trump thread

[Ben]

my point about the amazon in nyc thing is (and here's where it's important to point out that we both know the same 2% of this issue, you know 2% that i dont know, and i MAY know 3% that you dont know, so a-ha i have checkmated you my friend with my superior total 5%) that she co-opted the strength of her progressive "rhetoric" to gloss over the nuance in her constituency. if she has sat down with the figures she would have had to face being in the wrong

it seems much of the amazon hate came from folks (not just her) in local govt demonizing amazon and saying that the $3B in credits the city was giving them should go to other places, but they totally misunderstood that that $3B didn't actually exist and was just a reserve set of amazon money that amazon could keep. that is, if amazon showed up and made $10B and had to pay back half of that to the city, they'd only have to pay back $2B total. it was just a theoretical incentive and the true net effect (in this strict sense) was that they lost the opportunity to collect the $2B (ive pulled the $10B, half, and $2B numbers conveniently out of my ass)

so, im a liberal progressive and i yell about popular things (no war! clean energy! more gays! high taxes! woo!) and it gets people excited such that i start to think that i know what's best for everyone even when that ends up not being true. in fact, in my effort to protect the disenfranchised of my constituency, i ignore that 70-80% of black/latino folk in NYC are totally in favor of the amazon deal and that it's favorited 60-35 or so in total

but if i backflip on this and say "ok ok so capitalism bad, big company bad, naughty men should die, but this ones popular so let's go" then i lose my progressive cred. if i try to push forward with getting amazon out, i at least have to justify it objectively because its against the people's wishes, right? well, she's notoriously bad at that and just spread this $3B loss garbage that doesnt make any sense