The inevitable strain that will come with Amazon’s capital gain
Not many issues manage to unite hardcore Libertarians and Democratic Socialists of America, so in a way you have to commend Amazon for bringing people together.
Amazon’s recent search for a second headquarters in North America (HQ2) created some strange political bedfellows, but it also pitted cities against each other in a cronyism death match.
Cities all over the United States and Canada pitched to Amazon that their city was the place for Jeff Bezos and company. Middle-American cities like Cleveland, Indianapolis and Columbus tried valiantly, hoping a big company, soon to be the biggest, would take a chance and bring about an economic boom, maybe even a renaissance.
Instead, Amazon decided to split up HQ2 in plucky, up-and-coming cities no one ever paid attention to before: New York and Washington D.C. (the location is actually in the nearby satellite city of Crystal City, Virginia). A third smaller location in Nashville is also in the works.
Now Amazon can open up an office anywhere they want. They’re a business and it’s a free country as they say. If it is a free country though it should actually be a free country, not a bought and sold one.
Corporate welfare is a bipartisan issue. Both major parties support it in various ways and both parties have constituencies that recoil at it. Amazon received 3.1 billion dollars in subsidies from New York alone; Jeff Bezos made 39.2 billion dollars over the last year alone. Did they really need it?
They obviously do not need the subsidies, but you have to tip your cap to Bezos and co. While the choice to have Amazon HQ2A and HQ2B in already powerful cities is frustrating, the sweepstakes debacle is ingenious. Now Amazon knows the major long-term infrastructure and economic plans for almost every major Canadian and American city, including our own lovely Philadelphia, for the next quarter century. These cities willingly played their own version of billion-dollar bachelorette.
Two of the most important cities in the country are holding the rose and every city, including them, are suckers for playing. If a city is a winner, they will make money from Amazon over the subsidies 10 times over, but it’s a mixed bag at best and a pyrrhic victory at worst.
With Amazon’s Headquarters there is going to come another huge strain on the already stretched-thin public transit systems in New York and D.C. The lack of affordable housing in New York is already a problem and now, it might become a disaster.
Some taxes that could have been reinvested into these cities and states could have been minimized or waived entirely. The people who will staff the new headquarters are some of the best and brightest America has to offer.
They will come from all over, and some will be from New York and Washington, but it is naive to think these places are helping the average New Yorker or Washingtonian. Property owners will be thrilled, but the people almost priced out but not quite in surrounding areas should be thinking about contingency plans.
What can be done about this? Well, prosperity is a tricky thing, and what is good for somebody is often not good for everybody. According to a survey done by Georgetown University and New York University, Amazon is the second-most trusted institution in America, after the military. They got away with this one because we let them, but Americans should fight against crony capitalism like this.
Crony capitalism can come from Republican Governor and Senator-elect Rick Scott of Florida, and in this case it did come from Bernie Sanders sans charisma New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio. Cronyism is something if one person starts it, but it is a completely different story if everybody participates in it. It’s not even cheating anymore. It’s the rules of the game.
The rules must be changed though. We need a state and city government detente. Bringing industry to states and cities is good, but the central planning of cronyism is not.
Winners and losers aren’t for our elected officials to pick. Catering to special interests is not in the public’s interest. Amazon can move anywhere it wants, but it should be your impulsive buy of new socks that gets them there, not your tax dollars.
A lot of people make this argument better than me, I suggest looking those books up. I’m sure they are on Amazon.
