New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio Wednesday defended the tax breaks Amazon will receive for bringing one of its two headquarters to Queens, saying that New York is getting back far more than it's giving.
"[There are] 25,000 new jobs coming to New York City," de Blasio told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "It could go as high as 40,000. We are going to see in New York City alone over $13 billion in tax revenue coming to our city so that we can do things to help all New Yorkers."
Amazon was attracted to New York City's "strong social fabric," and its "incredible and diverse workforce," said the mayor, noting that the internet retail giant wanted a "whole host" of subsidies and concessions it didn't get.
"What we got in the end was a nine-to-one ratio of the amount of revenue we will give back for any kind of incentives that they got," he added.
New York and Virginia where Amazon's headquarters will be split, provided incentives worth a total of about $2.8 million.
But de Blasio said there is a series of automatic incentives that are available to any company coming into the state, and into New York City's outer boroughs.
New York drew a "hard bargain," the mayor added, but will get a "lot more" tax revenue and a number of jobs that is almost "unimaginable" in a single transaction.
"Those jobs need to go to everyday New Yorkers," he said. "Those jobs need to go to public housing residents."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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