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AOC takes victory lap after Amazon goes to NYC — even after she helped block $3 billion in subsidies

It is also a large part to whom receives these "tax credits"....If you donate to Republicans, you are eligible for tax credits....Kum N'Go moved their hdqtrs. from WDM to DSM a few years ago...and they received a $4M tax credit....Now where in hell is Kum N'Go going to move if not Iowa? They really needed the $4M to stay in Iowa...and move 3 miles? And that is but a sample of how the Ioway Legislature has decided to spend its tax money......you want me to start on crony capitalism at its Ioway best...we can start talking about MedicAid "privatization".....That to date has been nothing short of thievery of tax money by the private sector.

Please stop, you are looking silly.
 
So 25,000 down to 1,500. Are we to believe Amazon is so pissed at the state they will sabotage themselves by spitefully only hiring a small amount of people and end up paying those 1,500 workers overtime for years on end? Or...those jobs were never coming in the first place


Hahahahahaaaaa, take a deep breath and think a bit.
 
And your "no analysis" doesn't take into account the potential income tax revenue the state/city would have received via the income of 25,000 tax payers. Some of that added revenue may have been cannibalized from other sources, some of it may have been brand new, we really don't know. It may have also provided more stable and predictable tax revenue for the state/city as well, hard to say as none of us have a crystal ball in regards to what the economic future might hold in the near, mid, long term. It likely would have created added sales tax in and around the area as well.

You are also, wrongly, taking into account potential corp tax revenues that may never happen without the amazon project.

Lastly, NYC is the financial and commerce center of the earth so that in of itself puts them in a better negotiating position than say Des Moines, IA or Columbus, OH so while NY may have come out a winner in this case I wouldn't necessarily suggest these same hard ball tactics for smaller/regional cities where more jobs should almost universally be considered a good thing.

It took 57 posts for someone to bring up the taxes that would be brought in from this jobs. I read a story about this and they said the jobs that Amazon was bringing in would avg $150k. Think about that tax revenue from the 25k workers.
 
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It took 57 posts for someone to bring up the taxes that would be brought in from this jobs.

Nope. That's outlined in the links I'd provided on Page 1.

The taxes the local municipalities bring in are VERY SMALL compared with federal taxes. And it's not federal money being spent on the deals. It is local money or state money. Those taxes are a pittance compared with the incentives.

READ up on this, before you post stupid narratives that don't make any sense.
 
Nope. That's outlined in the links I'd provided on Page 1.

The taxes the local municipalities bring in are VERY SMALL compared with federal taxes. And it's not federal money being spent on the deals. It is local money or state money. Those taxes are a pittance compared with the incentives.

READ up on this, before you post stupid narratives that don't make any sense.

You are using one example compared to thousands upon thousand of examples out there. You would think that if these tax incentives didn’t work that all these states, cities, and towns would stop using them since according to the almighty Joe it doesn’t work. Imagine if the Des Moines metro didn’t use tax incentives for the major businesses or Cedar falls for the industrial park? Hell even in Waterloo without tax abatements right now for residential properties or on highway 63 (a lot of growth going on for local business) there would be no growth.
 
You are using one example compared to thousands upon thousand of examples out there.

No. The links I've posted have examined "thousands of examples out there". They've analyzed the data. They've looked at the typical outcomes.
 
Imagine if the Des Moines metro didn’t use tax incentives for the major businesses or Cedar falls for the industrial park?

Industrial parks are DIFFERENT from deals tailored to individual companies.
You're all over the place now.

Properly constructed/managed, enterprise zones and industrial parks often have very good ROI for municipalities. This topic is something entirely different. Try to keep up.
 
Industrial parks are DIFFERENT from deals tailored to individual companies.
You're all over the place now.

Properly constructed/managed, enterprise zones and industrial parks often have very good ROI for municipalities. This topic is something entirely different. Try to keep up.
Here is an example of tax incentives tailored to an individual company in West Des Moines. I wonder how that worked out for the metro? (Article is from 2003)

https://siteselection.com/ssinsider/incentive/ti0311.htm

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – Spurred on by US$56.5 million in state and local incentives, Wells Fargo (www.wellsfargo.com) is riding into West Des Moines, Iowa, with as many as 5,300 jobs in a $118-million, 900,000-sq.-ft. (81,000-sq.-m.) expansion.
The project is the largest job-generator in Iowa's economic development history, according to state officials. Of the 5,300 jobs that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Consumer Credit Group could position in its new two-building complex, 2,000 will be new positions, company officials said. The San Francisco-based unit of Wells Fargo & Co. will transfer as many as 3,300 other existing jobs to the new office facilities.
Most of those transfers, Wells Fargo Mortgage President and CEO Pete Wissinger explained, will come from the 10 facilities the company currently leases in Greater Des Moines. As that large leased swath suggests, Iowa's capital city holds a huge Wells Fargo presence. The nation's fifth-largest banking company has 8,000 of its 9,400 Iowa-based employees in the Des Moines area.
ti0311c.jpg

"Forty-nine other governors - make that 50 with Arnold Schwarzenegger's election - would like to be standing here," Gov. Tom Vilsack (pictured) said at the project announcement.

Even so, central Iowa didn't automatically have the project snugly buttoned in its back pocket. Wells Fargo Mortgage earlier this year made it known that it was considering other states as well, including Arizona, California, Illinois, Minnesota and South Carolina. And incentives were one part of what it was considering, the company said.
The state's large $54.9-million incentive package will yield large economic benefits, Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) repeatedly emphasized in unveiling the project.
"It's important and necessary for folks to understand that these new jobs are critical for us," Vilsack said at the expansion announcement at Wells Fargo Mortgage's 176-acre (70-hectare) site. "Forty-nine other governors - make that 50 with Arnold Schwarzenegger's election - would like to be standing here."



Governor: 10-Year Project Payoff Is $672 Million
The governor cited a state analysis that projected a $627-million, 10-year local-area economic impact. That impact will flow from payroll for Wells Fargo Mortgage's new jobs, capital investment for new facility construction and property taxes, he noted.
The end result for Iowa, explained Vilsack, is a payoff 27 times greater than Iowa's investment. "If we could all make that kind of return, we'd all retire," Wissinger said.
And the state's projected economic impact, Vilsack pointed out, doesn't include the spin-off jobs "that take place, when good jobs are created and people feel confident and comfortable investing their resources in a community, in a home and in an area." Wells Fargo Mortgage's new jobs, he explained, will be solid and sought after, with $33,500 average annual salaries.
ti0311b.jpg

The 5,300-employee Wells Fargo Home Mortgage complex will sit just south of the $200-million Jordan Creek Town Center (pictured in rendering) that's now being built. Mall owner Knapp Properties also sold Wells Fargo Home Mortgage the site for its expansion.

Wissinger characterized the project as "definitely good for Wells Fargo, but also good for Iowa. Our decision will ultimately benefit the business community and residents of Greater Des Moines and prove to be a sound investment in infrastructure by the state of Iowa and the city of West Des Moines."
And the Wells Fargo executive did touch on the expansion's multiplier potential.
"The area will benefit not only from the direct economic impact of our project," Wissinger said, "but by the fact that the resulting infrastructure will serve as a catalyst for the development of the surrounding properties and provide greatly improved access to the Jordan Creek Town Center [a $200-million mall that's being built just north of Wells Fargo Mortgage's site]."
The incentives intended to trigger those impacts include:
• $28 million from the state and city to Wells Fargo Mortgage in periodic cash grants that are dependent on meeting job-creation goals (with some $8 million of that amount used for worker training);
• $25.9 million from Iowa and West Des Moines for road, water and sewer improvements, with $16 million of that amount coming from the West Des Moines City Council and $9.9 million coming from the Iowa Department of Transportation.


Other States Offered Bigger Subsidies
But the location choice didn't solely revolve around incentives, Wissinger emphasized. Competing states offered more hefty subsidies, he explained. (The Wells Fargo Mortgage president and CEO didn't quantify other states' bids.)
"There are a lot of intangibles" in all location decisions, Wissinger said.
Some of West Des Moines' tangibles that the company particularly liked were business costs and labor, he explained. "Iowa offers us a high quality work force and is a great place for our team members to live," Wissinger noted.
Wells Fargo Mortgage also liked the West Des Moines site which it bought from Jordan Creek Center owner Knapp Properties. But that tract was undeveloped and had limited road access. Those conditions account for almost half of the project's incentives going to ready the site, company officials explained.
The West Des Moines expansion is being driven by the home mortgage market's rapid expansion, Wells Fargo officials said.
Wells Fargo Mortgage officials didn't outline a timetable for building the two-building complex. But the company's agreement with West Des Moines requires that construction begin no later than July 2004.


Another 1,000-Job Expansion
Also in the Works for Wells Fargo
Yet another major Wells Fargo expansion could be in the offing for Des Moines. This time, Des Moines-based Wells Fargo Financial is the corporate arm in question. Wells Fargo's consumer financial division has been in discussions with the Greater Des Moines Partnership (www.desmoinesmetro.com) to add 1,000 jobs in downtown Des Moines.

Wells Fargo Financial may have dropped one big shoe in the decision earlier this month, when it bought the vacant property across the street from the $90-millon headquarters it moved into last year. The new facility for the expansion would also house 1,000 transferred local jobs.
Wells Fargo's rush of expansion activity reflects financial services' vitality in Iowa. The sector is the state's third-fastest growing industry, creating 24,500 new jobs between 1990 and 2002, according to analysts with Iowa Workforce Development.
 
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Nope. That's outlined in the links I'd provided on Page 1.

The taxes the local municipalities bring in are VERY SMALL compared with federal taxes. And it's not federal money being spent on the deals. It is local money or state money. Those taxes are a pittance compared with the incentives.

READ up on this, before you post stupid narratives that don't make any sense.

The added income creates added commerce and it builds upon itself or does a rising tide no longer lift all boats?
 
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Here is an example of tax incentives tailored to an individual company in West Des Moines. I wonder how that worked out for the metro? (Article is from 2003)

https://siteselection.com/ssinsider/incentive/ti0311.htm

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa – Spurred on by US$56.5 million in state and local incentives, Wells Fargo (www.wellsfargo.com) is riding into West Des Moines, Iowa, with as many as 5,300 jobs in a $118-million, 900,000-sq.-ft. (81,000-sq.-m.) expansion.
The project is the largest job-generator in Iowa's economic development history, according to state officials. Of the 5,300 jobs that Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Consumer Credit Group could position in its new two-building complex, 2,000 will be new positions, company officials said. The San Francisco-based unit of Wells Fargo & Co. will transfer as many as 3,300 other existing jobs to the new office facilities.
Most of those transfers, Wells Fargo Mortgage President and CEO Pete Wissinger explained, will come from the 10 facilities the company currently leases in Greater Des Moines. As that large leased swath suggests, Iowa's capital city holds a huge Wells Fargo presence. The nation's fifth-largest banking company has 8,000 of its 9,400 Iowa-based employees in the Des Moines area.
ti0311c.jpg

"Forty-nine other governors - make that 50 with Arnold Schwarzenegger's election - would like to be standing here," Gov. Tom Vilsack (pictured) said at the project announcement.

Even so, central Iowa didn't automatically have the project snugly buttoned in its back pocket. Wells Fargo Mortgage earlier this year made it known that it was considering other states as well, including Arizona, California, Illinois, Minnesota and South Carolina. And incentives were one part of what it was considering, the company said.
The state's large $54.9-million incentive package will yield large economic benefits, Gov. Tom Vilsack (D) repeatedly emphasized in unveiling the project.
"It's important and necessary for folks to understand that these new jobs are critical for us," Vilsack said at the expansion announcement at Wells Fargo Mortgage's 176-acre (70-hectare) site. "Forty-nine other governors - make that 50 with Arnold Schwarzenegger's election - would like to be standing here."



Governor: 10-Year Project Payoff Is $672 Million
The governor cited a state analysis that projected a $627-million, 10-year local-area economic impact. That impact will flow from payroll for Wells Fargo Mortgage's new jobs, capital investment for new facility construction and property taxes, he noted.
The end result for Iowa, explained Vilsack, is a payoff 27 times greater than Iowa's investment. "If we could all make that kind of return, we'd all retire," Wissinger said.
And the state's projected economic impact, Vilsack pointed out, doesn't include the spin-off jobs "that take place, when good jobs are created and people feel confident and comfortable investing their resources in a community, in a home and in an area." Wells Fargo Mortgage's new jobs, he explained, will be solid and sought after, with $33,500 average annual salaries.
ti0311b.jpg

The 5,300-employee Wells Fargo Home Mortgage complex will sit just south of the $200-million Jordan Creek Town Center (pictured in rendering) that's now being built. Mall owner Knapp Properties also sold Wells Fargo Home Mortgage the site for its expansion.

Wissinger characterized the project as "definitely good for Wells Fargo, but also good for Iowa. Our decision will ultimately benefit the business community and residents of Greater Des Moines and prove to be a sound investment in infrastructure by the state of Iowa and the city of West Des Moines."
And the Wells Fargo executive did touch on the expansion's multiplier potential.
"The area will benefit not only from the direct economic impact of our project," Wissinger said, "but by the fact that the resulting infrastructure will serve as a catalyst for the development of the surrounding properties and provide greatly improved access to the Jordan Creek Town Center [a $200-million mall that's being built just north of Wells Fargo Mortgage's site]."
The incentives intended to trigger those impacts include:
• $28 million from the state and city to Wells Fargo Mortgage in periodic cash grants that are dependent on meeting job-creation goals (with some $8 million of that amount used for worker training);
• $25.9 million from Iowa and West Des Moines for road, water and sewer improvements, with $16 million of that amount coming from the West Des Moines City Council and $9.9 million coming from the Iowa Department of Transportation.


Other States Offered Bigger Subsidies
But the location choice didn't solely revolve around incentives, Wissinger emphasized. Competing states offered more hefty subsidies, he explained. (The Wells Fargo Mortgage president and CEO didn't quantify other states' bids.)
"There are a lot of intangibles" in all location decisions, Wissinger said.
Some of West Des Moines' tangibles that the company particularly liked were business costs and labor, he explained. "Iowa offers us a high quality work force and is a great place for our team members to live," Wissinger noted.
Wells Fargo Mortgage also liked the West Des Moines site which it bought from Jordan Creek Center owner Knapp Properties. But that tract was undeveloped and had limited road access. Those conditions account for almost half of the project's incentives going to ready the site, company officials explained.
The West Des Moines expansion is being driven by the home mortgage market's rapid expansion, Wells Fargo officials said.
Wells Fargo Mortgage officials didn't outline a timetable for building the two-building complex. But the company's agreement with West Des Moines requires that construction begin no later than July 2004.


Another 1,000-Job Expansion
Also in the Works for Wells Fargo
Yet another major Wells Fargo expansion could be in the offing for Des Moines. This time, Des Moines-based Wells Fargo Financial is the corporate arm in question. Wells Fargo's consumer financial division has been in discussions with the Greater Des Moines Partnership (www.desmoinesmetro.com) to add 1,000 jobs in downtown Des Moines.
Wells Fargo Financial may have dropped one big shoe in the decision earlier this month, when it bought the vacant property across the street from the $90-millon headquarters it moved into last year. The new facility for the expansion would also house 1,000 transferred local jobs.
Wells Fargo's rush of expansion activity reflects financial services' vitality in Iowa. The sector is the state's third-fastest growing industry, creating 24,500 new jobs between 1990 and 2002, according to analysts with Iowa Workforce Development.

So, where's the followup ROI analysis?

I've stated, outright, in this thread, that done properly, incentives can work. The problem is they often are NOT done in a manner beneficial to the locals, and end up costing more.
 
Industrial parks are DIFFERENT from deals tailored to individual companies.
You're all over the place now.

Properly constructed/managed, enterprise zones and industrial parks often have very good ROI for municipalities. This topic is something entirely different. Try to keep up.

LOL...THATS DIFFERENT bc it doesn't help my side of the debate.

JEEZUS man.
 
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The added income creates added commerce and it builds upon itself or does a rising tide no longer lift all boats?

Not when you're spending $100k per job you're buying.
Read Forbes. Read Cato Institute reports. Learn.
 
So, where's the followup ROI analysis?

I've stated, outright, in this thread, that done properly, incentives can work. The problem is they often are NOT done in a manner beneficial to the locals, and end up costing more.

So now it comes down to the competency of those elected in office?
 
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So, where's the followup ROI analysis?

I've stated, outright, in this thread, that done properly, incentives can work. The problem is they often are NOT done in a manner beneficial to the locals, and end up costing more.

Drive through West Des Moines in that areas, it is freaking BOOMING with commerce and new homes/living areas all over the place.
 
LOL...THATS DIFFERENT bc it doesn't help my side of the debate.

It's different, because it's not giving a SINGLE company a handout. It's applying an incentive EQUALLY for development to ANY company.

Get it? Free Market principles. Go read Cato Institute work on this. Or, are they too liberal for you?
 
So now it comes down to the competency of those elected in office?

Where's the followup analysis? Comparison of the ROI vs not spending it?

Remember, AOC is claiming (right or wrong) they called Amazon's bluff and still are getting 1k-2k jobs "for free", vs. spending $130k per job over several decades.
 
So now it comes down to the competency of those elected in office?

Which is what I stated on page one or two. Wisco deal was brought up and I stated, "sounds like poor govt negotiating", which it was. Put the proper bumpers around these incentives and things tend to work out well for all parties and THAT is what govt should be striving towards. Instead we got a few mouth breathers that went on a anti-republican rant which has nothing to do with nothing in regards to the effectiveness of these sort of programs/proposals.
 
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Drive through West Des Moines in that areas, it is freaking BOOMING with commerce and new homes/living areas all over the place.

That's not a ROI analysis. And w/o doing that analysis, you have no idea where things would be w/o the specific incentives. It's called "government accountability", and you should be asking for it.
 
It's different, because it's not giving a SINGLE company a handout. It's applying an incentive EQUALLY for development to ANY company.

Get it? Free Market principles. Go read Cato Institute work on this. Or, are they too liberal for you?

An incentive is an incentive, a job is a job, it doesn't matter where it comes from or who it goes to as long as it results in a positive outcome for the public.

The fact that some companies get this sort of offer is because of the scale they would be bringing to the community.
 
Which is what I stated on page one or two. Wisco deal was brought up and I stated, "sounds like poor govt negotiating", which it was.

That's been my point in this thread from the beginning, if you bothered to read those posts.
 
An incentive is an incentive, a job is a job, it doesn't matter where it comes from or who it goes to as long as it results in a positive outcome for the public.

Again, go look at the Forbes article, and the typical cost per job.
If your government officials do their homework, they can get good deals. Unfortunately for most, that is not the "norm".
 
That's been my point in this thread from the beginning, if you bothered to read those posts.

I think the point of this thread was to "not give big evil bad corps anything" and look "AOC got 1,500 jobs with no tax incentives when NY would have otherwise got 25,000". Then for some reason people spiked the football on that as if it was a win without any sort of further analysis.
 
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Again, go look at the Forbes article, and the typical cost per job.
If your government officials do their homework, they can get good deals. Unfortunately for most, that is not the "norm".

Because govt is often incompetent and frankly our best and brightest don't go that route unless they also happen to be power hungry.
 
I think the point of this thread was to "not give big evil bad corps anything" and look "AOC got 1,500 jobs with no tax incentives when NY would have otherwise got 25,000"

No, the expected COST for the 25,000 jobs number (which is a fuzzy number to start with) was going to be VERY VERY high - and THAT was the point here. Which is illustrated in the links I've provided.

If you're getting jobs/incentives and keeping that cost-per-job number LOW, then you have a local government doing a GOOD job.
 
No, the expected COST for the 25,000 jobs number (which is a fuzzy number to start with) was going to be VERY VERY high - and THAT was the point here. Which is illustrated in the links I've provided.

If you're getting jobs/incentives and keeping that cost-per-job number LOW, then you have a local government doing a GOOD job.

So if that is the case nobody knows so nobody should be pounding their chest on this one.
 
So if that is the case nobody knows so nobody should be pounding their chest on this one.

If you read my posts, I pointed this out at least a page ago (regarding AOC). And her "taking credit" for something that she probably had nothing to do with was the "trigger point" for the entire thread.
 
So if that is the case nobody knows so nobody should be pounding their chest on this one.

However.....the "cost per job" per this "Amazon Deal" being so high - I DID point out that you could credit AOC with being against it, and not taking the bait. Was she that savvy? I have no idea.

But in the end, they're getting 1k-2k jobs, for $0 in "incentives", which is an "infinite" ROI.

Basically, this is illustrating the point you're trying to make - local governments run by idiots outkick their coverage in providing sweetheart tax breaks that cost them far too much in the long run. Purportedly, AOC was not ok with that deal, in this case (again, whether that's true or not, that's what she's claiming). If she's right, then she indeed DID do a good job of not taking the corporate bait, like Wisconsin did.

That would make her a better legislator than anyone associated with the FoxConn mess.
 
http://www.wdm.iowa.gov/home/showdocument?id=6717

According to this 2009 report WDM jobs were up 72% since 2000 and Wells Fargo employees numbered 4511. Everything is going up and the trend is still continuing to trend up

Sure, but you still have no indication any of that wouldn't have occurred anyway w/o the spending/incentives. And for all you know, it might have been higher - because other industries might have taking up the slack, further diversifying your economy.

If they were purporting a ROI in 2003, where was the followup specific to that spend? Any "company" would analyze the shit out of a large, long-term investment to justify it, and to learn from the positive or negative outcome from it. From what I'm seeing, they just want to whitewash you with random data and ignore that spending, which implies it may not have been as big a "boon" as you're touting here. Per your PDF, 20% of the economy was financial/insurance/etc. Wells Fargo is even a subset of that. So, the boost may have barely even added 1% onto anything.

Maybe it was a good deal. Maybe it was a push. Maybe it actually slowed things in that sector, but it was 'made up' by all the economic activity pushed by Obama policies. W/o any formal analysis, you cannot exclude any of those.
 
Sure, but you still have no indication any of that wouldn't have occurred anyway w/o the spending/incentives. And for all you know, it might have been higher - because other industries might have taking up the slack, further diversifying your economy.

If they were purporting a ROI in 2003, where was the followup specific to that spend? Any "company" would analyze the shit out of a large, long-term investment to justify it, and to learn from the positive or negative outcome from it. From what I'm seeing, they just want to whitewash you with random data and ignore that spending, which implies it may not have been as big a "boon" as you're touting here. Per your PDF, 20% of the economy was financial/insurance/etc. Wells Fargo is even a subset of that. So, the boost may have barely even added 1% onto anything.

Maybe it was a good deal. Maybe it was a push. Maybe it actually slowed things in that sector, but it was 'made up' by all the economic activity pushed by Obama policies. W/o any formal analysis, you cannot exclude any of those.

Waste of time joe, waste of time. The problem is that the deal was so long ago that the people in charge of brokering it are long gone which means the current ones are not interested in touting it because it won't give them any benefits and it could even be detrimental to themselves.

The best bet to find that info is to have a reporter do an article about it, Des Moines Register is about the only entity capable of doing that type of investigative reporting but they are too busy trying to play Gotcha with the University of Iowa to actually care about local government business practices. KCRG and the other local tv news are actually owned by Sinclair and all the actual local news are fluff pieces that require very little thought or money to do.
 
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Waste of time joe, waste of time. The problem is that the deal was so long ago that the people in charge of brokering it are long gone which means the current ones are not interested in touting it because it won't give them any benefits and it could even be detrimental to themselves.

That's EXACTLY how most of this works.

IMO, per this thread, AOC probably deserves credit for not taking the bait on a potentially bad deal (like Wisconsin did). But it's unlikely she deserves credit for the 1-2k jobs moving in; maybe, but probably not.
 
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