Amazon in New York protests: Jobs for whom?

Politicians, protesters and journalists rallied together during the cold rally on Wednesday morning at the edge of the desolate warehouse district chosen as the future headquarters of Amazon in New York. The truck drivers who were passing honked in support. The crowd was small, but the message was clear: New York officials were not satisfied with the agreement reached between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew "Amazon" Cuomo to bring the e-commerce company based in Seattle in Queens.

"We should invest in housing and hot water, not in the seat. We should invest in universities, not in Amazon, "said Bronx member Michael Blake.

"We are here to end it. We do not give up until we have canceled this agreement, abandoned the process and resumed the conversation, "said Senator Michael Gianaris.

Jimmy Van Bramer, who represents this part of Queens at New York City Council, led the crowd on a call and replied, "Do we want Amazon?" "No!" "Do we want Amazon?" "No!

How times change Last year, Blake, Gianaris and Van Bramer, as well as council members Costa Constantinides and Stephen Levin and city council chair Melissa Mark-Viverito, who also spoke at the rally, signed a letter urging Jeff Bezos to his company in Long Island City. "Our tradition of reinvention corresponds to yours and we invite you to join us to write together our next chapters," reads the letter. The dogs had caught the car.

Of course, there is It is very disappointing to see the deal that Blasio and Cuomo have reached with Amazon: The $ 1.7 billion in subsidies the state has offered to society, in addition to nearly a billion tax breaks additional. It's a nasty new float in the long parade of offers that New York politicians, still underestimating the value of the city, have made to companies that never went elsewhere.

But Wednesday's press conference was a stronger response to Tuesday's announcement. Nor is Amazon's poor record in labor relations, its dishonest and dishonest headquarters competition, or its overt intent to destroy the backbone of the city's small business – all of which which was known last year. And not subsidies, which, even if they eclipsed those granted to the company in Virginia, were below the normal expenses of the Cuomo era for job creation that New York Democrats have so far tolerated without fear.

The real concern seemed to be the very idea of ​​creating 25,000 well paying jobs in West Queens. After months spent with their economic development advisors, Cuomo and Blasio had barely bothered to justify what – beyond creating jobs, platitudes that fuel growth and that still characterize the discourse political – suits New Yorkers who won. do not work at Amazon. "One of the largest companies in the world next to the largest social housing complex in the United States," said the Mayor. "The synergy is going to be extraordinary." Why would that be the case? Because Amazon was committed to organizing bi-annual summary workshops in Queensbridge? Would they appoint their conference rooms after the songs of Illmatique?

The widespread skepticism about a company hiring for a set of high-paying jobs in the country's financial capital is somehow a sign of New York City's current good situation – and another, the depth of his fracture.

First, the good news: New York City has the longest period of private sector job growth since the Second World War. The unemployment rate is as low as ever summer; the population is as high as ever; the share of the city's population born outside the United States is at its highest level in 100 years. In many ways, New York has never been more autonomous. So you understand why there is a general feeling of disgust at how the leaders crawled before Jeff Bezos. Amazon needs us more than we need from Amazon.

But a new business campus also has benefits: $ 27 billion for the city and the state in tax revenue; a spike in white-collar technician jobs that, in a good time, will raise wages throughout the city and, in the worst, will serve as a hedge for a budget with 20% of income taxes. Tax revenues do not take into account the benefits of well-paid workers who purchase local goods and services, competing for the dry cleaner, therapist, taxi driver and empanada lady. Enrico Moretti, a geographer at the University of California at Berkeley, concluded that every new job in the high-tech sector created five other jobs outside the long-term technology sector. An increase in job opportunities should give more power to workers.

On paper, no city is better prepared than New York to handle the negative externalities of this growth. Amazon builds over two underutilized train lines (the G and the LIRR), pulling commuters from Manhattan against the tide of peak flow in a neighborhood that since 2010 has added more than 12,000 apartments, of which 9,000 are in preparation. What could have been an event that changed the city to Detroit is expected to have a minimal impact here, in part because the company will likely hire most of its employees from the metropolitan area's talent pool of more than 300,000 workers. technology. The list of apartments on the rental site predicts a rent increase of 0.1% in New York, or $ 1 on a rent of $ 1,000. The difficult situation in Seattle's corporate city is not a convincing precedent; The queen alone has three times more people.

Now the bad news: the neglect, the lack of interest and the lack of ambition of the city and the state have led to the emergence of a transport crisis in the metro and in the street. Zoning and other regulations in the city and (especially) the suburbs have limited housing production, so much so that buying homes is very difficult for most New Yorkers. At the same time, the state has let the protection of tenants languish, the social housing of the city is in a disreputable state of disrepair, the number of homeless has reached a record level and the owners have misbehaved in all impunity. Some research suggests that while new high-income jobs generally improve everyone's prospects, this effect declines rapidly in places where the housing market is tight.

Two forces therefore welcome the possibility of Amazon in New York – and I think it would be the case, whether subsidized or not. Born of good weather, we feel that the city does not need it. And born of the bad, a feeling that we do not want it.

It is not so that a city that works is supposed to react to a new big office. It is in a way the symbol of the troubled US economy, in which a good new name (Dow 26,000!) Does not make sense for a marginal class increasingly without participation (half of the country no has no money on the stock market). But it is also a very particular indictment of the prolonged precariousness of housing in New York, in which everything from a bike path to a grocery store to the headquarters of a company is considered first and foremost. as a tenant excuse. To paraphrase a saying from Staten Island: Rent reigns everywhere around me.

This is where it is Blasio and Cuomo to conclude an agreement that takes into account this reality: do not show what we do for Amazon, but what Amazon does for us. "Jobs" is not the magic word that they think. Jobs for whom?

Senator Gianaris and his compatriots should definitely make the toughest deal possible. Get Amazon to repair Queensbridge. Or extend the tram to Queens. Or engage in local hiring. Show New Yorkers what they get from the richest society in the world. But I'm not sure that an infrastructure would give Amazon the feeling of being wanted in New York.