Amazon HQ? (Philadelphia, California, Dallas: best cities, to live in, professionals)

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by mslhu

Lol, defeatist Philadelphians will never change. On the bright side, we apparently have the best sources in the biz!

The posts wrt Texas are probably close to reality. Scores of municipalities have likely been scammed by this HQ 2 "search".

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by southbound_295

Politicians are getting the same pay whether they prepare the bid or not.

Yeah.....but wouldn't you rather they spend their highly paid time on issues with schools than a hail mary faux-RFP process? And that doesn't speak for the amount of work completed by consultants, hourly employees, T&E, etc. Again, I'm not saying it's all bad, but it is not free.

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by kyb01

The posts wrt Texas are probably close to reality. Scores of municipalities have likely been scammed by this HQ 2 "search".

Agree completely. This whole thing has a cloud of BS around it. Bezos and Amazon will never admit it, but I hope someone digs and forces out the truth...if it is the truth. I would boycott Amazon if I found out they lied and I think a lot of others would too.

[kyb01]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

Agree completely. This whole thing has a cloud of BS around it. Bezos and Amazon will never admit it, but I hope someone digs and forces out the truth...if it is the truth. I would boycott Amazon if I found out they lied and I think a lot of others would too.

If this is so, it will be so so disappointing. Sigh.

I suppose you all know that Amazon is going to start ditching the USPS and FedEx for deliveries.

[Redddog]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

Agree completely. This whole thing has a cloud of BS around it. Bezos and Amazon will never admit it, but I hope someone digs and forces out the truth...if it is the truth. I would boycott Amazon if I found out they lied and I think a lot of others would too.

I would, if it weren't so damn awesome.

[southbound_295]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

Yeah.....but wouldn't you rather they spend their highly paid time on issues with schools than a hail mary faux-RFP process? And that doesn't speak for the amount of work completed by consultants, hourly employees, T&E, etc. Again, I'm not saying it's all bad, but it is not free.

I said that it's free advertising, not free prep work. There's a difference. Almost every time that the HQ2 topic comes up, Philadelphia is mentioned. That's free advertising.

If Philadelphia got this, it would bring in enough money, annually, to drop the wage tax, somewhat, & give them more money for the schools. That's worth the effort.

If they don't get it, they have done the prep work. If another company shows up, they can put a sales presentation togethet quickly. The prep work is done.

Philadelphia has been trying to deal with schools for decades. It all goes back to money. Do something about getting more money, & the city has more options to fix long-standing problems.

[Hannah5555]

Originally Posted by Redddog

I would, if it weren't so damn awesome.

I boycotted after the NYT expose. Also have a friend who worked there (on the vp level) who confirmed that story. It would be truly awesome for philly to get the bid but Bezos is akin to Voldemort.

[Fireshaker]

Originally Posted by Hannah5555

I boycotted after the NYT expose. Also have a friend who worked there (on the vp level) who confirmed that story. It would be truly awesome for philly to get the bid but Bezos is akin to Voldemort.

Yeah, that NYT story was horrific. As cool as it would be to see Philly win one like this, I can't help but think we're better off without Amazon.

[AJNEOA]

Originally Posted by southbound_295

I said that it's free advertising, not free prep work. There's a difference. Almost every time that the HQ2 topic comes up, Philadelphia is mentioned. That's free advertising.

If Philadelphia got this, it would bring in enough money, annually, to drop the wage tax, somewhat, & give them more money for the schools. That's worth the effort.

If they don't get it, they have done the prep work. If another company shows up, they can put a sales presentation togethet quickly. The prep work is done.

Philadelphia has been trying to deal with schools for decades. It all goes back to money. Do something about getting more money, & the city has more options to fix long-standing problems.

It may be free air time, but the mayor and his staff including others, is not exactly a cheap marketing team for preparing materials. That offsets the free air we're getting.

I'm not debating that there's value in bringing Amazon here btw. My issue is that if Bezos is jerking everyone around, which is a very real possibility, I'm not thrilled with the time and money dedicated to responding to a pretend RFP. That does -7 for all of our other issues. And advertising may help bring some business in, but I'm thinking we would have brought more business in by focusing on modernizing our business tax structure from the get-go.

Who knows, maybe Tom Lennox and his tight underpants is right; a big loss like this will make our leaders realize why Philadelphia should change its strategy to attracting business. But that's only if we can keep Kenney away from the bar.

[Pennsport]

Originally Posted by AJNEOA

It may be free air time, but the mayor and his staff including others, is not exactly a cheap marketing team for preparing materials. That offsets the free air we're getting.

I'm not debating that there's value in bringing Amazon here btw. My issue is that if Bezos is jerking everyone around, which is a very real possibility, I'm not thrilled with the time and money dedicated to responding to a pretend RFP. That does -7 for all of our other issues. And advertising may help bring some business in, but I'm thinking we would have brought more business in by focusing on modernizing our business tax structure from the get-go.

Who knows, maybe Tom Lennox and his tight underpants is right; a big loss like this will make our leaders realize why Philadelphia should change its strategy to attracting business. But that's only if we can keep Kenney away from the bar.

You're acting as if our city government officials would be spending their time on more productive matters. Unfortunately they are all salaried rather than paid by the hour, and as they literally do nothing but hijack any progress in our city, we might as well have them create a slick marketing pitch. Better than halting development, running kick-back and pay-for-play schemes, and taking trips on the taxpayer dime.