Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is doing a victory lap on Twitter and ‘waiting on the haters to apologize’.
Why? Retail giant Amazon just announced plans to open a corporate office in NYC—without any tax incentives from the state.
Ocasio-Cortez garnered a lot of negative attention with her campaign against Amazon’s plan to build HQ2 in Long Island City, just outside of Manhattan. Proponents of the deal claim it would have brought thousands of jobs to the area, but the city was offering nearly $3 billion in tax incentives to entice Bezos to open up shop.
“Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation and the power of the richest man in the world,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted after it was announced that the company was looking to build elsewhere.
Amazon is paying $0 in taxes on $11+ billion in profit.
$0 for schools.
$0 for firefighters.
$0 for infrastructure.
$0 for research and healthcare.Why should corporations that contribute nothing to the pot be in a position to take billions from the public? https://t.co/IdsuKaVOTU
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 14, 2019
Look who is laughing now?
The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon will be expanding in New York City and recently signed a lease on 335,000 square feet of business space. While it is true that the newly leased space is smaller than the Long Island City plans, this expansion came without any special tax incentives.
Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions https://t.co/AC64pG0nZI pic.twitter.com/xzCepkX4AV
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 6, 2019
She even took some time to address the “GOP disinfo” that has been floating around since the announcement:
– “It’s in Manhattan, not Queens”: If you live in NYC, you would know people commute to work. Amazon would not have paid taxes for many, many years and not contribute to fixing our crumbling subway system. So lots of added strain, no benefit.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) December 7, 2019
