Posted on 10/05/2017 1:00:25 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
When you have administrative and technology functions like Amazon is looking to bring to a new location, the economic impact is mostly in the salaries of the staff and the secondary economic activities of the people earning them. Personally, I wouldn't offer up a very large incentive package for an Amazon headquarters at all.
For income taxes -- yes. For property taxes, it's often a whole different story.
They have a warehouse up in SE KS...not a lot of mid-sized businesses...springing up around that.
“Nobody imagined Amazon until it happened.”
Not even close to accurate.
Many tech companies were touting this potential years before Amazon actually executed it.
Hysterical?
You have some personal knowledge basis for that assertion?
With Amazon present in the state ALL residents ordering through Amazon will be charged state sales taxes - bigger population = lots more revenue for the state ...
For some cities that would actually be an enormous pain in the @ss. If Amazon put their second headquarters into my region it would be great for the office real estate market but would be disastrous in a lot of other ways.
They have a warehouse here in Charlotte, too. My friend’s nephew has a night-shift job at a good wage there, although he may die of old age before he gets a daytime job.
Something to consider is that if you bring in tens of thousands of Amazon techies, you’re bringing in tens of thousands of the hard-left. What does that do to your area, long-term?
Thats the way pretty much all tax BREAKS work. However, like most Economists (Jeffrey Dorfman is a professor of economics at The University of Georgia), he does not actually understand tax policy (and I would argue Economics either, but that is a different subject). He works off the assumption that the money already belongs to the government, therefore a tax break is a reduction of revenue to the government, which has to be “paid for”, rather than an incentive to generate more revenue for the government. This is the same liberal logic that says tax cuts need to be “paid for”, not taking into account that the tax revenue to the government would be zero if the business (or taxpayer) never sets foot in the state.
The technology and business cycle has been accelerating for at least a century. What makes you think we’re going to freeze, suddenly, at Amazon?
One would not expect a warehouse to generate secondary business.
A few robot repairmen, plenty of power, the initial construction followed by maintenance.
Most of those jobs will be filled by locals who are already contributing to the tax base
The only increases would be for the remainder who actually do come into the jurisdiction and any payroll increases for those already there
” but would be disastrous in a lot of other ways”
Cultural, or real?
“you’re bringing in tens of thousands of the hard-left”
Those clowns consider themselves moderate realists.
But, after they cash their check they are full-on commies.
However, I believe that all of these tax break schemes violate the spirit of equal protection and should not be allowed.
There’s no reason an eco-system will be built. We don’t even know if this office will do anything tech, could be purely administrative. Meanwhile with a massive tax give away the area will come out behind, at least for the first 5 to 10 years. These bidding wars companies get cities to participate are a lot like hosting the Olympics, the real winners are the ones that don’t play.
Actually, as another posted, there is an entire secondary economic benefit created for all the support businesses designed to hire contractors (mostly American citizens) to support the direct employees (mostly H1B) that the tech company will bring to the region. At Microsoft, that ratio is about 1:1. They have roughly 90K Direct employees, and roughly 90K v-dash (Vendor staff). THEN you get the spinoffs of businesses that want to do business with the Tech Giant, or companies that ex employees found to fill niches that the tech giant is ignoring, and they would probably employ double that again, along with consumption of more office space than the Tech Giant alone will consume. This is why tech areas get catchy names like Silicon Valley and Technology Triangle ... it is not just one big company, it is at least one big company and a host of smaller ones that change the economics of a region.
The core Amazon business (the part we think of when people say “Amazon”) is just a very big mail order company. They’re Sears. All it takes to up end Amazon is the same thing they used to upends Sears: faster, cheaper, better UI.
“What makes you think we’re going to freeze, suddenly, at Amazon”
It won’t.
Remember, Amazon used to just sell books and music. Barnes and Noble was their competition.
For an ENORMOUS company they are as nimble as any to ever exist.
They are doing brick and mortar groceries now because folks won’t buy groceries on the web (duh!). But they back that business with the most sophisticated logistics back-end in the world.
I read this morning that now they will go after Fedex and UPS. No sense paying another company to play in your own ecosystem of commerce.
I fully expect them to win.
They use superior technology to morph into whatever they need to be to get filthy stinkin’ rich.
Only government can stop them. And that’s far more than a minor risk.
Should be pointed out that Amazon, at its base, isn’t actually doing something totally radical. What they managed to do is make the 1800s idea of mail order from catalogs work in the Internet era with modern technology. (Which then makes you wonder how the old catalog houses somehow didn’t.)
Wherever they build, scores of mid-sized businesses will emerge around them and form a tech ecosystem.
Plain and simple................
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