The following is cross posted here, from the Our Revolution Arlington Facebook page, at their request. My view is basically that I’m not a fan of corporate welfare in general, and am generally skeptical that the benefits outweigh the costs when cities, counties and states play this game…
Our Revolution Arlington Opposes Amazon HQ2 Bid
Our Revolution Arlington opposes the Arlington County Board’s efforts to bring Amazon’s HQ2 to Arlington.
As you may have heard, Arlington County has submitted a bid for Amazon’s HQ2.The Board has been highly secretive about the incentives they’re offering Amazon to bring HQ2 here. This is absolutely unacceptable given Amazon’s track record and the potential consequences for the community.
If the one of the sites in Arlington is selected, it is unlikely that there will be much time for the citizenry to review the details of that deal before the board takes a vote.
Amazon’s record is atrocious, giving us countless reasons to oppose the county board’s bid for HQ2, such as:
- Amazon is a multibillion dollar corporation with a near monopoly position in the retail market. Moreover, its CEO Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world with a net worth of $129 Billion (and with all this money the only thing he can think to spend it on is space travel).
- Amazon paid ZERO in federal taxes in 2017, will receive a $789 MILLION tax break due to the new tax law, and since 2000 has received over $1 BILLION dollars in corporate welfare as tax subsidies. They do not need nor should they receive tax payer subsidies, especially at the expense of schools and public services.
- Amazon has an atrocious labor record in its warehouses, with their last-mile drivers, and even among its HQ1 office employees. By actively soliciting their HQ2, the Arlington County Board is implicitly endorsing those socially harmful and morally reprehensible practices.
- Amazon pays their employees so low they have to resort to public assistance. Amazon chose to employ paramedics instead of air conditioners for their overheated employees, until massive exposes and media attention forced them to add A/Cs in some of their warehouses.
- Amazon’s HQ1’s explosive growth has had severe consequences for Seattle, causing home and rent costs to skyrocket (an 85% increase in home prices in the last six years and a 39.8% increase in rent in five years) and leading to mass displacement of low to middle-income residents, closure of small businesses, and the mushrooming of tent cities.
- Amazon is ruthless in avoiding taxes. When Seattle proposed a new tax on big businesses to alleviate the homelessness crisis caused by businesses like Amazon, Amazon held the city hostage by immediately halting construction of a new building – putting 7,000 new jobs on the line – and continues to threaten the city even after a watered-down version of the bill passed.
- There is no guarantee that Amazon’s promises of 50,000 high-wage office jobs and $5 billion in investment will materialize. Just look at the example of Boeing in Seattle or GE in Boston. Also, businesses that receive incentives do not tend to generate more jobs than those that don’t.
- In addition to the negative environmental impact of online shopping in general and Amazon’s two-day shipping in particular, Amazon further refuses to release information about energy consumption at data centers. Greenpeace gave Amazon an F in their most recent analysis of consumer electronic companies’ efforts to address their environmental impact.
If the board remains determined to bring Amazon to Arlington, ORA asks them to negotiate a robust community benefits agreement instead that forces Amazon to make concessions to the Arlington community and leaves them on the hook for paying for the consequences of their growth. Some examples of community benefits might be:
- linked safeguards to protect and build affordable housing (e.g. a community land trust);
- intentional local-hiring preferences;
- job quality standards (living wages, full-time hours, health care, paid family leave, and other benefits) for all of Amazon’s employees in the state;
- transit-system improvements;
- procurement systems that favor minority and women owned-businesses, worker-owned cooperatives, and other local suppliers;
- partnerships with local schools and universities;
- other community-specific benefits based on local needs.
ORA believes that the County Board should not pursue partnerships with corporations whose record stand in stark contrast to our community’s values and therefore oppposes any incentives given to Amazon.
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