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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
That's assuming the companies would be willing to pay $1,903,321 per year for the privilege of being located in San Francisco as opposed somewhere in sunny Silicon Valley. The city can't "lose" $400,000 that it never had.
I've yet to read where municipalities win on tax breaks for companies. Maybe the entities can approach it like dating -- if a company wants to locate in an area ~ fine, show off the best assets of the area. But don't give them a tax break for doing it.
just have general laws with few exceptions. a general wage. a general tax law. everyone pay up. and if THEY can get the subsidies, how come I, a person with a small business working at home, can't get a subsidy? I do shit, too. I mow the neutral strip and pick up garbage on the street in front of my home. I cut the branches above the street that the city wouldn't take care of. I cleared out ten years worth of pine needles building up five inches deep on the street end filling the yard waste container about 12 times this winter with city owned stuff left on a city owned street. That's a public service. where's my subsidy? what about the folks volunteering at the library or at their church or in giving sick people meals on capitol hill, where's their subsidy? why do we fucking continually pander to business and exalt it's slightest contribution and think we have to reward it with a subsidy?
are they the enfant terribles we can't govern any other way? what a spineless approach. how about this approach: they get stuff from society, we allow them absolution from personal responsibility of the owners, we can fucking tax them like we fucking want to tax them and we make all taxes apply to all businesses sort of equally without special deals, special breaks and what not which is just another form of corruption. you want to deal with cost of housing immediately raise the MW to 15 then immediately allow all manner of cottages basement dwellings do broad based general things that actually help not bullshit little bandaid things that don't do hardly anything at all. here's another thing: stop raising taxes all the time, the Times reported on that this weekend, we're piling on levy after levy as if it doesn't add to the cost of housing.
Tech workers, as a rule are pretty socially awkward. The amount of socially awkward I encounter here is sometimes above and beyond what I can parse. Imagine an entire office full of that one awkward girl at the party. Sometimes it's cool but it often sucks when you are actually trying to accomplish anything.
This means social venues like clubs, restaurants, bars, concerts, etc are pretty watered down because tech is their main client. I get so much bad service here it's not funny. But tech guys don't notice, so they still get big tips, leaving places with horrible service doing the briskest business in the city!
There is a lot of elitism here. But not a lot of 'taste'.
Yes, the tech business has brought a lot of money to the bay area, but it caused a lot of the current problems because it brought a lot of people here without any infrastructure to support them. Traffic is horrible, housing is out of control (3k a month for a dumpy 'college' style apartment), there is an acute water shortage. And because things got so expensive, plenty of the more interesting cultural things to do either got so expensive that you can't afford to go (200+ dollars to go see the ballet, and that's the just-in-front-of-nosebleed-seats) or they just folded up and left.
Pay can't keep up with the rising costs.
The tech industry is trying to solve the problem by building their own housing, but that's fraught with other problems, and you've all read about the google buses.
Uncorralled tech is not a good idea for any city.
Journalism at its finest!
I guess I just don't have the super brain power that lets me understand.
The logic was the "Cities" are so overwhelmingly great and fantastic that all high tech is moving there.
Well, except for Google, Apple and Facebook, who have to provide their own buses to let people leave the city crime zones for healthful, brand new campuses.
But leave that aside, these Cities are so great and perfect they have to lure people in with tax breaks that exceed the benefits accrued. The benefits that justified the tax breaks! The tax breaks which shouldn't be necessary because cities are so superior to suburbs. Which don't need to give tax breaks...
Criticize the program for increasing the breadth of gentrification pushing low-income people out of the city, but don't say it doesn't make financial sense.
Another way of giving the rich more, paid for by the poor
Detroit is because the State of Michigan won't give Detroit the legal share of state sales tax collected
Well, that's novel at least.
In other words, put a sock in it.
I've seen tech workers drop 30% on shitty, shitty service.
Btw Anyone look into plans for the high (ish) rise development planned for the Rainier Lowes/Pepsi neighborhood? It's big news on NextDoor but haven't seen it discussed elsewhere.