What the h*ll has Carl Marx got to do with Amazon, the non-tax paying megalith? I realize zero corporate tax is a goal of the republicans but this is ridiculous.
Attracting the high tech companies can be a double edge sword as the costs can exceed the benefits. Companies do not train people as they did long ago and when they move into a city they essentially steal some of the workforces from other companies, raise rents in nearby areas, and do not value all their employees as much as the high tech workers … creating somewhat unpleasant working conditions for the unskilled. High tech companies are attracted to the well-educated workforces found in some major cities and the workforce is unlike previous generations, more mobile … not seeking a lifelong career at a single company. The real danger to the tax cuts that affected specific geographical areas — the blue states — will be the backlash. The migrators are not high earners which will make the destination states even less attractive to high tech transplants.
" … Moore and Laffer say that 3.5 million Americans on net have moved from the highest-tax states to the lowest-tax ones. They add that high earners are the ones who have cost the states the most by leaving. Yet they fail to mention that very few of those 3.5 million were high earners.
What’s more, the number of millionaires in those high-tax states is actually growing, not shrinking." …"
Do not weep for Amazon and jobs. Existential changes are good for both. Those working for buggy whip and horse harness industries are probably suffering.
I thought You’d be happy, Ramirez, that Amazon is not going to have it’s HQ in a blue state that you hate. Perhaps now they will move to a “business friendly” Red state. The economies of New York and most other liberal, business hating, high taxation and money wasting blue states are better than those of your beloved Red states. I wonder why.
Marx and Adam Smith were in the balcony heckling this deal, like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show. Opposition to crony capitalism unites honest economists on the left and the right.
. Amazon is under attack in various locations, in the US and overseas. It doesn’t need this agrevation. 2. NYC Offered the bonus to Amazon. 3. Amazon can go wherever it likes, 4 . Local politicians, not privy to the deal, did not get their payoff. 5. Now, NYC will not be improving. Yeah it does need to, not every place in the city looks like lower Manhattan.
The socialism involved in the Amazon deal is CORPORATE socialism. Giving a company state tax breaks (and whatever else is included in that “deal”) that already doesn’t pay corporate taxes despite their mega-profits is ridiculous.
Repost:The irony is that New York City has long been ground zero for the union busting movement. I refer to Wall Street, which for decades, under the banner of maximizing shareholder value, has tried to force every company to cut pay and benefits for its workers and ship jobs overseas, or face certain takeover by private-equity firms and activist investors who will.…
Business leaders are already pointing to Amazon’s retreat from New York as a warning about the economic harm that will befall the rest of the country if the Democratic Party continues its leftward drift and gains control of Congress and the White House. But they have only themselves to blame. The antipathy and distrust people have for business is the direct result of three decades of winner-take-all capitalism in which the benefits of economic growth were captured by those at the top and too many people were left behind.
Now the business community is discovering that what goes around comes around — that the anger, distrust and resentment that it has spawned does not distinguish between good companies and bad, between productive self-interest and greed, between good deals and bad ones.…
The political mugging that Amazon received in New York is a preview of what is in store for American business if it fails to repair the social contract and replenish the social capital it has depleted. The choice for the business community is either to embrace rules and practices that strike a better balance between shareholders, workers, customers and the public, or have rules and practices much less to its liking imposed by an angry and sometimes irrational public.
“Urban economist Robert Poole subsequently assessed matters: “New York City spent and spent, creating a vast city hospital system, a city university open to all at no charge, the highest welfare benefits in the country and a Civil Service system unparalleled in its solicitude toward employees all without concern for its increasingly hard-pressed taxpayers.” – NY Daily News.. The year? : 1975. NY City asked for a federal bailout, and was told “No”. Perhaps if AOC read the history of her city, and the world for that matter, she’d be less cocksure.
Moving policies back towards the center, after the radical shift to the right by the GOP is not equivalent to Socialism, even though it is a shift in a leftward direction. It’s a natural reaction to the radicalization of the right.
All the empty MAGA hats want a return to a period when America was great, but won’t accept things characteristic of that period which included high corporate taxes, state supported colleges and unis, laws requiring “fairness” in public broadcasts (no GOP propaganda network) enforcement of anti-monopoly regulations (which would have broken up Bezo’s business plan early on), strong (and not always as corrupt as they are made out to be by the GOP propaganda network) unions, the GI bill, bans on semi-automatic weapons, real federally funded infrastructure projects like the interstate highway system, and a significant start on civil rights. Oh and we really, really hated Communists like Putin. Ironic, no?
There was a lot of suffering by non-white, male groups who weren’t part of the patriarchy that was truly evil but it was getting worked on. Then the Reagan year’s came,
Whine about supposedly entitled “millennials” all you want, but the vast majority of Boomers had more handed to them than they admit (including the right wing commentators that aren’t bots who post here) and they corrupted it into an “I got mine, to hell with the future.” attitude that is literally destroying America. MAGA: an empty slogan straight out of Orwell’s 1984.
Leave it to Mikey to buy into Dotard’s read on the subject. It had nothing to do with communism or even socialism. Yeah, Ocasio-Cortez counted as one nasty voice heard by Amazon, but read their reasoning. It had much more to do with how they felt New York City was treating them than a few voices making nasty noises.
Oh Mikey. What ever happened to your belief in the “free market”? Isn’t this a case of the government picking winners and losers?
That aside, Industrial Revenue Bonds sound great in theory and are a slow motion disaster in practice. I’m not sure there has EVER been an IRB that resulted in the city or county that issued them recouping the taxpayer’s investment. The corporations who receive the funding and the tax exemptions either renew the deal or pick up and move on to the next set of suckers when they expire.
Let me point out that Amazon opposes unionizing. Those 25,000 jobs would pay 15 dollars an hour (thanks to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), but they would also continue to have horrible working conditions. The Federal Government should ban these “races to the bottom”.
In your dreams, Mr Ramirez. Businesses always greatly overpromise on these deals, which wouldn’t work out as envisioned no matter what. It’s like public support for sports stadiums. The “thought experiment” promises all kinds of economic activity which in practice simply is shifted from one expenditure to another. These things have been studied to DEATH but the politicians and their constituents always are sure that THIS time Lucy will not whisk the football away. And they are always wrong.
Amazon wants corporate welfare and the tax payers to pick up the tab for it all. Big corp tax breaks and big corporate tax cuts never pay for themselves.
Lessee. At that rate, the city would pay about $120,000 for each of those “good paying jobs”… and as someone already pointed out, many of them would go to folks who move to the city. It’s true that those jobs would put some more money into the local economy, maybe as much as half of it. Then there’s the whole “do you believe that number?” issue. (I don’t). Not to mention what it would do to the neighborhood in terms of traffic, parking, stress on the infrastructure…
Generally, I think it’s better to let businesses pay their own way, and just not deal with the ones who want too much baksheesh.
AOC dancing on the grave of the richest (and non-tax paying) company in the world. As usual, the right wing fever dreams are way more awesome than the reality.
Odd. Every other political cartoonist is focusing on the Constitution and how Trump is trampling over congressional rights with Republican collusion. All I hear here are crickets.
American cities should unite and tell Amazon they don’t want the HQ2. Amazon has been acting like an extortionist ever since the search was announced. It seems like whatever benefits a city would get, they will get screwed worse by Amazon.
Daeder about 5 years ago
Welcome back, Mike. I like the stand-in you had on Sunday. I’m going to miss that guy.
brit-ed about 5 years ago
What the h*ll has Carl Marx got to do with Amazon, the non-tax paying megalith? I realize zero corporate tax is a goal of the republicans but this is ridiculous.
Ontman about 5 years ago
One of the best artists in comics…such a waste.
superposition about 5 years ago
Attracting the high tech companies can be a double edge sword as the costs can exceed the benefits. Companies do not train people as they did long ago and when they move into a city they essentially steal some of the workforces from other companies, raise rents in nearby areas, and do not value all their employees as much as the high tech workers … creating somewhat unpleasant working conditions for the unskilled. High tech companies are attracted to the well-educated workforces found in some major cities and the workforce is unlike previous generations, more mobile … not seeking a lifelong career at a single company. The real danger to the tax cuts that affected specific geographical areas — the blue states — will be the backlash. The migrators are not high earners which will make the destination states even less attractive to high tech transplants.
" … Moore and Laffer say that 3.5 million Americans on net have moved from the highest-tax states to the lowest-tax ones. They add that high earners are the ones who have cost the states the most by leaving. Yet they fail to mention that very few of those 3.5 million were high earners.
What’s more, the number of millionaires in those high-tax states is actually growing, not shrinking." …"
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/26/800000-people-are-about-to-flee-new-york-california-because-of-taxes.html
Gypsy8 about 5 years ago
Do not weep for Amazon and jobs. Existential changes are good for both. Those working for buggy whip and horse harness industries are probably suffering.
shakeswilly about 5 years ago
I thought You’d be happy, Ramirez, that Amazon is not going to have it’s HQ in a blue state that you hate. Perhaps now they will move to a “business friendly” Red state. The economies of New York and most other liberal, business hating, high taxation and money wasting blue states are better than those of your beloved Red states. I wonder why.
Dave Ferro about 5 years ago
AO☭ knows so much that isn’t so…
Judge Magney about 5 years ago
Marx and Adam Smith were in the balcony heckling this deal, like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show. Opposition to crony capitalism unites honest economists on the left and the right.
thomaspryan about 5 years ago
If AOC got a nose job, too, would it be career ending?
walfishj about 5 years ago
. Amazon is under attack in various locations, in the US and overseas. It doesn’t need this agrevation. 2. NYC Offered the bonus to Amazon. 3. Amazon can go wherever it likes, 4 . Local politicians, not privy to the deal, did not get their payoff. 5. Now, NYC will not be improving. Yeah it does need to, not every place in the city looks like lower Manhattan.
Nantucket Premium Member about 5 years ago
The socialism involved in the Amazon deal is CORPORATE socialism. Giving a company state tax breaks (and whatever else is included in that “deal”) that already doesn’t pay corporate taxes despite their mega-profits is ridiculous.
newyorkslim about 5 years ago
Mike gets it all wrong on this one. DeBlasio and Cuomo are the statists. Amazon’s NYC deal was not capitalism. What a joke.
Radish the wordsmith about 5 years ago
More tax breaks for billionaires and use more coal, say Republicans.
martens about 5 years ago
Repost:The irony is that New York City has long been ground zero for the union busting movement. I refer to Wall Street, which for decades, under the banner of maximizing shareholder value, has tried to force every company to cut pay and benefits for its workers and ship jobs overseas, or face certain takeover by private-equity firms and activist investors who will.…
Business leaders are already pointing to Amazon’s retreat from New York as a warning about the economic harm that will befall the rest of the country if the Democratic Party continues its leftward drift and gains control of Congress and the White House. But they have only themselves to blame. The antipathy and distrust people have for business is the direct result of three decades of winner-take-all capitalism in which the benefits of economic growth were captured by those at the top and too many people were left behind.
Now the business community is discovering that what goes around comes around — that the anger, distrust and resentment that it has spawned does not distinguish between good companies and bad, between productive self-interest and greed, between good deals and bad ones.…
The political mugging that Amazon received in New York is a preview of what is in store for American business if it fails to repair the social contract and replenish the social capital it has depleted. The choice for the business community is either to embrace rules and practices that strike a better balance between shareholders, workers, customers and the public, or have rules and practices much less to its liking imposed by an angry and sometimes irrational public.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/amazons-political-mugging-in-new-york-is-a-warning-for-american-business/2019/02/15/0f9686d8-313e-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html
And further evidence of Amazon’s inepititude in the NYC deal:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/amazon-new-york-bill-de-blasio.html
DrDon1 about 5 years ago
Ramirez — The Champion for ‘unfettered’ Capitalism!
benjamineyal about 5 years ago
While I am bitter over the loss of the deal, I think this is a great exaggeration
Holden Awn about 5 years ago
“Urban economist Robert Poole subsequently assessed matters: “New York City spent and spent, creating a vast city hospital system, a city university open to all at no charge, the highest welfare benefits in the country and a Civil Service system unparalleled in its solicitude toward employees all without concern for its increasingly hard-pressed taxpayers.” – NY Daily News.. The year? : 1975. NY City asked for a federal bailout, and was told “No”. Perhaps if AOC read the history of her city, and the world for that matter, she’d be less cocksure.
newyorkslim about 5 years ago
Mr. Ramirez — now draw a picture of you having beer with socialist demagogues DeBlasio and Cuomo.
kballweg Premium Member about 5 years ago
Moving policies back towards the center, after the radical shift to the right by the GOP is not equivalent to Socialism, even though it is a shift in a leftward direction. It’s a natural reaction to the radicalization of the right.
All the empty MAGA hats want a return to a period when America was great, but won’t accept things characteristic of that period which included high corporate taxes, state supported colleges and unis, laws requiring “fairness” in public broadcasts (no GOP propaganda network) enforcement of anti-monopoly regulations (which would have broken up Bezo’s business plan early on), strong (and not always as corrupt as they are made out to be by the GOP propaganda network) unions, the GI bill, bans on semi-automatic weapons, real federally funded infrastructure projects like the interstate highway system, and a significant start on civil rights. Oh and we really, really hated Communists like Putin. Ironic, no?
There was a lot of suffering by non-white, male groups who weren’t part of the patriarchy that was truly evil but it was getting worked on. Then the Reagan year’s came,
Whine about supposedly entitled “millennials” all you want, but the vast majority of Boomers had more handed to them than they admit (including the right wing commentators that aren’t bots who post here) and they corrupted it into an “I got mine, to hell with the future.” attitude that is literally destroying America. MAGA: an empty slogan straight out of Orwell’s 1984.
Stephen Runnels Premium Member about 5 years ago
I have always been in awe of Ramirez artistic genius, yet so disappointed he corrupts it in right-wing ignorance.
Real Joel about 5 years ago
Leave it to Mikey to buy into Dotard’s read on the subject. It had nothing to do with communism or even socialism. Yeah, Ocasio-Cortez counted as one nasty voice heard by Amazon, but read their reasoning. It had much more to do with how they felt New York City was treating them than a few voices making nasty noises.
streetbeater about 5 years ago
Oh Mikey. What ever happened to your belief in the “free market”? Isn’t this a case of the government picking winners and losers?
That aside, Industrial Revenue Bonds sound great in theory and are a slow motion disaster in practice. I’m not sure there has EVER been an IRB that resulted in the city or county that issued them recouping the taxpayer’s investment. The corporations who receive the funding and the tax exemptions either renew the deal or pick up and move on to the next set of suckers when they expire.
VadimUzdensky1 about 5 years ago
Let me point out that Amazon opposes unionizing. Those 25,000 jobs would pay 15 dollars an hour (thanks to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), but they would also continue to have horrible working conditions. The Federal Government should ban these “races to the bottom”.
rodgerjacobsen Premium Member about 5 years ago
I wonder why a guy who can daw as well as Ramirez can’t even get close to a likeness of AOC, he misses by a mile.
AndrewSihler about 5 years ago
In your dreams, Mr Ramirez. Businesses always greatly overpromise on these deals, which wouldn’t work out as envisioned no matter what. It’s like public support for sports stadiums. The “thought experiment” promises all kinds of economic activity which in practice simply is shifted from one expenditure to another. These things have been studied to DEATH but the politicians and their constituents always are sure that THIS time Lucy will not whisk the football away. And they are always wrong.
DeepState about 5 years ago
Amazon wants corporate welfare and the tax payers to pick up the tab for it all. Big corp tax breaks and big corporate tax cuts never pay for themselves.
mysterysciencefreezer about 5 years ago
Bezos tapped out in the face of mild (for NYC) opposition. He’s a bully looking for easier prey.
Concretionist about 5 years ago
Lessee. At that rate, the city would pay about $120,000 for each of those “good paying jobs”… and as someone already pointed out, many of them would go to folks who move to the city. It’s true that those jobs would put some more money into the local economy, maybe as much as half of it. Then there’s the whole “do you believe that number?” issue. (I don’t). Not to mention what it would do to the neighborhood in terms of traffic, parking, stress on the infrastructure…
Generally, I think it’s better to let businesses pay their own way, and just not deal with the ones who want too much baksheesh.
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] about 5 years ago
One thing they will never say, but rely heavenly on—- that Capitalism under govt saves Capitalism from itself.
Barry Onyx about 5 years ago
AOC dancing on the grave of the richest (and non-tax paying) company in the world. As usual, the right wing fever dreams are way more awesome than the reality.
Dtroutma about 5 years ago
Bonespurs dances with Putin, and brings flowers.
SeanT about 5 years ago
Odd. Every other political cartoonist is focusing on the Constitution and how Trump is trampling over congressional rights with Republican collusion. All I hear here are crickets.
StackableContainers about 5 years ago
American cities should unite and tell Amazon they don’t want the HQ2. Amazon has been acting like an extortionist ever since the search was announced. It seems like whatever benefits a city would get, they will get screwed worse by Amazon.