eyeballs in pension debt and basically broke. Next financial crisis will be a true tipping point....
And here's a laughable story from CNN: "How Amazon blew its chance in New York" https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/15/tech/amazon-nyc-hq2-fail/index.html CNN seems confused as to who the loser is here.
Amazon "blew" it ha ha...there will be 10 other cities lining up with knee pads to get them to build in their location.
Like Wisconsin is a big winner paying $350K/job of taxpayer money to Foxconn to get them to build a factory (https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-fox...onsin-the-costs-to-taxpayers-go-up-1530091800) It's like cities lining up with knee pads to get a professional sports team by spending a billion or two on a stadium. There's a thing called the winner's curse in auction theory that definitely applies to these situations.
It's not nearly as clear as it was said in the article. There are good things and bad things about what happened. On one hand, the numbers did not add up and, more importantly, it created a massive moral hazard issue. Other large tech companies (e.g. Google) have moved to the NYC without the same incentive package. If Amazon had twisted the arm of the city/state governments, every other firm will (and should!) try to do the same. Maybe it's better for the city to forego this one chance not to be blackmailed in the future. On the other hand, most of the noise that eventually drove them away was by the anti-gentrification and union people (who I, rather honestly, dislike a lot). PS. The final result, in my mind, is net more negative
This may explain the reasoning better.... A link which should get you into WSJ. Open the link in private window. https://t.co/nkNIhgwhNC
NY shooing-away Amazon was about as smart as the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees. (But at least Red Sox fans came to understand and regret their blunder rather than celebrate it.)
When one reads: "Ignorant masses, idiotic reporters, and their devious political heroes banded together to thwart prosperity in an endless Shock and Awe campaign against Amazon until the company finally pulled the plug on New York." A red flag should go up in the reader's mind. They are being warned that objectivity may be lacking. It is most likely that there is a second side to the story that is not being told. Reader beware! There are usually intangibles that should be considered, but often are not. They cannot be quantified, but they should at least be considered. There is virtually always two sides to such a story. If it is truly a win-win deal then it is a good deal. But is it? No way to tell from the article linked to in the original post.