Amazon HQ2, America's Great Divide & Those Left Behind, Robert Reich
- The Long Island City waterfront in Queens, New York.
What Amazon HQ2 Tells Us About America's Great Divide, Robert Reich. Tomorrows technologies are flocking to hubs of innovation on the east and west coasts, while everyone else is left being left behind. The Guardian, Nov. 14, 2018. <EXCERPTS>
Amazon has decided that its much-vaunted second headquarters will be split between Long Island City in Queens, and Crystal City, across the Potomac from Washington DC. Amazons decision coincides with Americas political tumult. Its main headquarters is in Seattle, one of the most liberal cities in the most liberal of states. Its picks- New York and metropolitan Washington- are liberal, too.
Amazon could easily have decided to locate its second headquarters in, say, Indianapolis, Indiana. After all, Indianapolis was one of the finalists in Amazons search for a second headquarters, and the city vigorously courted the firm. Not incidentally, Indianapolis is a Republican city in a bright red Republican state. Amazons decision wasnt based on political partisanship, but it does expose the real political and economic divide in America today.
Technology isnt a thing. Its a process of group learning. And that learning goes way beyond the confines of any individual company, like Amazon. It now happens in geographic clusters. In America, those clusters are now mostly along the east and west coasts in places like Seattle, New York, metropolitan Washington, Boston and Los Angeles. Indianapolis may be a nice place to live, but it doesnt have nearly as big a cluster of talent as do these others.
The result is widening inequalities of place. Increasingly, bright young people from all over America, typically with college degrees, are streaming into these places, where the sum of their individual capacities for invention is far greater than theyd be separately. The ideas sparked there are delivering streams of new designs and products to the rest of the world. In return, the money pouring into these places from the rest of the world is delivering high wages, good living conditions (museums, restaurants, cafes, recreation) and unbounded wealth.
Relative to these booming mega-cities, Americas heartland is becoming older, less educated and poorer. The so-called tribal divide in American politics, which Trump has exploited, is better understood in these economic and cultural terms: on one side, mega-urban clusters centered around technologies of the future; on the other, great expanses of relatively open space inhabited by people left behind. - Read More...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/14/amazon-hq-what-bezos-choice-says-about-us-society
Related: 'It's Obscene and Wrong': Amazon HQ2 gets typically warm New York welcome. Residents wonder if company will be good corporate citizen as governor hails decision to put headquarters in Long Island City.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/13/amazon-hq2-second-headquarters-new-york-long-island-city-response