Nope. The Excelsior Jobs Program would have eliminated Amazon's state tax, part of the incentives of the deal, $48k per job.

I have to go hard right Brainy on this one, I don't like tax payer money being given to a company, any company, much less one with a Market Cap approaching $800 Billion.

 

I thought hard right was national socialist. Very different from libertarian. Libertarians believe you can marry who you want, do whatever drugs you want, shouldn't be compelled to pay for government schools, and that government shouldn't subsidize businesses. I think there's common ground for us on quite a few things.

 

I'm not disagreeing with you, concerning things like tax subsidies.

I don't like them regardless of whether they are given to corporations, or to individuals in the form of income-tax deductions and credits for things like having children, paying mortgage interest, or being poor.


But I'm looking at this from the point of view of all of the people in NYC who opposed Amazon's coming to the city. Regardless of whether the corporation itself would have been given a tax break valued at around $3b, the situation still would have been a net-positive for the city, in that the additional income / sales / property / etc., taxes generated by 25,000 new workers would have more than covered it. Not to mention the increase in revenue which all of the local businesses that serve those 25,000 new workers would see. Grocery stores, bodegas, coffee shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, etc.

These people were, for all intents and purposes, saying "No, we don't want more money from you, because we're prejudiced against large corporations."

 

I'm sure we could endlessly debate on what exactly is hard right, hard left, just-a-touch-left-of-middle-right, etc.

I guess I consider myself a left-leaning Libertarian? I agree with all points you just made. If you aren't impeding mine, or anyone else's, right to life, liberty, and property...............I literally couldn't care less what you do. Smoke opium, bang hookers, pray to dung beetles, whatever, not my concern.

I use the school thing as an example of people that hate socialism, except for the stuff that they derive benefits from.

 

I agree. I think most of it boils down to 2 issues.

1. NYC is a union town, Amazon refuses to let workers unionize.
2. NYC is short on tech workers as it is. So most of the jobs would be filled by people moving to NYC.

 

Interacting with different political philosophies has led me to believe the left vs right divide is best described as hierarchical. Leftist attempt to flatten hierarchies while right wingers support hierarchies. The best way to differentiate a Socialist and a Liberal is to find out how they react when you start suggesting dismantling hierarchies they exist within.

 

1: There are lots of tech firms in NYC. Yahoo!, for instance, has a large office in midtown Manhattan. I interviewed there several years ago. I am intimately aware of the union situation- I used to manage a group of TV engineers under IBEW 1212, though I will note that employees who were part of the IT department were NOT union. I am pretty sure that there is no union which represents accountants, lawyers, software developers, administrative assistants, MCSA-types, and so on. Those are the types of jobs this would have involved.

2: Why does it matter where the workers come from? My point is that they'd be earning income in NYC (and thus paying income taxes to NYC), living in and around NYC (and thus paying sales / use / property / etc taxes to NYC), and spending money at businesses in NYC. That is what makes the deal a net-positive, even if the city did agree to give the company one-time tax break on corporate earnings.


I'm finding it a little hard to believe that here I am in a forum in which people are normally chanting "Taxation is Theft," who are NOW complaining that a city and state which they usually complain about taxing too much, decided it was NOT going to tax someone.

What's next, democrats resisting a republican president who wants to end foreign military occupations?





Unrelated: not sure if AOC has started writing fortune cookies, or if she got her economic philosophy from them:

 

If you want hard-right: If I were a business in NY or VA, I'd sue the state because their corporate tax policy violates the state's own tax laws, and violates equal-protection laws.

 

They aren't giving money to anyone. They are simply taking less of it from Amazon for a specified amount of time if they deliver a specified amount of jobs.

 

That's actually not entirely true. There are some tax breaks, but also:


The agreement comes with a number of incentives: Specifically, Amazon will receive $897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP). It will receive an additional $505 million in a capital grant and $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits if its job creation goals are met. That brings the total amount of public funds granted to $2.988 billion—in other words, the city and state will pay Amazon $48,000 per job.



Source: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/11/16/180...city-explained



An Excelsior credit is a tax credit. Details on that program: https://esd.ny.gov/excelsior-jobs-program


So that $3b figure is about half tax breaks, and half actual taxpayer money being given to Amazon.

 

it's 100% cronyism and corporate welfare.

also: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the...603826?tesla=y

 

No idea. I assume it's because New Yorkers think they are special because of the zip code in which they were born.

As for the tax thing, it's very simple. If I'm getting bent over for taxes, you should be as well.

That's actually kind of interesting. Although I suspect if what you say is true, there would be attorney's lined up around the block for a class-action suit.

You're spare parts aren't ya bud?

Correct. And it's 1200% bullshit.

 

Please expound upon this.

Historically, Marxism's implementation has erased the middle class and created just the proletariat and ruling class. There was no ability to transition between the classes except by coup d'etats. Many of its champions in academia see themselves as elitist and believe they would be privileged by the shift. Sadly they don't consider the possibility or implications of they themselves being deemed the underclass.

A libertarian view (and an American constitutional view) promotes the equivalency of opportunity under the law and gives no elected person privileges above an unelected person. Some will be born smarter, or more driven, or better looking, or to wealthier parents, so they may have better outcomes but will still be treated similarly under the law. They can be born to humble beginnings and ascend to great wealth or be born to wealth and descend into poverty and all is well.

A ruling class and a proletariat with differing rules and privileges is a big problem with me. It goes against the constitution.

 

So, jealousy then.

The way I see it, if someone else is getting free housing vouchers, free food, and free train & bus passes, then I should be getting those things as well.

 

People in academia will often spout pro-marxist beliefs up until the point an event forces them to realize that, in their own worldview, they represent the bourgeois and not the proletariat. There is a strong anarchist bent to most socialistic lines of thinking, and this puts the academics in a position where they have something to lose. There are also the students that calls themselves socialist, but believes the Nordic countries to be examples of socialism. The Nordic countries are very much capitalist with re-distributive systems. Socialism doesn't provide enough resources to be redistributed. These types of "Socialist" if you suggested give up their consumer goods, work the land, and march in solidarity with the working class will be no where to be found when the rubber meets the road.

The liberal sees the world as unfair and works to change the system to their vision of fair, but still supports capitalism as an economic system just with redistribution. The socialist sees the world as unfair and wants to change the system completely. They view capitalism as the root cause issue. Liberals support hierarchies to some degree, but the pyramid may be a little shorter and a little fatter than the hierarchy of the conservative and libertarian. The liberal opposes what they see as 'unjust' hierarchies. This is different to the socialist, especially those with anarchistic bents, that oppose any and all hierarchies. A good example is the family. Liberals (at least all the one's that I know) uphold the idea of family as being meaningful, and the family is a hierarchy where the parents are above the children. Socialist view the entire concept of family as hierarchy and something to be dismantled.

This is to say nothing about how socialism has historically been implemented. It is almost if as humans organize themselves into hierarchies naturally and that attempts to flatten the hierarchy change whom sits at the top and the bottom.

 

meanwhile:





but please, tell us more about #russia

 

FTFY

 

I take great offense to your usage of the word jealousy, all I want is "equality."

*Just in case anyone doesn't pick up the dripping sarcasm.

 

but your idea of equality is everyone being equal in misery, joe's on the other-hand is that everyone is simply treated equally.

 

There's a big difference between equality of opportunity under the law and egality (egalite en Francais) which strives for equality of economic outcome by enforcing it as policy.

I want everyone to be treated equally under the law and given the same opportunities sink or swim as they see fit. The fable of the ant and the grasshopper comes to my mind. There's about 20% of the population that will do absolutely nothing if you let them. If it were quite a bit more uncomfortable to do nothing then I think fewer people would choose that route. They shouldn't be on the back the guy who's busting his *** or risking what he's saved to try to get ahead.