This past week Amazon announced it was no longer considering New York City for a second headquarters.

One does not need to be a Thursday morning quarterback to figure that one out. Virtually anyone in between the coasts would consider the selection crazy on its face. It’s a massive culture clash, to begin with. How would you arrive at some sort of an arrangement between a perceived anti-union powerful corporate entity and an ever moving leftward anti-business (and consequently anti-job creation) political entity that considers itself the economic center of the nation (and world)?

Three billion is a nice subsidy but not worth it to Amazon to put itself in an untenable position. The New York governor thought there might be a minor backlash to the deal. Amazon appeared to be totally unprepared for the unexpected and was blindsided.

What can we learn from this endeavor? Maybe from the corporate view companies may need to create an executive vice president position, whose sole responsibility is to think the opposite of the corporate culture and be prepared to manage the unexpected and the unknown.

Political jurisdictions that move more and more to the left might have to do a reality check that at some point their anti-business message will get through and businesses will not entertain moving into their jurisdictions. However, it’s unlikely those rabid leftists will ever understand that there are limits to political philosophy.

The lesson for Minnesota leftists could be that NYC was a warning flag. Any business looking to move to this state would need to carefully weigh the possibility that the DFL could take the state senate in 2020 and we could have a repeat of the 2013 anti-business, anti-job creation legislation.

Let us suggest that a “left” and more “left” culture here could add new meaning to the term “left”—left out.

Bob Smith, 3rd
Gopher State Politics Institute
February 19, 2019