Boy, that’s really gonna twist the PPresidential briefs…
The infamous Bezos wedgie…
So Trump helps Bezos with his yuuge tax break. He helped make Bezos a winner.
This will not go over well.
Craig Bernstein, founder of the investment fund OPZ Capital, said the capital gains break is good public policy because it helps push investors to put up the money for new housing, which may be in high demand once Amazon fills an expected 25,000 new jobs in the neighborhood.
“This will help expedite the process of building up the surrounding area,” Bernstein said.
Dear God! What western Queens doesn’t need is more housing. What it desperately needs (along with Brooklyn) is more affordable housing. Trust me when I say that this area is obscenely gentrified and overdeveloped NOW. I wonder how much Cuomo/DeBlasio got in terms of kickbacks for this.
ETA: Actually, I take this back - it’s not them really. The whole concept of the “Opportunity Zone” is really more a creation of the City Council.
Nah. $50 says some Trump owned LLC(s) will be making investments and developing outlying properties near the Amazon hdqtrs, profiting off of all this just like the people referenced in this article intend to.
When I was in graduate school I wrote a paper on what were called then opportunity zones. Back then it was popular with your Jack Kemp, Minnesota Senator Rudy Boscwitz Conservative opportunity society types as well as a few liberals like Charlie Rangel.
The concept was similar, cutting taxes and regulations in depressed areas in order to entice investments.The problem is many of those investments would have already taken place or would have been pulled from other places.
Long Island City by most measures is not a depressed area and Amazon can locate there because of talent and proximity to markets.
I’m still amazed how many people are so ignorant of economics. All the chatter about how good this might be for a specific area, but totally missing that this is a Zero Sum outcome.
You are at the most minimum exchanging one existing job for a “new” one. And more importantly you are penalizing a competitor by subsidizing Amazon. This shit angers me to no end. Especially given the very predacious and sociopathic manner in which Bezos operates.
People, here is a large reason our Middle Class economic viability is being continually degraded.
we see this in La. all the time. programs like these aren’t tax incentives. they’re tax shifts. giant tax breaks don’t make the costs of development disappear. so instead of businesses funding these costs through a comparably small portion of revenues, it’s now shouldered by local residents.