Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Sides With Dem Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Amazon is ‘Fleecing’ New York
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York socialist just elected a congresswoman, has found a unlikely ally as she Instagrams her way through House orientation: the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Both the millennial lawmaker and the arch-conservative, frequently batty editorial board agree that New York is doling out outrageously generous subsidies to Amazon for selecting Queens as the location of its new headquarters.
Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018
The Journal‘s board wrote in Thursday’s paper:
“We rarely agree with socialist Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she’s right to call billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for Amazon ‘extremely concerning.’ These handouts to one of the richest companies in the history of the world, with an essentially zero cost of capital, is crony capitalism at its worst.”
Crony capitalism at its worst! Has Jacobin has staged a revolt at News Corp and taken control of the WSJ newsroom?!
The board goes on to explain what Amazon will bring to Long Island City in exchange for the $1.5 billion subsidy it’s receiving from the state of New York.
“As Amazon put it on its website, this works out to $48,000 per job,” the board writes. “Apparently bodega owners in Brooklyn are supposed to be happy about subsidizing a third of the salaries of hipster techies.”
The Journal‘s chief gripe? That there’s no indication Amazon would have planted its HQ elsewhere had it not received the massive subsidies from Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“The worst actors here are the politicians who pose as job creators but are essentially job buyers. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo once famously said he’d change his name to Amazon Cuomo if the company located in New York, but he didn’t need to pay such a Queens ransom,” they write. “Google and other companies have created thousands of jobs in New York without similar subsidies, and Amazon might well have done the same given the city’s intellectual capital.”
Read here…
[Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images]
