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Amazon City

Posted October. 23, 2017 07:47,   

Updated October. 23, 2017 08:57

한국어

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that more than 80 cities submitted a proposal to Amazon’s public bidding finding a city with more than one million inhabitants to build the second headquarters in North America. Governors are eager to host Amazon that announced to invest five billion dollars (around 5.64 trillion won) to build its second headquarters and employ 50,000 some locals.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie proposed seven billion dollars in tax incentives over the next 10 years. That is two billion dollars more than Amazon’s investment. Stonecrest Mayor Jason Lary in Georgia State has announced that he is willing to rename the city “Amazon” and has offered Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos life-time mayoralty. Arizona's largest city, Phoenix, has also suggested changing the name to “Phoenix, Amazona.”

The address of Kia Motors factory near Atlanta, Georgia, is “7777 KIA Parkway West Point, GA 31833.” The state government paved the road and built a training institute for the company when Kia invested one trillion won to build a factory in 2010. Kia received 500 billion won in total including tax incentives back from the state government. The governor himself saw that the factory was given an address with four 7s, the lucky number. Local residents call it “KIA-Ville” that provided jobs to an economically declining, textile industry-based city. The city of Mlaba in Poland changed its centuries-old name to “Mlaba-LG town” after LG Electronics’ TV manufacturing factory was constructed in October 2003.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster said, “Samsung makes me happy,” in the public hearing about a safeguard on Samsung and LG washing machines held by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington, D.C., against Whirlpool, the U.S. washing machine manufacturer that demanded the government to lay high tariffs on Samsung and LG. Samsung Electronics invested 380 million dollars (around 435 billion won) to construct a washing machine factory in Newberry, South Carolina. While officials and residents are business-friendly in other countries, it is truly worrisome to think that Korea is not so friendly to its companies.