• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Amazon is looking for a 2nd headquarter city, a 'full equal to Seattle'

OlNate said:
lol...those days are long gone, man, c'mon, you know that. ;) Canada has so many American jobs - we're cheaper North Americans, after all. I don't think I've ever had a job that hasn't reported into an American head office somewhere....at least, not in my post-college career.
Click to expand...

Montreal is not going to be attractive for young engineers. The last thing young Americans will want to do is uproot their culture and be forced to move into a different country suffering from massive high taxes, inefficient health care, exchange all their money into Canada currency, and a province where the majority of people speak French.

Americans want to be surrounded by people like them. I don't see them assimilating well with people that have more loyalties to Canada and the queen.
 
Winchester said:
Cleveland. City is turning around and real estate is still pretty cheap. Or they could be really ballsy and go for Detroit.
Click to expand...

Miami would make strategic sense if they want to get into the Latino market however the education level in Florida is very low.
 
Bucky said:
Montreal is not going to be attractive for young engineers. The last thing young Americans will want to do is uproot their culture and be forced to move into a different country suffering from massive high taxes, inefficient health care, exchange all their money into Canada currency, and a province where the majority of people speak French.

Americans want to be surrounded by people like them. I don't see them assimilating well with people that have more loyalties to Canada and the queen.
Click to expand...

haha...well, if the queen is a concern, you'll be glad to know that most people under the age of 60 don't care about her.

And it wouldn't be Americans getting the jobs, it would be Canadians, and we get along just fine. :) Again, do some research and find out how many American companies have offices, plants, and warehouses in Canada with no need to do so. Tons! We're cheaper than you, and speak the language, have similar enough culture to make working with us easy... Again, nearly every company I've worked for in Canada has had head offices in America. The fact that we are your second largest trade partner, with a fraction of the trade deficit that your other top 5 trade partners have, helps things too, not to mention currency exchange... Ya, man, your corporate big wigs love us!! :)
 
Threegoofs said:
I realize you like to cling to that fantasy, but Chicago has been attracting a lot of tech firms lately, and others as well. McDonalds is moving their corporate offices to the West Loop next year, for example.

Tech talent doesn't want to live in North Texas.
Click to expand...

Fantasy ? It wasnt fanatsy when Toyota moved their HQ from Torrance California to Plano Texas a few years ago, newp

That actually happened. Companies are trying to divest in States that for all practical pupurposes are bankrupt and instead invest in States that are fiscally responsible and healthy

States that have massive unfunded pension liabilliies, like California and Illinois for examlth are chasing off investment dollars and their tax base

Corporations know the only way these States know how to address rising debt is to raise taxes, which causes even more debt
 
OlNate said:
haha...well, if the queen is a concern, you'll be glad to know that most people under the age of 60 don't care about her.

And it wouldn't be Americans getting the jobs, it would be Canadians, and we get along just fine. :) Again, do some research and find out how many American companies have offices, plants, and warehouses in Canada with no need to do so. Tons! We're cheaper than you, and speak the language, have similar enough culture to make working with us easy... Again, nearly every company I've worked for in Canada has had head offices in America. The fact that we are your second largest trade partner, with a fraction of the trade deficit that your other top 5 trade partners have, helps things too, not to mention currency exchange... Ya, man, your corporate big wigs love us!! :)
Click to expand...

Perhaps Amazon moving out of the U.S is a good thing. They are a dangerous company. They kill jobs and don't pay taxes. They are a big reason why good American companies are dying. They have an unfair advantage and a big reason why retail companies are hurting.

Trump needs to do something to stop Amazon. In Seattle, as Amazon grew, the homeless population exploded and many people couldn't afford to live here.
 
reinoe said:
I doubt Amazon wants their employees getting gunned down at random by out of control police and out of control gangs. Las Vegas would be a genuinely nice choice. If they're looking for something more "CENTRAL USA" they could go for just about anywhere in Missouri. Omaha would be a good choice. I haven't got any ideas for the East Coast.
Click to expand...

Omaha would be good except I remember hearing somewhere they were looking for a city with good public transportation and currently Omaha just doesn't have that. We are working on it but it's not going to be anytime soon.
 
americanwoman said:
Omaha would be good except I remember hearing somewhere they were looking for a city with good public transportation and currently Omaha just doesn't have that. We are working on it but it's not going to be anytime soon.
Click to expand...

Omaha will need a new spark after Buffett leaves.
 
Bucky said:
Perhaps Amazon moving out of the U.S is a good thing. They are a dangerous company. They kill jobs and don't pay taxes. They are a big reason why good American companies are dying. They have an unfair advantage and a big reason why retail companies are hurting.

Trump needs to do something to stop Amazon. In Seattle, as Amazon grew, the homeless population exploded and many people couldn't afford to live here.
Click to expand...

Like Trump, you're out of date with your "Amazon doesn't pay taxes" talking point. The issue was sales taxes, and they've thrown in the towel on that and now collects taxes on sales to every state with a sales tax.

Amazon to start collecting state sales taxes everywhere - Mar. 29, 2017

On Saturday [April 1, 2017] Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) will start collecting sales taxes on purchases in the last four states where it wasn't doing so: Hawaii, Idaho, Maine and New Mexico. Four other states -- Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon -- have no sales tax, while a fifth, Alaska, doesn't have a statewide tax, but it does have municipal sales taxes.
Click to expand...

According to the article about half of the sales through "Amazon" are by third party vendors, and I don't know if Amazon CAN make them pay sales tax where they have no nexus, but the same policy doesn't apply to those vendors. If one of them only has an office in Tennessee, and no other nexus-creating presence elsewhere, sales to the other 49 states will be sales tax free.

The problem is with Congress. Various Congressmen have introduced bills for years to close this loophole, but they die without votes because passing it will be an effective tax increase on online shopping and that's not popular with voters. It's not really a tax increase because if Amazon doesn't collect the tax, everyone owes use tax on that purchase for the same amount. In my experience, people don't realize (generally), or care if they know, that by not paying sales taxes on online purchases, they're engaging in tax fraud.

At any rate, the Supreme Court ruled decades ago in a case involving mail-order sales that this is a problem that CONGRESS can fix, and Congress has failed to do their job. Trump can use his bully pulpit if he wants, but it doesn't help when he singles out Amazon, when they now collect sales taxes everywhere that has sales tax.
 
OlNate said:
That's kinda the point, though. Bringing in employers like Amazon will draw people to those areas. Who really wants to live in Mississauga? No one...but it has a high concentration of jobs, so people spend 3 times as much on a house as they would outside of the GTA to live in that dump of a city. Chances are they are not going to come to Canada at all, so this is just academic...but I think it would be cool if they picked a less saturated area to drive development, vs. centralize in an area already over saturated.
Click to expand...

Except those areas do not have the infrastructure to support it.
 
faithful_servant said:
TDS on post #12 of a thread that has nothing to do with the President... :(
Click to expand...

In this case it does

Trumps is wanting to clamp down on H1 B Visa's. A significant number of Indians I expect are brought in for periods of time to work for Amazon under that program, certainly Silicon Valley has.

So if Visa program becomes more stringent and allows fewer H1B visa's per year, while at the same time Canada makes the process easier, it could open the door to Amazon deciding to open the HQ in Canada. At this point in time, with the current H1B status, I doubt Amazon would go out of the US for the second HQ

H1B Visa: How Donald Trump Wants to Change It | Fortune.com

They’re widely used in Silicon Valley, whose largest employers include outsourcing firms like Tata, Infosys, and Cognizant. According to Bloomberg, these companies tend to pay H-1B workers $65,000 to $75,000 a year, far less than the $100,000 or more at Google and Microsoft. Nearly 70% of all H-1B visas go to Indian workers.
Each year, a total of 85,000 H-1B visas are granted to foreign workers, with 20,000 earmarked for those with master’s degrees or higher. The visas are distributed through a random lottery.
Click to expand...
 
Carjosse said:
Real estate in Seattle is probably getting too expensive to expand further.
Click to expand...

Seattle is also sitting on two of the biggest potential natural disasters in NA. Between the possibility of the massive mud-flows that would ensue if Mt. Rainier went off and the Cascadia faults, Seattle sits in one of the potentially worst places from a massive natural disaster POV.
 
Bucky said:
Montreal is not going to be attractive for young engineers. The last thing young Americans will want to do is uproot their culture and be forced to move into a different country suffering from massive high taxes, inefficient health care, exchange all their money into Canada currency, and a province where the majority of people speak French.

Americans want to be surrounded by people like them. I don't see them assimilating well with people that have more loyalties to Canada and the queen.
Click to expand...

For young engineers Montreal would be very attractive (outside of the cold). Montreal has a very high number of english speakers as a primary or secondary language. An amazing cultural landscape, great food. Also nearly no one in Canada has any real loyalties to the queen. In general just english immigrants

So positive for Montreal
Diverse ethnic city, with at least 59% speaking english
Generally open immigration, a positive for temporary workers
An international airport which will have access to any major city in NA in 5 hours and Western Europe in 6 (guess's here)
Low crime rate
Low levels of racial issues (except for the horrible french people, why cant they just speak Canadian)
A very good subway system

Negatives
Cold winters
Higher tax levels (this would be the killer)
 
JasperL said:
Can't figure that one out either. "HQ" implies ONE location by definition.... Might be a kind of marketing. We're already going to see cities rush to see how much money they can funnel to Amazon with a CEO one of the richest on the planet to pay for the privilege of hosting their "HQ" and maybe labeling it "HQ" increases the bids.

Sort of off topic, but if king for a week or so, this would make the list of stuff to fix. I don't mind cities offering incentives, but if Amazon gets a tax break/incentive package of $50k/employee or whatever sweet deal they'll negotiate, give that to all the existing businesses in that city. Otherwise, I don't see why the government should have the ability to cut deals with a single private company and use taxpayer money to do it. It's straight up bribery, and the other way, Amazon paying a Mayor a bonus of $500k for some favor, someone at Amazon is going to jail. But if the city pays Amazon $1 billion as a bribe, that's fine???
Click to expand...
It's what the American people want. It's what the American people deserve.
 
reinoe said:
I doubt Amazon wants their employees getting gunned down at random by out of control police and out of control gangs. Las Vegas would be a genuinely nice choice. If they're looking for something more "CENTRAL USA" they could go for just about anywhere in Missouri. Omaha would be a good choice. I haven't got any ideas for the East Coast.
Click to expand...
Oh B.S.! Chicago has great quality of life, unless you're in one of the several slums that make up a very small percentage of Chicagland. It has a strong economy, a great business and financial infrastructure, world class universities, and perhaps the best transportation systems in the country. It is indeed a world class city.

You're dreaming, if you think a corporate giant like Amazon is going to build an "equal" corporate HQ in Omaha. Omaha doesn't have the business infrastructure or cultural atmosphere to attract execs and high paid highly mobile employees, and is not urban enough for techie and corporate types.
 
Carjosse said:
Toronto seems to be pretty enthusiastic about it and will probably stop at nothing to see that it does. Montreal would also make sense as the data and tech hub for Eastern Canada with good connections to both Europe and the US as well as dirt cheap electricity and sever hosting. And both offer corporate tax savings.
Click to expand...
Both cities are excellent, and I'm especially fond of Montreal.

But they'd have to make a decision to have their "co-equal" HQ technically "international" under a foreign government. I don't know if that's their desire, and then there's also possible image problems (leaving America).
 
Crovax said:
I dont think I would classify Amazon as a "tech company" anymore as most of their business relies on delivering physical items to a physical place and logistics is probably a much bigger division of the company than the website
Click to expand...
It may not be a tech company per se, but I suspect it has huge I.T. needs, which was his point.
 
Amazon Cloud isn't their biggest money maker, but it is a big money maker.. Web Serivices is important for Amazon.

Anyway I'd say.. Boston... Montreal... Maybe Atlanta...
 
OlNate said:
That's kinda the point, though. Bringing in employers like Amazon will draw people to those areas. Who really wants to live in Mississauga? No one...but it has a high concentration of jobs, so people spend 3 times as much on a house as they would outside of the GTA to live in that dump of a city. Chances are they are not going to come to Canada at all, so this is just academic...but I think it would be cool if they picked a less saturated area to drive development, vs. centralize in an area already over saturated.
Click to expand...
But you're missing Amazon's point:

They want to go where there's already a talent pool, or areas that talent would desire to locate.

They are not interested in taking time and effort to "build-up" an area, which may or may not even occur.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom