Thread by @matthewstoller

New York is giving Amazon a tax subsidy of $48,000 per job plus a straight $325 million cash grant. Plus other incentives.

https://twitter.com/felixsalmon/status/1062357887505350656

Also looks like Amazon is now predatory pricing to kill UPS and Fedex. Classic monopolizing technique. cnbc.com/2018/11/09/ama…

This is my favorite subsidy for Amazon. Small, but humiliating. "The company will also receive a cash grant from Arlington of $23 million over 15 years based on the incremental growth of the existing local Transient Occupancy Tax, a tax on hotel rooms."

Also, Amazon isn't splitting this between two cities, but three cities. Nashville is getting an Amazon "Operations Center of Excellence." Even the press release of 'splitting between two cities' is a lie.

These aren't just subsidies to Amazon, they are also weapons aimed at every one of Amazon's competitors. Which at this point includes basically everyone.

De Blasio and Cuomo throwing themselves all over Bezos to pay him for what he would have done anyway is classic Democratic powerlessness. The voters picked Cuomo, even though he had challengers in 2014 and 2018.

These $150,000 a year jobs are about transferring wealth from regional cities with retail HQs and moving it to NYC. And New York City is already too expensive, so this will drive a housing shortage and killing working class neighborhoods.

A billion here, a billion there.

https://twitter.com/danarubinstein/status/1062370779533398016

This is all so stupid. They don't need to offer incentives. New York City is a monopoly provider of New York City. Northern Virginia is a monopoly provider of the Pentagon. The offer could be zero dollars plus we'll put a special tax on Amazon and Bezos might take it.

This is why the whole 'we didn't lose we pushed the politician left' argument is stupid. When voters pick Amazon Cuomo, voters get Amazon Cuomo. Plutocrat friendly politicians will make whatever noise they need to win, it's the governing that matters.

https://twitter.com/Atrios/status/1062371582419628034

Is New York going to offer tax incentives to all the people who have to move out of the neighborhoods that are now too expensive to live in?

This seems fine and not at all about creating an environment of lawlessness for Amazon.

https://twitter.com/brfreed/status/1062372347280269318

Looking at the backlash against Amazon's #HQ2 award, I'm heartened. This is the first time I've seen genuine across the board anger at the power of Bezos. Usually it's 'yeah but I love two day shipping.' This time people are mad. Politicians are mad. And good on @Ocasio2018!