Pittsburgh Patrika April 2019

The Pittsburgh Patrika, Vol, 24, No. 3, April 2019
The Quarterly Magazine (Jan, Apr, Jul, and Oct) for the Indian Diaspora
Vol. 24 No 3 www.pittsburghpatrika.com April 2019
Phone/Fax: (724) 327 0953
Amazon’s Arrogance
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e-mail: ThePatrika@aol.com
After a one-year long search, Amazon announced that its HQ2 project in
Novrmber 2018, with the potential to employ 50,000 employees, would be
split ,between two large metropolitan areas, namely, New York City (population
8 million) and the Washington DC area (over 6 million), both on
the eastern seaboard, hardly 250 miles from each other. The project, with
an outlay of $5.0 billion, is expected to provide employment for 25,000
people in each location. The two locations are the 1st and the 7th largest
metropolitan areas in the nation. New York City is already the capital of
TV news media houses, financial markets, ad agencies, and with all other
cultural accoutrements
such as
museums, sports,
theater, music
and dance… The
DC area is the
political epicenter
of the nation
with top-flight
universities, several
thousand
lobbying houses
for every conceivable
special interest group, and all the trappings for the “good life,”
with all kinds of tax-payer subsidized attractions like parks, museums
and monuments. And the DC area, for a variety of reasons, is the most
recession-proof regions in the nation. The pictures in this story show the
public anger against Amazon’s arrogance.
No matter where Amazon moves its HQ2 and HQ3, tax payers will
be coughing up over $2 billion in tax subsidies and abatements for
several years. This is nothing new. In the US, cities vie with each other
to attract new glamorous businesses with the potential to offer thousands
of jobs or give national visibility. Sports teams, healthcare facilities, or