The teachable moment from Amazon’s HQ2
Bottom Line:Last week’s New York debacle as Amazon pulled its HQ2 plans out of the city provided the ultimate teachable moment. Not only do elections have consequences but so do protests and of course policy. A quick recap.
New York has the third highest tax burden of any state in the United States. To attempt to be competitive with other states they offered incentives totaling around $3 billion in long term tax breaks to Amazon.com. That worked for Amazon and the deal was stuck. Enter AOC and company...
Here’s New York’s first inconvenient truth. Had AOC not defeated Representative Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary last year we’re likely not having this conversation and Amazon’s HQ2 likely sticks in New York City. But New York is getting everything it voted for and deserves. Here’s the irony of irony. Why is it that New York advanced the tax concessions in the first place? It’s an admission that taxes are too high to be competitive in the first place, right? What’s more is that it was an admission by the very politicians, who’ve passed ever rising taxes for years. This is where I give AOC credit. She’d fail economics 101 right now but at least she was consistent. She believes in high taxes and increased government regulation and intervention. She was true to her beliefs and consistent on the issue unlike the other New York politicians who’re highly hypocritical. The next irony is this. Real world accountability.
During the recent partial government shutdown, I illustrated numerous points about the absurdity of the coverage. First, the average American earns about half of what the average impacted non-essential Federal employee earns (with total compensation that averages about $128k per year). Second, those employees were able to protest, speak against the government and eventually get paid to have done it. There were hundreds of thousands of federal employees who didn’t work for over a month, were played up as sympathetic figures in news media and eventually got full back pay for the month plus they didn’t work and received a raise. Would that ever happen anywhere but in government? So, about the teachable moment. While federal employees might have the opportunity to trash their employer publicly, get paid to do it and a raise at the end of the process – there’s not a company on this planet that can or does operate that way.
Once Amazon saw that they’d be relentlessly protested, have boycott’s attempted against them, etc. - they were out. That’s how things work in the real world. It’s important we teach our kids, those entering the real world, economics and financial literacy...but also the difference between news reporting and how things actually work in the real world. It’s also the latest reminder that New York got exactly what it voted for in AOC. Elections have consequences.