Friday, November 16, 2018

Of pedantry and helipads!

Amazon, seen here dividing, and spreading
like some kind of...of...what's the word?
Amazon announced this week that it'll be building its second headquarters in both New York and in Arlington Virginia, which, I mean, second headquarters? Not to get pedantic-wait, no-to get enthusiastically pedantic about this: can one have more than one headquarters? Like, by definition? And even if you can-you can't, but even if one can, can one then further sub-divide an already impossible second headquarters into two second headquarters? Doesn't one of them become a third headquarters? Or a .5? .33333?

I'm going to stop there before I venture any further down the path of hack 90's observational comic, but seriously. Second headquarters.
"And why do they call them headquarters? There's only
going to be three of them, shouldn't they be headthirds?"
-Some hack
"We've wasted our lives."
-Mathematicians
In further linguistic fuckery, Jeff Bezos originally announced that the new headquarters, called HQ2, would be a 'full equal' to the company's actually headquarters in Seattle so who the hell knows? The new headquarters are both one and many. Words and numbers meaningless. Well, some words and numbers. The HQ2 before it was split was going to create fifty thousand new jobs with salaries averaging $100,000, but now both cities should see twenty-five thousand new jobs, which not too bad right? Wrong. This is apparently really quite terrible.

Oh, don't look so glum.
You're still widely reviled. 
New Yorkers are quite upset about what quickly became a behind closed doors sweetheart deal and yesterday the city saw its first non-Trump related protest in recent memory. According to this, the subsidies and perks Arlington and New York gave Amazon for the privilege of hosting the company that is single handedly killing American retail, amount to $2.8 billion in tax breaks and straight up cash. Oh, and better still, the headquarters will actually cost the cities tens of thousands of dollars per job they create.

Not to mention the fact that renters in New York now have twenty-five thousand new six-figure earners to compete with in the housing market.
"Is that the phone number, or the rent? Hey-o!"
-That hack from earlier
"Take the subway? Like a poor?"
-Jeff Bezos, aghast
Anyway, said headquarters's...heads quarters? Like mothers in law? Doesn't matter. They're going to have helipads. Yeah. While they're still negotiating with Arlington, the New York office will have a helipad; something that's been illegal in New York since 9/11. They've agreed to limit themselves to just one hundred and twenty landings per year, but since this is one of three headquarters, I can't imagine that'll be too much of a hardship for them. In fact, nothing will be a hardship for them. They'll literally be above it all.

And look, obviously the outrage isn't about helipads-well, it's not just about helipads. It's about a company getting tax payer money and perks for doing their literal job, while schools and public services are going underfunded. And also, they're getting goddamn helipads.
I mean, can't Jeff Bezos just hang on to one of these
while he glides majestically over a sea of angry
New Yorkers his overpaid employees just displaced?

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