"No Arizona cities named as a finalist for Amazon's second headquarters"
Thank God. One less occasion for my business to be taxed more in order to hand money to another business, merely because their business's name is better known and makes for a good press release for politicians. The final 5 or whatever they get it down to is going to be a just stunning exhibition of politicians throwing average people's money in huge amounts at a wealthy corporation.
irandom419:
Agreed, now they can concentrate on shaking down the small business since they don't have any clout.
January 23, 2018, 12:56 amrst1317:
Feels good, eh?
Nashville being in the running is curious in that they've just committed stupid money to building a stadium for a soccer team along with some other $10 billion to build a tunnel and some train tracks in the center of the city. The later proposal would jack sales taxes about high as anyone thinks they can be practical. I'm not sure where they think they'll get the money for those AND for kissing Bezos' toosh.
January 23, 2018, 1:13 pmrst1317:
Speaking of redistribution, I was a bit surprised that the Iron Range of Minnesota didn't get in on this game. They have a ready made tool, the IRRRB that rakes in money from a taconite tax ( aka mining + some processing ). The unelected IRRRB then runs around distributing that money to build an sometimes prop up all sorts of schemes. They've done golf courses, ski resorts, call centers, solar manufacturing et al. You have a scheme that the private market won't fund, talk to the IRRRB and they'll find a way to fund it if you can promise jobs. It's not all that dissimilar from how Beijing does business these days.
Their most infamous turd was back wen the MN Leg & guv bailed out the failed Northwest Airlines ( NWA ). In exchange, NWA promised all sorts of jobs including a new maintenance base at Duluth for it's airbuses. The jobs never fully materialized and future management realized it was foolish to run a maintenance base at a remote location that's frozen for half the year. They never had to pay any penalties for never fulfilling the so-called job promises they made.
I figured for sure schemers in the DFL and the other side of the aisle would get the IRRB into some Minnesota scheme to leverage those taconite dollars to get Amazon into the state. Maybe Amazon would promise some call centers and some token tiny "technology office" thingy bobber in exchange. Maybe the leadership as a whole is too smart for that crap. Or maybe they've just thrown too much at one too many failed solar companies on the range to have much to fund it these days.
January 23, 2018, 1:21 pmmarco73:
Speaking of finalists, Maryland has started the bidding at $5 billion.
January 23, 2018, 4:44 pmEven Doctor Evil couldn't imagine that much money.
Jaedo Drax:
Start taxing the subsidies, make it hurt, and it will put an end to them.
January 23, 2018, 6:45 pmMSO:
Minnesota just subsidized a $1 billion plus stadium for the Minnesota Vikings. Nobody buys Amazon t-shirts, so Amazon didn't stand a chance in MN.
January 23, 2018, 10:55 pmAudreyA:
I still don't understand why ANYONE wants Amazon in their city. Doesn't Amazon promise something like 40,000 MINIMUM WAGE jobs? Now, courting Microsoft or a car manufacturer, that makes some sense. But adding more minimum wage households??
January 30, 2018, 9:24 am