Cities’ Offers for Amazon Base Are Secrets Even to Many City Leaders

Austin city council member Leslie Pool, pictured and quoted in this article, is a notorious pseudo-progressive NIMBY. When she speaks in generalities, everything that comes out of her mouth aligns with my political ideals and my concerns about growth in Austin, but at the same time, she fights tooth and nail against anything that might help.<p>She talks incessantly about affordable housing while at the same time doing her best to prevent any new housing from being constructed. She wrings her hands over lack of transit (her favorite excuse for opposing density) and supports transit as an idea while always finding an excuse to oppose any specific proposal for improving it.<p>I have fears about Amazon as well (it could be fine, but it also could be horrible, and I know Austin will be fine without it) and they&#x27;re the same as the ones she articulates, but to me they mean nothing coming out of her mouth when I know her only agenda is protecting her single-family-with-yard-and-three-cars constituents from sharing space with apartment dwellers and public transit users.

I respect Toronto&#x27;s proposal a lot, in light of this: absolutely no specific incentives offered, just an overview of the benefits of working in Toronto&#x2F;Ontario&#x2F;Canada from an employee&#x2F;employer&#x27;s perspective. I think it was a strong action both in terms of attracting Amazon (there&#x27;s no other non-US cities being considered, so they are already hugely differentiated) and in terms of reassuring the constituents that the government will not bend over backwards for corporations (especially considering the Google smart city in development).

&gt; Corporations have choices. They could go about their business, and simply choose the best location, the one that makes the greatest business sense, and invest accordingly. Or they can as Amazon, GE, and dozens of others, go through the ritual of pretending to entertain a wide range of proposals, and use the leverage of competing bids to sweat the best possible deal out of their preferred location<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cityobservatory.org&#x2F;cash-prizes-for-bad-corporate-citizenship-amazon-edition&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;cityobservatory.org&#x2F;cash-prizes-for-bad-corporate-cit...</a><p>Whoever &#x27;wins&#x27;, may not come out ahead.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2017&#x2F;9&#x2F;10&#x2F;what-can-i-do-to-have-you-love-me" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.strongtowns.org&#x2F;journal&#x2F;2017&#x2F;9&#x2F;10&#x2F;what-can-i-do-...</a>

Democracy: When you can&#x27;t tell your citizens what you&#x27;re up to, you already have a problem.<p>It is also a very hypocritical example of, speaking generally of these things, business decrying &quot;the nanny state&quot; while actually engaging and encouraging it, full force.<p>It&#x27;s just that <i>they</i> want all the nanny&#x27;s attention and preferential treatment.

Why is Amazon negotiating&#x2F;receiving offers from outside the gov&#x27;t? Seems odd.<p>They could pick a specific city and the city council could say &quot;hell no&quot; or just be unable to pass legislation to deliver on it.

The only reason why they would do this is for plausible deniability. If it turns into a disaster, then they can claim they didn&#x27;t do anything about it. It&#x27;s pretty disgusting to think we&#x27;re that stupid, but journalists will just take the lazy way out.

I’ll be stunned if they end up anywhere other than northern Virginia and if nova gives than much more than token incentives. They have a huge presence there already and if they want to negotiate for big government contracts it helps to be nearby.

What prevents the elected city officials from voting No on the package once it is accepted by Amazon and revealed? Anything with legal teeth or just public pressure?

Usually tax deals or tax holidays are offered to entice prospective companies but given Amazon&#x27;s US tax burden is already nearly zero what else can these cities offer, free land, protection from unions?<p>Amazon seems unlikely to choose a city randomly, its likely to already have decided which city suits it best in terms of logistics, efficiency, cost and available labour pool so this seems to be an elaborate game to squeeze its preferred city.

Capitalism is disgusting.<p>World&#x27;s richest man is going to rob two cities blind with promises of jobs. Just a massive giveaway to the man who literally has the least need in the world.<p>Guess they don&#x27;t want the people actually having any say.<p>&gt; pitched the idea of Amazon University, with a customized curriculum developed in partnership with Amazon and local universities<p>Just gonna go full company town I guess.<p>&gt; added $38 billion to Seattle’s economy from 2010 to 2016.<p>and made it impossible to get a modest tax passed.<p>&gt; “They are about ending inequality and creating more inclusive cities,” said Richard Florida, a professor at the School of Cities and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “Now they’re in a game competing with one another to throw money at one of the most powerful companies in the world run by one of the world’s richest men.”<p>Yup, because they want to be able to say they brought amazon in. It fucks over the people who already lives there, increases inequality, and ultimately doesn&#x27;t really help that many people other than Jeff.

DC should just let Amazon run the city government as Amazon sees fit. I wouldn’t mind living in an Amazon company town, I bet they’d shape things up around here.