By Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
The Twitter tax break, the tax breaks for Amazon — they do a lot more harm than good. It’s time SF officials admitted that.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is criticizing the massive tax incentives that New York is giving to Amazon – and that’s created a lot of much-needed discussion about the impact of tax breaks on corporate location decisions.
The conservative National Review agrees with the democratic socialist Ocasio-Cortez: Tax breaks to entice companies to move to a city or region are generally ineffective and a bad idea…
Ocasio-Cortez raises a larger question than the wisdom or value of the tax breaks for Amazon in Long Island. She questions, and I think she is right, whether the new tech HQ will lead to massive displacement in Long Island City. Will the existing residents get the benefits of high-paying jobs – or will people move to that community to take those jobs and force longtime residents out?…
You can’t change bad policy directions without admitting that you were doing the wrong thing. At some point, everyone involved needs to accept reality and say: The Twitter tax break was wrong, on so many levels, in so many ways. Then the next time we can know better… (more)
