Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Blasts Amazon As They Seek Lobbyists for HQ in New York

Newly-elected socialist New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked Amazon as the massive company attempts to navigate New York City’s laws and regulations in their bid to build their new headquarters.

Amazon recently struck a deal with Democrat leaders New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo that promised to give Amazon at least $2.5 billion in incentives in order to build their new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. The headquarters is expected to employ 25,000 workers.

However, the deal doesn’t sit well with Ocasio-Cortez. She took to Twitter to blast Amazon in a series of tweets.

What Ocasio-Cortez gets right about the Amazon deal

While Amazon doesn’t plan on building helipads as part of their deal with New York, Ocasio-Cortez’s point hits home.

This might be the only sensible thing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has written as a candidate and incoming congresswoman. Amazon shouldn’t be getting these massive subsidies at the expense of taxpayers. Why aren’t  Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo giving these breaks to the working men and women – the very men and women who work hard every day to pursue the American dream but are rewarded by their government with increased taxes that go to subsidize building projects for a billion-dollar company like Amazon?

In fact, Amazon bragged to Fox News about how much money they have invested in the U.S. since 2011: “We have created over 250,000 full time, full benefit jobs across the U.S. that now have a minimum $15 an hour pay. We have invested more than $160 billion in the U.S. economy since 2011 which has created over 360,000 indirect jobs in construction, hospitality, logistics, and other professional services.”

If you have invested over $160 billion in the U.S. economy in seven years, what’s another $2.5 billion going to hurt you to build your new headquarters? Governments, whether local, state, or federal, should stop subsidizing corporations at the expense of taxpayers. What ends up happening is these corporations become extensions of the government due to the contracts they have with the government. No longer are they actually providing value to their original customers, but are instead solely focused on getting that taxpayer money from the government.

A perfect example right now is General Motors, the company that was infamously bailed out in 2008. The bailout cost us, the taxpayers, collectively tens of billions of dollars. Less than a decade after their bailout, General Motors is now shutting seven of their plants, including four plants in the United States.

And guess who is having to suffer the consequences when the company tanks again, thanks to misguided government subsidies? The people who actually work in those plants. It’s not the big wig CEOs or the stockholders. It’s the workers who no longer have jobs. It’s the restaurant owners in those towns who lose paying customers. It’s the small businesses located around the plants whose customers will more than likely be leaving. It’s your hard-working, tax-paying American who suffers the consequences while the CEOs get off scott-free and don’t suffer any consequences for their own blunders.

What Ocasio-Cortez gets wrong about the Amazon deal

The stupidity of Ocasio-Cortez, or at the very least the double-think, is on full display in her rant against Amazon. On the one hand, she doesn’t want the government subsidizing corporations, but in the very same breath she advocates for that money to spent on other ventures such as schools. Now, I know you might be thinking: How can this man hate schools? Just think about the kids! Well, I am thinking about the kids and the hard facts show throwing money at education has been a real loser.

Forbes notes that in 2011 that the United States spent “$11,841 for every student enrolled in traditional primary and secondary public schools.” This was good enough to rank in the top 5 of all countries in spending in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In fact, the cost per student was $2,973 more than the OECD average. What did that spending get us? Well if you want to look at education rankings, it put the United States 27th in math, 17th in reading, and 20th in science.

However, what public education has really given us is a dumbed-down populace that doesn’t have a basic understanding about the history of our great country. It’s given us a generation of people who value socialism and communism over industriousness and capitalism. Not only has it taught a generation to value one of the most heinous ideologies of human history, but it’s also made them emotionally weak. Students who attend publicly-funded universities whine to their teachers to get their tests cancelled, they have cry-ins, and even hotlines for people getting upset over Ben Shapiro or Milo Yiannopoulos coming to visit their campus.

Throwing money at the current education system will only foster the coddling of more of these people who lack spine and promote an ideology that is antithetical to the idea of America and the American dream.

New York shouldn’t subsidize Amazon to the tune of $2.5 billion and the government should rethink how they spend education money. Maybe trim the fat of their administration costs and use that savings to empower the teachers who are actually involved with educating students. And who knows, maybe with some emotionally tougher students, New York and other localities won’t have to deal with idiotic policies like banning songs that mention Jesus.

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