Amazon's New Headquarters
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The online retail giant has announced that it will split its long-anticipated new headquarters between Long Island City In New York City, and Arlington, Virginia.
Some 238 cities across North America had competed for the role. But many residents at the lucky winners are angry about the billions of dollars in alleged "corporate welfare" offered by their city authorities to lure Amazon in. Winner's curse?
Michelle Fleury meets the protestors in Long Island City, while Edwin Lane speaks to urban studies theorist Richard Florida, Seattle-based professor of public policy Jake Vigdor, and to Vinous Ali of the British tech industry body TechUK.
(Picture: Boxes with the Amazon logo turned into a frown face are stacked up after a protest against Amazon in Long Island City; Credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Edwin Lane, and this is Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:05.7 | In this program, tech giant Amazon is moving to New York, but not everybody's happy about it. |
| 0:11.9 | The state, the governor and the city, both seem to have given away $1.5 billion in tax breaks |
| 0:17.8 | to one of the richest companies in the world, while our trains don't run and |
| 0:21.5 | this neighborhood has no schools. |
| 0:23.3 | Amazon's getting billions in tax breaks. |
| 0:26.3 | Are they worth it? |
| 0:27.4 | And you know what? |
| 0:28.1 | The real key in building our economy is not to lure an Amazon, it's to create an Amazon. |
| 0:33.4 | We should be focused on investing in our universities, our local technology businesses. |
| 0:38.1 | That's all in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:43.4 | Just over a year ago, Amazon, one of the world's most valuable companies, |
| 0:48.9 | announced a plan to build a second headquarters to rival its home in Seattle in the US. |
| 0:55.0 | But it didn't say where. |
| 0:57.0 | Instead, it invited cities from across America to submit bids. |
| 1:02.0 | And it was unbelievably popular. |
| 1:04.3 | There were 238 bids from across the US, Canada and even Mexico, |
| 1:10.6 | all of them falling over each other to convince Amazon |
| 1:13.3 | to bring thousands of highly paid tech jobs to their city. |
| 1:17.6 | There were slick marketing campaigns. |
| 1:20.1 | Newark in New Jersey offered $7 billion in tax breaks. |
| 1:24.4 | Tuxon in Arizona gifted Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder in the world's richest man, |
... |
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