Amazon winners and losers

WINNERS:

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam: He did a good job on the first Amazon deal for Virginia, and now can try to lure more of the company here.  There is a new reason to keep him in office and also to start paying attention to a different issue.

Nashville and the Southeast more generally: That part of the country has fewer local NIMBY activists and is less likely to elect figures such as AOC.  Texas too.  Is it possible that I live in the sanest part of the country?  Wouldn’t that be funny?

The Bay Area: NYC is no longer such a fierce competitor at the macro level, with the potential to become the new center of gravity for the tech world.  The Bay Area can breathe a bit more easily now, at least as long as clustering remains the name of the game.  Yet this one is double-edged, because it also means the Bay Area has less incentive to solve its rather pressing problems and dysfunctions.

Valentine’s Day: It will be used to announce more dramatic break-up events, and thus become all the more emotionally fraught, in both positive and negative directions.

Hoboken and Jersey City: They are nicer than Manhattan anyway and with better day-to-day food options, right?  Right?  Queens won’t be obviously outcompeting them as a home for a new, high-quality business site.

Regional development subsidies: It was awfully easy for Amazon to walk away from this “deal.”  Expect to see higher subsidies and tighter deals in the future.

LOSERS:

Queens: Most of the residents wanted the project to come.

Amazon: The company will find it harder to access the top talent of New York City, and the top talent that is willing to live in New York City.  Let’s hope this is a blessing in disguise, and a new path toward discovering hitherto untapped sources of talent.

New York City: Yes, Google is expanding in Chelsea but more and more NYC is becoming a city of finance and tourism and restaurants.  Can a location have the Dutch disease and cost disease at the same time?  Stay tuned to find out.

YIMBYs: One of the world’s most valuable, efficient, and also popular companies could not make stick a deal to expand and create tens of thousands of high-paying jobs and pay more taxes.  What hope do the rest of us have?