Economic Development: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Jobs. Literally, the only reason
that anyone gets up before 11am. Politicians care about jobs
more than anything else, as you can tell from how often
they mention them. These are the things I focus on.
Jobs, jobs, jobs– Jobs, jobs, jobs. Jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Period. -Jobs… jobs… jobs.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs.
Good-paying jobs. It’s about jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs.
American Jobs. Politicians seem to think
that jobs are like Beetlejuice. If you just say the word
a magic number of times, eventually they’ll just pop up
out of nowhere. Now, more specifically tonight,
I’d like to talk about one of the ways that politicians
try to create jobs. Economic development incentives. And I know that
that doesn’t sound interesting. Wait, wait, what are you doing? You’re putting me
picture-in-picture? Is thatEntourage: The Movie?Fine, you know what,
switch over the audio, listen to the first line.
You’ll be back. I may have to jerk it
before we even get there. -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-Oh! Oh, how about that? All of a sudden, a show about
economic development doesn’t seem like
the worst thing you could be watching, does it? -(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
-So… (CLEARS THROAT) -As I was saying…
-(AUDIENCE CHEERS) Economic development incentives
are essentially when state and local governments
offer perks to companies to entice them to build
or expand in their area. Here in New York there is a program called
StartUp New York which launched with some pretty
astounding tax breaks. AD ANNOUNCER:Start-Up New York
creates zero tax zones
for new businesses
for ten years.
Zero property tax,
zero corporate tax,
zero business tax,
and zero income tax.
Wow. Zero property, corporate,
business, and income tax. (SLIDE WHISTLE ASCENDING) And I believe that that sound
you just heard was Donald Trump
getting an erection. (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) Wait for it. Don’t wor–
-It’s gone again. -(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)
-See ya next year, little buddy. And look,
it’s not just New York. All 50 states
offer some kind of incentives, like tax-breaks
to attract companies, and the argument is,
that they attract employers, which attract jobs,
which lead to spending, which creates more jobs
and so on, and so on, and so on, and many places have
bought into this, hard, trying to outbid one another
for businesses. Indiana even once took out
attack ads on other states, like this billboard, which read,
“Illinnoyed by higher taxes? Come to Indiana,
a state that works.” And that’s pretty aggressive,
although, it’s actually much tamer than their
original billboard, “Just Arkan-saw your tax bill? Ida-hope you like
our tax breaks. Because if you Colora-don’t, we’ll Conneti-cut
your fucking balls off.” (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) And if a company is big enough, it can even start
a bidding war itself. That is actually happening
right now, with Amazon. They are planning to build
a second headquarters somewhere in North America and they are making
governments bid for it. They even released eight pages
of instructions for candidates telling them to “think big
and be creative,” which led many cities
to do stupid shit like this… NEWS REPORTER 1:Overnight,
the Big Apple
looking more like an orange.New York City mayor,
Bill de Blasio
lighting up the city in, quote,
“Amazon orange.”
The city of Birmingham is using
giant Amazon boxesto try to get
Amazon’s attention.
NEWS REPORTER 1:Stonecrest,
Georgia offering to create
a new town of Amazon, Georgia.They would create a new town
and name it “Amazon.” You know, to compete,
I’m not surprised that Omaha, Nebraska didn’t
offer to let Jeff Bezos kill any three people he likes. ‘Cause you know he would.
Look at him, he wants it so bad. It’s the only thing
he can’t have and he wants it. And numerous mayors
made direct appeals to Amazon with videos ending in versions
of the same bad joke. Hey Alexa, where should Amazon
locate HQ2? ALEXA:Hmm. In Frisco, Texas.Alexa, where is
the most interesting company in the world gonna locate? ALEXA:Obviously,
Washington, DC.
So, Alexa,
where is the best place for Amazon to locate
its second world headquarters? ALEXA:Danbury, Connecticut.I told ya so. You know, my one and only worry
with all of those ads, and I mean this sincerely, is,
are they almost too hilarious? But those stunts
are just window-dressing. What Amazon cares much,
much more about, as they mentioned
in their instructions 21 times, are incentives. And while few places
are revealing what they offered, we do know that New Jersey
reportedly offered seven billion dollars
in tax breaks, which is an insane amount
that other places may now have to compete with,
and think about what that means. That could mean billions
of tax dollars that would not be collected
for things like roads, or schools, or hospitals,
and Amazon already has more money than it knows
what to do with. How else could you explain
the existence ofGoliath?A show that, and this is true,
literally nobody has ever seen. Nobody. No human.
No animal. Nobody. -Nobod– No one.
-(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING) Does it even exist? If you make a show
and no one watches it, does it exist? Discuss. And…
And that is the thing here. We give companies a lot of money
through these incentives. By one estimate, in 2015
they cost state and local governments
45 billion dollars. And that money can go
to some questionable projects. For instance, a few years ago, Kentucky took a big swing
on this… A full-size replica
of Noah’s ark is drawing thousands of visitors
to Williamstown, Kentucky. REPORTER 2:
This is the Ark Encounter.
A chapter from Genesis
told on a $100 million budget.
Four floors of Noah,
his family,
and beasts great and small.The project received $18 million
in Kentucky tax incentives.
Eighteen million dollars of tax breaks
for a gigantic ark museum. And I’m not saying that is
inherently a bad idea, I do kind of want to see
this thing, especially as its website
genuinely has a section devoted to the question,
“What about all the manure?” The answer, apparently, is, “Slatted floors
or multiple-level cages,” which is really
not a good answer, ’cause you do not want to be
the animal on the lowest level of that ship. And while the ark
clearly created some jobs, there were some caveats
to those positions… REPORTER 3:Critics complain
of discrimination in hiring.
Only Christians,
no gays or lesbians,
and single people have to sign
a chastity pledge.
-Oh, come on! Aside from the homophobia, chastity is a pretty weird rule
to put in place for a museum that’s pretty much a gigantic
replica of a floating fuck-zoo. They… they weren’t brought in
two by two so that everyone
would have a swim-buddy, they were on that boat
to fuck. (AUDIENCE APPLAUDS, CHEERS) To fuck! But the justification for taking a gamble
on a gigantic ark, was that it would be
a boom to the whole area, and to hear one
local official tell it, the economic impact
has been underwhelming. The ark’s success has not had
the ripple effect many hoped it would. REPORTER 4:Downtown
which was expecting
increased car and foot traffic,
has almost as many
empty store-fronts
as occupied store-fronts.REPORTER 5: What’s it meant
for downtown Williamstown? Nothing. I don’t wanna sound negative
in this interview, but… there’s nothing here. Yeah,
and that kind of makes sense because once you’ve spent
three hours walking around a wooden boat with
sexually frustrated tour guides and haunted by the mental image
of a miserable zebra neck deep in shit, ’cause apparently decks
were assigned alphabetically, you’re probably gonna
skip lunch in town. And look, a well-designed,
closely monitored program with clear goals
might make sense to an area, but too often the terms
are extremely lax. Some don’t require
that jobs be created at all, and some require
almost laughably few. Remember StartUp New York?
Zero taxes for a decade?… -(SLIDE WHISTLE ASCENDING)
-Oh shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t think about it,
I’m sure it will pass. That program
is hiring requirements– That program’s hiring
requirements were that you create just
one new job a year, and the state
recently considered scaling that back to one
new job in the first five years. And sometimes these incentives
are given out even when
they may not be necessary. Take a look
at Fargo, North Dakota. -(SLIDE WHISTLE DESCENDING)
-You know what, he’s not wrong. He’s not wrong and I knew
that would do the job. Fargo gave a tax break to FedEx for moving a facility
to their city, but why? Did they really need to? ‘Cause just listen to what
happened when one city council member
asked that very question of a FedEx representative. Mr. Wilson, if you don’t get
this exemption, will you still move to Fargo? -MR. WILSON: Yes, sir, we will.
-Okay. Yet, ten minutes later, the council voted
to give FedEx that exemption. Why? Also, if someone wants to
willingly move to Fargo, you don’t offer them
tax incentives, you simply offer them
a full psychological work-up that starts with the question,
“Who did you murder? We’ll still let you live here,
but we do need to know.” (AUDIENCE LAUGHING) And then…
Then there are programs narrowly set up to encourage
a particular industry to grow. Which can sound great,
but may not lead to good, permanent jobs.
Take film and TV incentives. At some point
in the last couple of decades, nearly every state decided
that they wanted to be the next Hollywood, and now,
31 states have incentive programs
for film or TV. The problem with that is,
if you are one of them, you have 30 other states
competing with you… hard. And because film productions
are portable, if you try and scale back
your incentives, they’ll just go
wherever a better deal is. Just listen
to this movie producer who has taken advantage
of multiple states’ incentives. I would never make a movie
where I didn’t get an incentive, and I don’t ever intend to. But at the end of the day,
if there’s an incentive… it’s good for me. -And look…
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING) He’s not wrong,
I mean yes, he looks like every woman’s
worst ex-boyfriend, but he’s– he’s not wrong. It is not his job to worry
about whether his incentives are good for the states. It is his job to, I’m assuming,
refer to sushi as “sush,” because he definitely does that. But it should be someone,
someone’s job, to worry about the effect
of these programs. And on some occasions
when states have done that, the news they got was not great. For instance,
Louisiana found that for every dollar
it spent on its film program, it generated just 22 cents
of tax revenue. Which sounds bad,
but which is still better than Maryland,
which made just 10 cents for every dollar spent,
which is still better than Connecticut’s program,
which returned only seven cents on the dollar. That’s like putting a dollar
into a vending machine, and getting a single,
yellow Starburst in return. At some point,
what you’re getting out is not worth what you’re
putting in. And defenders
of economic incentives will say, that’s just a fraction
of the broader economic benefit that they bring.
The problem is, there’s not much evidence
for that. And I know that accounting
for the total economic impact of anything is tricky,
but we are gambling billions of dollars
on little more than faith. And even basic information
can be really hard to come by. One study found that
three quarters of major state
development programs don’t even disclose actual jobs
created or workers trained. So, we’re basically throwing
money down a hole and hoping it bring us
prosperity, which is the exact
business model of a fucking wishing well. (AUDIENCE LAUGHS) And to see this at perhaps
it’s most pointless, just look at Kansas
and Missouri. They’ve offered competing
tax breaks to businesses for years. Which has made things
particularly interesting in one metro area. So,
I’m in Kansas City, Missouri. That’s it behind me. Uh,
there is Kansas City, Kansas. Two states, one metro area,
but those states offer subsidies for job creation. Create a job,
you get a tax break. So, what do businesses do? A Missouri business will move
some employees over to Kansas City, Kansas
and claim a tax break, move ’em back,
claim another tax break. It’s true. For instance,
Kansas City, Missouri lost corporate offices
for all these companies to Kansas City, Kansas
which, in turn, lost offices
for all these companies to Kansas City, Missouri.
And that isn’t creating jobs any more than moving your couch
from the bedroom to the living room
is creating fucking furniture. And this war has come
at a real cost. A local foundation has studied two state-level
incentives programs and estimates that since 2009,
around 6,600 jobs have moved from Missouri
to Kansas. While around 5, 500 jobs have moved
from Kansas to Missouri. Meaning there’s been a net-gain
of around 1,100 jobs on the Kansas side of the line
and a combined cost to the two states of
$331 million in lost tax revenue, and
think about that for a second. You could create a program
where the first 1,100 people to move from– to Kansas City
from Missouri would each get a Ferrari
which they could then drive around a giant pile
of $30 million that the state had set
on fire and you’d actually be
fiscally responsible, because you would have
saved the area $20 million. Look, it is pretty clear
that economic development needs to be done
in a much smarter way. And I don’t fully blame
the companies for this. Because if governments
are going to offer ridiculous incentives,
they are going to take them. So, governments need to
hold themselves, and companies,
more accountable. And if companies aren’t
producing what they promised, we need a system to claw
our money back. But to find that out,
we’re going to need much more oversight
over these programs and what we’re getting
in return. Although, I will tell you one thing that I know for sure
we got in return, theEntouragemovie. That got a $5.8 million
tax credit from California and where else were they
going to filmEntourage?Idaho? So,
California, please know that you indirectly had a hand
in producing a movie, which, may I remind you, had this,
for it’s very first line… I may have to jerk it
before we even get there. You know what,
I’ve got to say this, “Congratulations,
Kentucky Ark Museum, because somehow, you’ve become
the second worst tax-payer subsidized
fuck-boat in this story.”

  1. No wonder so many Americans are anti tax if it's misused like this. It's pathetic. That money as a strange idea, could have been used to built some public infrustructure……which is what it is there for……and this creates jobs…..and this helps companies, I dunno, because people need roads to get to work…..people need hospitals, so they can work.

  2. This show always leads me to do follow up research. This episode lead me to the Arc coverage. I learned so much from the Bill Nye AND ARC GUY tour.
    The Arc founder isn't a total whack job as I imagined.

    The most important thing came in the last 5 minutes — how to hold a phone to take a selfie. Golden info.

  3. Im pretty sure god did not give Noah plans to build a greek ship! Hahah. After modeling the dimensions out of the bible, why would you still build something that was common knowledge from the region. Hahaha. Religious people are so done.

  4. Okay. I had my Alexa turned off. I made the mistake of watching this video in the same fucking room, and as soon as the first "hey where should Amazon locate its office" joke started, the goddamn thing gave me a heart attack and started talking about where the office ended up. So. Thanks for letting me learn something and screw you guys for the heart attack.

  5. Wait, the people at the top don't give a fuck about what it cost someone else. First I'm hearing this…. Said only by people who watch fox news.

  6. That's why I hate answers in genesis and the arch encounter. I hate fundamentalist Christians. I am fine with moderate and progressive Christians but fundamentalist Christians make me angry

  7. this subject is so important. There is so much republican hypocritical BS on this issue (handing out billions of dollars to failing industries like coal and corn) and so much emotionally driven waste on the democratic side. We are wasting so much money in this country its ridiculous.

  8. Amazon doesn’t create full time jobs at all,they only hire people from temp agencies. Only management and administrative jobs are permanent the rest don’t know if they’ll have a shift the next day and the employee has to pay the temp agency in most cases for transportation etc. Amazon is basically extortion

  9. A proposal: nationalize Amazon, put it under democratic control, and "compensate" Bezos with a $10 Whataburger voucher.

  10. The Ark Encounter is still the dumbest economic ecentive rescepiant. For nothing else then that it is a monument to making kids scientifically illiterate.

  11. citizen action is needed to end all tax breaks and incentives. until that happens areas will be in constant competition for who can pleasure the wealthy best, and will keep being exploited. there should be no benefits for large businesses at all, only some help for small businesses. put chains and big box stores out of business. they are the reason good jobs are so few. whenever you shop at Walmart or eat at McDonald's you're putting a local business out of business. those companies won't invest in your community or offer decent pay. support small business instead.

  12. Christianity is merely the cheap finery. The only thing these scientists like Dawkins, Hawkings, Hitchens, or any of them stand opposed to is paper plates in the system. Christianity is a mid-progress dagger, so to speak. A > B > C. You know the good stuff.

  13. He mentions that no one has ever seen Goliath, so I looked it up. While it's probably true that not many people have watched it, the few people who have must have really liked it. It's going on it's third season and has an 8.2/10 on IMDB, so it must have something going for it. Not many shows maintain a score of over 8. Esp after a cpl seasons.

  14. You guys all get that it was never about the jobs, right? That's just a fancy buzz word corrupt politicians use to pull the wool over your eyes while they give LITERALLY BILLIONS to their buddies, the wealthy corporations and businessmen that are actually controlling the country.
    Whoever you vote for, only vote for a candidate with a proven record of being anti-establishment. Those are the only ones you can trust.

  15. No infrastructure, Health care or quality education but corporate welfare that is not nonsensical at all…

  16. A very capitalist view over a capitalist country and it's economy. Incentives are not the only thing to be seen on Jobs creation.

  17. Corporate Conservative Platform: Raise your taxes as we cut the rich classes taxes, get rid of your social security, cut your pension, cut all funding for programs to assist you, and then MAKE MORE JOBS. They won’t have good pay or any laws protecting you but hey, gave you what you asked for.
    “What luck for rulers that men do not think” – Hitler

  18. Rich mans world (immortal technique)
    I spend my day pairin' America overseas
    Pension for the workers, nigga please
    Embezzlement etiquette, private settlement
    I'm better with confederate rhetoric
    From my mansion in Connecticut
    Foreclose, evict hoes out of tenement
    I twist words like a speech impediment
    I hope you got good credit, bitch
    If not, better get a new job with benefits
    While I play golf with niggas I get cheddar with
    New money buys brand new carats
    My old money bought your great grandparents
    You got grills in your mouth, I ain't mad at ya
    I own every goldmine in South Africa
    Thanks, baby, you made me a billion
    Plus I own a building
    For each one of my children's children; that's the shit
    Snort coke in the whip, Miss USA suckin' my dick
    Yeah, what! Fuck the law, ‘cause real jail is for suckas
    I go to country club prison, you dumb motherfuckers
    You know my CEO, corporate steeze, please
    Overthrow governments overseas in a breeze
    Politicians in my pockets for a few hundred G's
    So if I'm ever in court, my assets'll never freeze

    I got a job and a house and a bank account
    When I'm out, I doubt that's something you can say
    And if not then I'll fake death like Kenneth Lay
    Make money everyday the world burns on its axis
    While y'all strugglin' to pay taxes
    I'm gettin' my money the fastest
    Memos and faxes, shredded up documents
    Slush funds through the corrupt continents
    But they don't want me indicted
    ‘Cause they don't want my dirty laundry aired when I fight it
    Don't get my lawyers excited
    ‘Cause what good is a law if you can't rewrite it?
    I got CIA traitors, dictators
    So fuck y'all whistleblowers and haters!
    (Sheeeiiitt!) I'll invest money from al-Qaeda
    In the bank 9/11 widows go to later
    Capitalism's who I pray to, fuck the state of the world
    Money talks, so what the fuck I need to say to your girl?
    Yacht in the ocean, coastin' with the sails out
    Hey, America, thanks for the bailouts
    I made off with the Banco Ambrosiano
    Got away scott-free like El Vaticano
    Activists act a bitch, get mad at me
    ‘Cause of my tax-free charity
    80 percent to the staff and company
    And 20 percent to the homeless and hungry
    The country gotta pay the Fed Reserve
    Kick back to the banksters—haven't you learned?
    You protest cops or patrols on the street
    But I bought city hall, so I own the police
    Email, Facebook, and the shit you tweet
    All the phone companies, so I heard you speak
    And my suggestion is your correction
    No elections, sex with no affection
    No invention will benefit the world of man
    Will exist 'til I've got the money in my hand
    World Bank interest rate damn rape on the spot
    But I'm a gangsta, you gon' take my money, like it or not, nigga
    (I got your country in my pocket, motherfucker!)

  19. Lets get one thing straight you dumb "motherfuckers", big companies like amazon, should never get 0 tax brake, because when you give them that you're basically passing on that economic strain down the economic food-chain, making whoever live is the bottom (95% of you dumb "motherfuckers") even less capable of surviving in the economy you just made.
    It doesn't even make fucking sense giving an International, successful, big, shady company a fucking tax brake.
    If anything y'all dumb "motherfuckers" need to come together and define a minimum income tax, to be applied to the enterprises, i.e.: Amazon, despite their HQ location inside the nation and what not's.
    Sorry for the harsh words but apparently it works wonders on you dumb "motherfuckers".

  20. The company increases the total property, sales and income tax. I'm not sure why people keep saying it's a lost.

  21. It seems to me like the states need to stop battling each other. USA should outlaw state tax incentives and only offer American tax incentives. So that it's America vs the world, not each state vs the world

  22. Why can't americans pronounce the o in „jobs" correctly??
    They fuck it up so hard the end up saying „jabs" instead

  23. And Andrew Yang's UBI is a handout at least UBI will put back more in the economy than these handouts do

  24. I salute you my English friend. You are fucking funny and damn good at making sure people know just what a vapid sociopath trump is and toadies and of course + the insufferable kids in all their self importance and just as delusional as their daddy. You make me laugh bro thanks!

  25. That ark thing is even worse as explained in Bill Nyes doc, the idiot that runs that place thinks that evolution doesn’t exist and that dinosaurs existed at the same time as other modern day animals and some Dino’s are even on the fucking ark. That place teaches children make believe instead of fact. It also tries to teach that global warming isn’t real, the universe isn’t real it’s only the earth and the sun, lgbtq people aren’t welcome, only Christian’s (which is discrimination) and when Bill Nye went there that place generally broke his heart. Like the ark would’ve been that place is full of shit

  26. dude, you gotta do an update on the Ark Encounter —>
    …they've got Raptors now…

  27. I don’t think the Stonecrest Georgia plan to offer them a city name is that outrageous. Marlboro has an entire country renamed for them in SC.

  28. Apart from the fact that it is failing, here is the thing to know about the Ark Encounter. It is, on one side, a scale replica of the biblical ark. It took hundreds of workers, including qualified engineers, years to build. Noah, who was 500 years old at the time he built his ark, was not qualified, had almost no help, had to gather all of the world's animal species and put them on a seaworthy vessel.

    Basically the Ark Encounter is a multi-million dollar debunking of a bible story.

  29. He's right, I've never heard of anybody watching or mentioning the show Goliath. Amazon has become too powerful.

  30. The Big Lie, money for rich is good in every way but money for poor is welfare socialism that ruins lives.
    The Big Truth , economic development works better building up than trickling down.

  31. Corporations vs. People

    The paradigm is shifting from

    Day after day it's becoming more and more clear. Both are fighting for control of the government. Corporations usually win.

    Look at this list of problems facing the nation. These major problems all have something in common. PEOPLE vs. CORPORATIONS.

    People want it. Major media corporations don't.

    People addicted. Drug corporations making big profits.

    People lost their homes. Banks got 700 billion dollar bail out.

    People want reasonable gun laws. NRA / Gun Lobby opposes change.

    5. F – 35 FIGHTER JET ( Cost 1 trillion dollars), oil wars, unaccounted military spending.
    Capital enough to end poverty in the country. Weapons Manufacturers.

    6. TAX REFORM.
    People got little relief. Corporations got massive tax cuts.

    People want reasonable privacy. Corporations want personal data to focus ads.

    Medicare for all. Health Care Business Profits.

    People for common sense change. Polluting Corporations.

    National Parks for all. Corporate controlled land for profit.

    11. MEDIA
    People need to know about issues and solutions. Media concentrates on scandal to avoid investigative journalism of corporation abuses.

    12. TOBACCO
    Smokers addicted. Tobacco company profits.

    College Education . College profits.

    Corporations protect their profits, but the creators get little for their work.

    15 ADVERTISING. Corporations promoting themselves, their service, and product as perfect. People blocking out the onslaught of ads, spam, mailings, etc.

    16 PLANE TRAVEL. Corporate profits. Customer comfort and safety.

    We have three political parties, the Republican Corporate Party, the Democratic Corporate Party, and all the rest of us that don't have lobbyists.


    The list is just started. What would you add to it?

  32. This is why every state, city, county, and the federal gov are in debt. Basically every gov agency Is in massive debt. The usa has over 80 trillion in unfunded liabilities. Plus the 21 trillion nation debt. And we are goin deeper every minute. We will never be able to pay it back. Ready we pay 7% of the entire national budget each year just on the interest and its rising. So imagine when interest rates go up we'll be paying upwards of 12 to 16 percent. We are screwed.


  34. Hey Bezos, seems like Americans hate you and your company. Don't worry, you are most welcome in Mumbai, the financial capital of India. You'll get low cost and hardworking labor that won't throw hissy fits over minimum wage. You'll get politicians that welcome you instead of taxing you to death.
    I'd love to work at your esteemed corporation!

  35. This obsession with jobs is retarded. We haven't needed everyone working to meet society's consumer demands for decades. If companies stopped outsourcing they'd just automate instead. Capitalism is dying. Time to accept the inevitable and move on. It was a good system while it was viable, but it's not anymore because it depends on the demand for human labor, and that's being replaced by technology.

  36. What John Oliver doesn't seem to have thought through is the fact that if Amazon doesn't move to your city, there won't be any taxes to collect. At least if you give a $7 billion tax break, you'll still be able to collect something

  37. Moving a job from one state to another is not the same thing as 'creating' a job. The same way as transferring your money from one account to another is not the same thing as creating value.

  38. Amazon, Microsoft, and Boeing have had a huge hand in the housing shortage in the greater Seattle metro area, and the whole west side of the state has seen housing prices skyrocket as a result. Cue a homeless epidemic and the normalization of co-living (sharing the cost of living with family/friends/other roommates). If you ALMOST had Amazon come to your state, you dodged a bullet, friends. Large corporations don't give a shit about your community.
    Additionally, no one I've known who worked at the lower tiers at Amazon had anything close to a decent experience. So unless you have the education and experience to work higher up, it's a last resort job, and a miserable one at that.

  39. The only news show that's allowed to talk shit about things its parent companies do and that's why I trust him more than any cable news

  40. Being from Indiana, I can confirm we are all at least that level of petty or higher

  41. We don't need to attract employers to give us jobs, we can make our own jobs through public and community banking providing loans to start-up cooperatives. We can also supply everyone with jobs using a federal job guarantee. We can also help provide funding to small entrepreneurs and consumers through providing a universal basic income plus.

  42. Enormous corporate empires don’t pay the taxes for infrastructure or social programs, so guess who does? That’s right, it’s you. Goodbye American pie, your slice is very thin while working your ass off for peanuts. Oh but just get an education. Yeah start a job after college $50,000 in debt, housing you can barely afford and cars that cost,… well you know. Hey, but you’re free right? Neo-slavery is the cage you cannot see. Good luck. Man I feel so sorry for young people these days. It’s a fragile house of cards under the best of circumstances for the average citizen. Don’t get sick or fall behind for any reason – you are very replaceable. Live in fear and stress is the new motto.

  43. Amazon is valued at $1,000,000,000,000. If Jeff Bezos gave the entire value of Amazon to the Federal Government for "schools and roads," it would not even cover social security spending (1.25 trillion) for 1 year. People (and John Oliver) do not understand the scale when they whine about tax breaks. Also, tax breaks lead to larger tax receipts. Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan, Bush, and now Trump have granted tax breaks to the wealthy and the result has been an increase in tax revenue. Every single time. Ireland has among the lowest tax rates in the EU and the highest growth in tax revenue. Finally, everyone should know that it doesn't make sense to say "a tax break is giving a company money." Not taking does not mean giving.

Leave a Reply
