Amazon's Retreat from New York Augurs Ill for Neoliberals

Amazon's decision to abandon Queens as a site for its HQ2 is wonderful news. Goliath turned tail and skedaddled once it became apparent that politicians couldn't be cowed as they were in Seattle. The price tag, $3 billion in incentives from New York, once publicized was too unseemly to defend. It seems like we might have arrived at a tipping point for peak neoliberalism. As Bryce Covert says in her opinion piece "New York Doesn’t Need Amazon’s Sweetheart Deal":

These kinds of economic incentive deals are typically struck with little public oversight and get support from voters who seem satisfied that their leaders have at least tried to create jobs. But New York’s rage at Amazon’s sweetheart deal may finally signal a sea change in how the public reacts to these billion-dollar boondoggles.

In an age of rising rents and stagnating wages, after corporations just got a big handout from the Republican tax bill with much less relief for struggling families, as income inequality continues to ensure that the profit of our economic productivity is skimmed off by those at the top, the era of such incentive deals may be coming to an end.

Yves Smith has a substantial write-up this morning, "Amazon Drops New York City Headquarters Plan in a Snit," where she reminds us what a loathsome employer Amazon is and counsels us to enjoy this win. She also offers a reason why Amazon cut and run so quickly, unionization:

A more specific concern is that locating Amazon in Long Island City would have subjected Amazon to an ongoing unionization push, which given the shift in the zetigeist, the giant retailer was at risk of eventually losing. Better to stick to places where those fights aren’t so imminent.

Amazon is often compared to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart will shut down a store rather than let that store go union. If Amazon's NYC HQ were to be unionized, unionization drives would spread to other locations in its vast corporate empire. Yves Smith speculated that Amazon hadn't even really begun to fight in New York City as it had in Seattle last year. So its abrupt departure had to have been influenced by other factors besides public opinion and the loss of the allegiance of some local elected officials.

Interpreting the Zeitgeist while stuck in the middle of it in real time is tricky business. Look at how many, myself included, oversold Occupy Wall Street. It was perceived to be a Second Coming of the social revolution of the 1960s. But as it turned out, it was easily contained. Obama was able to co-opt it and use it for his reelection.

I think part of the problem is you have to be able to conjure up an image of the other world you want to create. Most of us don't know what that is, can't see beyond the gadget-boosterism that peak neoliberalism offers consumers for their allegiance to the political system.

But I do think a shift is upon us. The other world becoming visible is one where we take the money being vacuumed up by the 1% and the corporations they control and use it instead to build affordable housing, pay for public health and education, construct a renewable energy architecture. More and more people understand this. The Republican tax cut helped. Why did the corporations enjoy a windfall and we never got the infrastructure build-out that Trump promised?

It is going to take a miracle of propaganda or a nighttime police raid of the entire nation to keep people penned in on the neoliberal reservation in 2020.