AOC, Sanders Say I Told You So, As Amazon Comes to NYC With No Taxpayer Funded Giveaways

December 9th 2019

Bernie Sanders at a rally in New Orleans, Louisiana (Nick Solari)

By hankg (of the Daily Kos community)

Amazon signed a lease for 335,000 square feet in the Hudson Yards neighborhood in NYC, enough space for more than 1,500 workers. So Amazon is coming to NYC without $3 billion of incentives paid for by NYC and NY state taxpayers, no publicly financed helipad for Jeff Bezos, no Queens residents or small businesses being pushed out, no neighborhoods destroyed (Hudson Yards is an already existing development on the Manhattan waterfront).

Facebook Inc. also leased more than 1.5 million square feet and is looking for 700,000 more square feet. Google is also in the midst of a major expansion in the city, adding thousands of employees in coming years.

Amazing what Progressives can accomplish when they stand up to corporate extortion.

Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions https://t.co/AC64pG0nZI pic.twitter.com/xzCepkX4AV
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 6, 2019

Amazon was valued at $1 trillion but pays $0 in federal taxes. So imagine my surprise to find out it didn’t need taxpayers to fork over billions in corporate welfare to create jobs in New York. @AOC and many others fighting for working people were right. https://t.co/uUF0bA3Yaj
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) December 7, 2019

There was pushback that the number of jobs added by Amazon was not as much as the number promised in the Queens deal. AOC responded:

You should know better. That 25k number was an unsubstantiated #, not a year 1 hiring figure. Nor was it a promise backed w/ consequences if it wasn’t met.

1,500 jobs off the bat is huge, & a much better deal than paying billions for a fairy tale that would’ve displaced many.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 7, 2019

Posted with permission