Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Campus
As someone who lived in NYC for 5 years, I can&#x27;t understand how anyone can not consider this a loss to NYC. Don&#x27;t get me wrong I hate corporate welfare as much as anyone else and I have no desire to work for Amazon because it seems like a corporate sweatshop, but 25k jobs at an average $100k+ salary would&#x27;ve been a boon to the city, even despite the $3 billion in tax subsidies. The additional revenue for workers and taxes would&#x27;ve been a huge boost to the economy and would&#x27;ve more than paid for itself.<p>The jobs would&#x27;ve been in Long-Island City, which is basically a glass tower condo ghost town with practically no office&#x2F;business presence. The subway for people commuting into LIC for work is probably currently fairly empty, so the subway could accommodate them. (The same cannot be said of the reverse. Commuting from Astoria, Queens or Williamsburg, Brooklyn into Manhattan for work during rush hour is horrible).<p>I agree that politicians need to do a better job of accommodating those who are displaced by gentrification. NYC housing costs are insane (as someone else mentioned we undertax single-family homes and $100m penthouses), the subway is failing, etc.<p>Perhaps the deal would&#x27;ve gone through had politicians better communicated how the $3 billion subsidy package was not just a handout to Amazon but would actually improve the city and the well-being of its residents.<p>But given the city&#x27;s failure to build affordable housing (not the &quot;affordable housing&quot; buzzword where luxury apartments are subsidized to low income people who enter a lottery, but doesn&#x27;t actually meaningfully increase affordable housing stock) and fix the subway, maybe the city isn&#x27;t capable of managing itself and stemming the pitfalls of gentrification, and so the opposition was fired up by this awareness. It seems that so long as fundamental aspects of NYC like its subway system are managed by NY State, we will never see any meaningful change at anything more than a snails-pace. Perhaps NYC should be fighting for independence from NY State to be in full control of its own destiny rather than being at the mercy of politicians in Albany with a poor track record of attending to the city&#x27;s needs. (sorry I got derailed there a bit, just a stream of thought)