An editorial in the New York Daily News lamented a push by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other elected officials to prevent Amazon from moving its headquarters to New York City, arguing the city would be in a better position with those high-paying jobs.
“As New York City suffers an economic crisis on top of the coronavirus pandemic, some are looking back with regrets at the left-wing campaign that forced Amazon to scupper a plan to bring tens of thousands of jobs to the area – arguing this project could have helped the Big Apple weather the storm,” said the editorial.
The article went on to call local officials smug and shortsighted for the decision to kill the new Amazon building.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if elected officials hadn’t been so smug and shortsighted as to insist that our great metropolis had so much going for it that it could easily look the best economic development opportunity in the modern history of the city in the mouth?” the editorial asked.
New York City’s Independent Budget Office said recently that 475,000 jobs could be lost by next March to the tune of a $9.7 billion decrease in tax revenue over the next two years due to coronavirus lockdown measures, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The headquarters was planned to be built in Long Island City in Queens and was anticipated to bring 25,000 high-paying jobs to the area, but left-wing lawmakers, including Ocasio-Cortez, ultimately blocked the move.
“Now what I DON’T want is for our public funds to be funding freebie helipads for Amazon + robber baron billionaires,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in December 2018 when the plans were being debated. “All while NYCHA and public schools go underfunded & mom+pops get nowhere near that kind of a break.”
Now what I DON’T want is for our public funds to be funding freebie helipads for Amazon + robber baron billionaires, all while NYCHA and public schools go underfunded & mom+pops get nowhere near that kind of a break.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 4, 2018
Ocasio-Cortez later touted her efforts as a “defeat” of Amazon’s “corporate greed.”
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others disagreed with Ocasio-Cortez, citing the benefits of the jobs that would have come to the city.
Cuomo argued that the plan would have brought “at least 25,000-40,000 good-paying jobs for our state and nearly $30 billion dollars in new revenue to fund transit improvements, new housing, schools and countless other quality-of-life improvements.”
