OT: Happy Happy Joy Joy, Amazon is in advanced talks with DC
- Thread starter RaleighPittFan
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This was a ploy to work their short list for as much as they could. This is very similar to the Olympics scam. It could very well work out for NoVa and NYC but from my 20 years of planning and econ devp experience, I can say most of us are not disappointed. This would've been a massive risk for our region. The market is so dynamic. Amazon is the cheerleader with brains and a rich daddy right now but there are rumors that she has an eating disorder and that her daddy is involved in some shady business. In other words, Amazon may not be the big ticket in 10 years and if they aren't, this fiasco will hurt their host like most Olympic hosts have been hurt.
Post Gazette today says that Pennsylvania offered 4.6 billion to Amazon, not through traditional subsidies, but something more akin to having employees pay payroll taxes to Amazon instead of to the state. Uh glad that didn't happen.
Amazon went were they probably wanted to go all along -- the two giant metro areas with the most employees to poach.
Amazon went were they probably wanted to go all along -- the two giant metro areas with the most employees to poach.
Played being the key word.
This was in the cards for politics alone. As the poster noted earlier, Atlanta was probably more of a logical option. But ... all the white bubbas, nascar, football fans ... ugh. As Chad Brown's wife might say, where can you get a decent piece of sushi there?
And while the actual city of Pgh could offer the complementary politics they'd like, the city still carries the old, grimy stigma in many ways, and surrounding areas widely have the rep of being too conservative (an opinion many posters here will either scornfully or proudly support).
As far as things like infrastructure and transit and COL and housing costs, i'm sure they were duly tracked and weighed by the analytics flunkies and passed up to the (normally would say "suits" but in this case maybe has to qualified by "varvatos") ... who scoffed at the city that REALLY won and automatically selected the ones they targeted from the start.
Other than CMU & Pitt (and mainly CMU) what did PGH bring to the table to Amazon? Terrible transportation......still clogging the streets with oversized slow moving PAT buses that require brutal transfers to get anywhere rather than an efficient subway. Try getting from Oakland to Ross Park Mall with public transit. And an airport where you have to again transfer to get anywhere. I wish it would have happened but what really set PGH apart from the rest of the crowd?
Since Amazon clearly is favoring size of local talent base (and possibly transit) over affordability of housing for its workers, I don't think there is anything we could have offered. Clearly 4.6 billion in subsidies wasn't going to do it. I have to imagine if NYC and metro DC are your locations, affordability was never in the formula at all, if there even was a formula.
NoVa offered at a minimum $22,000 in incentives per job, and NYC offerecd $48,000 at a min.
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/1...000-per-job-and-goodies-for-new-headquarters/
https://www.wraltechwire.com/2018/1...000-per-job-and-goodies-for-new-headquarters/
No doubt that is great comfort to the millions who are struggling to make ends meet.
I don't recall affordability being on the list of things Amazon was taking into account. They can pay the necessary salaries. Among the things they were taking into account was access to mass transit, which they wanted AT THE LOCATION of their buildings. That essentially means rail/metro lines at their front door. The only front doors Burgh-land politicians are building a metro line to is the Rooney's.
And I'm not kidding either. That's exactly what happened.
But but but... Pittsburgh is still kind of cheap and we are getting Bus Rapid Transit. What's not to love for Amazon?
Next to nothing. Never thought Pgh had much of a chance. I figure others, likely Atlanta, scored highest in the purely subjective items, as i wrote.
According to the 2017 CIA World Fact Book, the US' poverty rate is higher than some, yes, but is lower than Denmark, the UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Japan, South Korea, Italy, Israel, Greece, Germany, and France; higher than, among others, Canada, Finland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Austria.
Income inequality is vastly overrated as a problem. We should be much more concerned with eradicating poverty than income inequality. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and JK Rowling being billionaires does not make anyone else poorer. According to this year's Nobel co-laureate in economics, William Nordhaus, these innovators create about 49 times more value than they keep. Pretty sweet deal: they get 2% of the benefit of their innovation; the rest of us get 98% for free.
I'm sure that our people living in their cars are proud knowing that they're better off than the Carthaginians.
No. We live in a country where some people are worth more than entire nations and some people can barely afford to eat. Income inequality is one of the primary reasons for the high poverty rates in this country.
http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/america-wealth-inequality/
We should work to keep increasing overall wealth, while making sure that the poor don't fall too far behind. Same reason the NFL team with the worst record picks first and the SuperBowl winner picks last.... or as conservative Republicans like to call it... "Punishing Success".
How many people are living in cars? How did they get there? It isn't for lack of jobs. Our company is absolutely dying for factory/warehouse workers, they are in high demand right now.
who can barely afford to eat? I see an awfully lot of fat people out there.
How did they get to that point?
I highly doubt we have as high of a poverty issue as you are making out. Again, if we do, how did they get there?
If people follow these guideline they vastly improve their chances of not being poor:
1. Stay in high school and graduate
2. Don't have kids before marriage
3. Don't have more kids than you can afford
4. Don't get divorced unless abuse is involved
5. Don't buy things you cannot afford
6. Don't do drugs
Spot on
Follow that and not a single person would live in poverty in this country.
Not good for the Big Socialists Lie, but it’s a bingo.
Healthier fresh food is usually more expensive. Cheap calories tend to be less healthy.
This is true. I love the efforts to get more whole foods into less affluent areas, like farmers markets in the summer, etc.
The conundrum with "cheap" food is that it is typically also addictive. Empty calories that appeal to certain parts of the brain.
Bull plop. We buy produce at a farmers market and get tons of veggies for under $30.
Water is cheaper than soda and beer. See lots of folks drinking coke.
Bull plop. If they follow the guidelines I set forth earlier, they fare better for themselves. Unless you are saying the poor are too incompetent to help themselves. In that case, a CEO making $5M less won't help them.
Worse environment, worse parenting, fewer opportunities. You know, the cycle. It aint rocket science here.
How does a CEO making $5M less help that?
If people want to have better lives, they need to make better choices for themselves and their children.
Tax the 1 percenters more, and put more of that money into education for poorer areas, free college, etc. There's lots of things you can do. We should not have people living in the type of poverty you see in Appalachia or the inner city.
There are tons of opportunities for "free" college now for those who are minority or under privileged. I hate the free thing because the issue isn't at that level - it starts waaaaaay earlier. You can't suddenly take kids who aren't interested at 17 and give them a college education and think it will fix anything.
I'd agree if you would rather send them to trade schools, rather than studying some foolish major. Money is already poured into inner-cities (not sure about Appalachia, which is harder because people are less densely situated). But if people don't follow the guidelines I listed above, they are going to remain poor.
Yeah, I was rolling through the hood the other day and there were just dozens and dozens of farmers markets.
Food deserts totally aren't a thing.
So the only acceptable case for divorce is if abuse is involved? That's moronic.
Interesting thing to me is how many people who are otherwise self proclaimed "free market conservatives" were in favor of offering deals to Amazon that clearly would never be offered to other businesses. Isn't part of the idea of a free market that there is an invisible hand, not government, picking winners and losers in the market place? This isn't free market capitalism, it's increasingly monopolistic corporatism with government aiding the biggest companies.
EDIT: to be fair, I did see some stuff by people like Tucker Carlson and Reason magazine where conservatives and libertarians were critical of the subsidies and lack of transparency.
EDIT: to be fair, I did see some stuff by people like Tucker Carlson and Reason magazine where conservatives and libertarians were critical of the subsidies and lack of transparency.
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The farmers market I go to is in the inner city. I have to drive half an hour to get there. If not, I would not be opposed for funding to create inner city food markets.
I didn't say nobody should get divorced, but it contributes to poverty. Joined resources work better than not. Saying otherwise is moronic. Are you arguing that divorce does not contribute to having less money?
One reason why I miss the Locker Room. Stupid comments like 'divorce is only acceptable when there is abuse'. Cracks me up.
would people not be better off not getting divorced at a drop of a hat? I thought we were talking about ways to minimize poverty. Not getting divorced because you don't "feel in love anymore". would help.
I definitely agree that part of this investment in education should be in trade school scholarships.
Stop with the guidelines. When you are born poor to perhaps a single mom, perhaps a teen mom, your chance of getting out are miniscule. As a society, we should be helping those kids succeed.
The guidelines I laid out should be mandatory curriculum in schools. Otherwise, I'm not sure how just throwing money at them will help. I'd rather give financial incentives to people who follow the guidelines.
Absentee fathers and bad parents are a much bigger problem than divorce.
Why should rich people be responsible for "fixing" bad parents? We need to incent people for not having children out of wedlock, especially when they are young. t is one of the top determinants of poverty and continuing the endless cycle of poverty.
Kids also can't control if they have absentee fathers, divorced parents, "bad" parents, opiod addicted parents, parents who aren't literate, etc.
When we consume something like 75% of the world's opoids, you're talking about more than a cultural flaw. All sorts of people around the world have individual or cultural "failings." But to that extreme, you're talking about bad policies and practices from drug companies, government, certain Doctors and so on that led to this mess.
When we consume something like 75% of the world's opoids, you're talking about more than a cultural flaw. All sorts of people around the world have individual or cultural "failings." But to that extreme, you're talking about bad policies and practices from drug companies, government, certain Doctors and so on that led to this mess.
I'd rather tax them for it. Nevertheless, people are responsible for what they ingest. After I had surgery, I rejected opioids and went with a different pain reliever.
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