20 THE QUEENS COURIER • NOVEMBER 15, 2018 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
Ron Kim seeks to block Amazon subsidies for student debt relief
BY JENNA BAGCAL
jbagcal@qns.com/ @jenna_bagcal
Assemblyman Ron Kim announced
new legislation that would help millions
of New Yorkers facing crippling
student debt in response to
New York state offering Amazon
hundreds of millions of dollars in
subsidies to develop a second headquarters
in Long Island City.
Kim’s announcement came immediately
after retail giant Amazon
confirmed that Long Island City
and Arlington, Virginia, would be
the locations for the company’s new
headquarters.
The law, entitled the New Yorkers
Financial Freedom Act, would redirect
taxpayer revenue from corporate
and welfare subsidies toward buying
and canceling distressed student
debt. According to the assemblyman,
the implementation of a debt cancellation
program could add, on average,
between $86 billion and $108
billion per year to the economy in
addition to a rise in job creation and
a decline in the unemployment rate.
“In New York, repurposing money
used for corporate welfare to buy
and cancel distressed student debt
would cover roughly 84 percent
of total troubled student loans.
Approximately $8.25 billion of giveaways
can be reallocated to relieve
$9.8 billion of distressed student
debt,” Kim said.
Kim took to Twitter and doubled
down on his anti-Amazon
stance, asking why Democrats in the
Assembly and Senate were not stopping
Cuomo from giving the company
taxpayer money.
“What’s the point of having a
full majority Dems in the Senate &
Assembly when we can’t (or won’t)
stop one man from giving away billions
of taxpayers money to mega
corporations & super monopolies??
#stopamazon #endcorporatewelfare
#cancelstudentdebt,” wrote Kim on
Twitter.
Just days before introducing the legislation,
Kim co-authored a New York
Times op-ed with Zephyr Teachout railing
against Governor Andrew Cuomo
and his administration for the subsidies.
He called the governor’s actions, which
included a joke about renaming himself
“Amazon Cuomo” before the company
confi rmed its decision, “peak sycophancy.”
“Giving Jeff Bezos hundreds of millions
of dollars is an immoral waste
of taxpayers money when it’s more
than clear that the money would create
more jobs and more economic
growth when it is used to relieve
student debt,” said Kim in a written
statement.
The assemblyman from the 40th
District equated giving Amazon
Image courtesy of the offi ce of Assemblyman Ron Kim
large amounts of corporate welfare
to “Donald Trump giving trillions
in corporate tax breaks at the federal
level” and added that there is no
correlation between job creation and
“corporate giveaways.”
“If we used this money to cancel
distressed student debt instead, there
would be immediate positive GDP
growth, job creation, and impactful
social-economic returns,” Kim said.
In his announcement, the assemblyman
cited studies which showed
that incentives result in negative
effects including “distorting business
investment decisions or unduly
enriching companies that would have
made investments without the need
of incentives.” He added that experts
like Timothy Bartik of the W.E.
Upjohn Institute for Employment
Research found that using incentives
did not change wages, unemployment
rates or economic growth
in the places he studied.
“A program to cancel student
debt executed in 2017 results in an
increase in real GDP, a decrease in
the average unemployment rate, and
little to no inflationary pressure over
the 10-year horizon of our simulations,
while interest rates increase
only modestly,” Kim said.
In the upcoming days, Kim said
that he would be announcing the
details of the New Yorkers for
Financial Freedom Act on www.gutcheck.
us.
in Queens
LIC: TALE OF THE TAPE
01 More than 170,000 residents live in Long Island City
Approximately 115,000 people and 6,600 business are located
in the neighborhood
More than 16,800 housing units have been completed since
2006, and another 11,700 are expected to open by 2020
LIC has 8.2 million existing square feet in commercial and
industrial space; another 3.4 million square feet will be
added by 2020
Employers in LIC include Altice USA, Boyce Technologies,
Estee Lauder, Brooks Brothers, Citibank, Fidelis Care,
J.Crew/Madewell, JetBlue, Lyft, MANA Products, Ralph
Lauren, Silvercup Studios, TEI Group, Uber and Vaynermedia
More than 50,000 students attend higher education
institutions in or near Long Island City, including LaGuardia
Community College, CUNY Law School and the Cornell Tech
campus on Roosevelt Island
Approximately 51% of LIC residents are between 20 and 44
years of age
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Source: LIC Partnership Photo via Shutterstock
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