The arrogance of the opposition to Amazon jobs in New York

Selena Zito:

Tito Brown can’t imagine driving a perfectly good thing out of a town that hasn’t had a perfectly good thing come its way in a very long time.

At least, a perfectly good thing the size and scope of the Amazon headquarters that ideological politics drove out of Long Island City on Thursday, when Democrats including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., danced on the grave of the deal as Amazon walked away from the New York project.

Brown doesn’t really get that. He governs a city with a declining population, a 40 percent poverty rate, and would welcome the opportunity for a project such as Amazon to have considered locating here.

“Oh, any time I can get regional and/or economic growth in my community, I would absolutely want that here,” he said. “It’s budget time.”

Ocasio-Cortez, who has become the leader of the left-wing insurgency within the Democratic Party, slammed the plan in a tweet the moment it was announced in mid-November last year.
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She initially said the response to the Amazon announcement from her constituents was outrage, arguing that the tax breaks Amazon would receive should be spent by city and state officials on the subway system and communities instead of billion-dollar corporations.

Which isn’t how tax breaks work. It’s not like there is a pile of money they would hand to Amazon that could have been spent on the subway system, but that is a story for a different day.

What this moment signifies in the Democratic Party is one that has been in existence for several years, but the party establishment and ruling class have been unwilling to face: the leftist populism punching up to take the reins of the party.

New York took a big lurch left last year in the midterm elections when they gave the Democrats their largest majority in the state senate ever, as well as giving Ocasio-Cortez her victory over a moderate establishment Democrat for his Bronx seat in the primary race.

National Democrats hailed the wave and felt empowered, but no one felt more empowered than their left flanks. What the ruling class of the Democratic Party failed to realize is their voters with the largest megaphone believe they are entitled to use it like a sledgehammer, a sledgehammer they plan to use to impact the country’s societal, economic, and political viewpoints.

Sledgehammers make great copy on Twitter, but they don’t help legislators govern, or help job creation — just the opposite.
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Arrogance combined with ignorance can kill jobs and economic growth.  Unfortunately, New York has both in abundance.  The tax abatement would have been paid back several fold in later years after the business operation was up and running and also it would have been paid back by people with high wages from those jobs improving their own property or moving up to better housing.

In areas where communities are looking for growth, it appears there is a better understanding of this phenomena.  In states like Texas, Tennessee, and Florida the lack of a state income tax also incentives company to relocate there.  That is why those states are growing and why New York and California are losing population.  The intellectual lightweights of the left just don't get it.