NY’s anti-Amazon politicians feel the wrath of local entrepreneurs and business owners at ‘victory’ rally

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The radically left-wing New York City politicians, activists and unions leaders who successfully pressured the tech giant Amazon into not expanding its operations into the debt-laden, high-unemployment city are already beginning to pay a steep price for their economic illiteracy.

Over in Queens, where Amazon had sought to build a new headquarters, bystanders heckled a group of left-wing activists and politicians as they held a victory rally Thursday afternoon to celebrate the tech giant’s announcement earlier that day that it’d be scrapping its NYC project.

Watch:

The anger was palpable, and for very legitimate reasons.

“This was a gift,” one of the hecklers, local eatery owner Josh Bowen, said to the New York Post, describing Amazon’s since-cancelled plans. “Our dumb, glory-seeking politicians decided this was their hot-button issue, f–king over our people for political gain.”

He wasn’t wrong. Had the project gone through, NYC would’ve benefited from 25,000 new jobs, billions in additional tax revenue and a “soaring interest in local real estate,” as one columnist put it.

“With the withdrawal from its proposed campus in Long Island City, the company has snatched away potentially tens of billions in tax revenue, soaring interest in local real estate, plus new stores, restaurants and guaranteed employment for everyone from babysitters to dog-walkers,” the Post’s Andrea Peyser noted in a column published late Thursday.

“Most any municipality in the nation would eagerly grab the $27.5 billion tax windfall to be paid over 25 years, for the cost of just shy of $3 billion in taxes and subsidies over the same period.”

That $3 billion in so-called “subsidies” is the rub that rubbed left-wing political leaders like socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez the wrong way so much so that following Amazon’s announcement, they literally celebrated what everybody else is now calling a great loss:

The $3 billion in so-called subsidies would have just been a tax break — one quickly offset by the billions in additional taxes NYC would have collected over the next 25 years. But never mind such facts.

“It is never bad to fight for rights of people and working people,” councilman Jimmy Van Bramer babbled to his small audience of supporters at the victory rally Thursday.

“Even when we were faced with the richest man in the world and the richest company in the world, we did not buckle. Amazon doesn’t need our $3 billion … rather than adopting our New York values, they took their marbles and went somewhere else.”

Congratulations?

“I think it’s an incredibly short-sighted decision by local politicians who just want to be heard and rattle their swords,” local business owner David Katzen said to the Post. “I’m very disappointed. I’m in construction. It would have benefited me. It would have supported huge construction projects.”

“For years we’ve needed large commercial businesses to come here to Queens. The return on that $3 billion was incredible,” Frank Raffaele, the owner of a local cafe chain, added.

It’s called return on investment, or ROI, and it’s a term economically illiterate leftist politicians don’t understand in the slightest. Their concerns seemingly only lie with the here and now. For instance, it doesn’t bother them that their rejection of Amazon will only further disincentive other businesses from setting up shop in the non-business-friendly city.

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

“Not only have we been stripped of a great opportunity for real employment growth and related monetary benefits, the fleeing of Amazon will reverberate for years to come,” Peyser argued. “The officers of other corporations considering setting up shop in the city will realize they’d rather stick pins in their eyes than tangle with New York’s loathsome political class.”

Not to mention the state and city’s exorbitant taxes and overburdensome regulations. That a corporation like Amazon even considered locating one of its facilities in the left-wing city was a miracle unto itself — one that the perpetually ungrateful left decided to take for granted.

The irony, as noted by one social media user, is that the owner and founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is himself a far-leftist who also owners The Washington Post:

Perhaps he’ll rethink his political views? Probably not. Like a great man once said, “Once a left-wing idiot, always a left-wing idiot.” Sad!

HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE MISSING …

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Vivek Saxena

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