Comments

1

"What her example made clear to me was the absence of this tax was, in effect, a subsidy for corporations competing for national and international talent. For incomes over $100k, a Seattle company like Amazon could always add a $15,000 to $30,000 bonus paid by the public."

Congrats, Charles! You've discovered that regional differences in cost of living play a role in employee compensation. What a brilliant and novel approach to economic theory!

2

So it's not like that income tax line is a deep insight. Your own regional governments made that pitch to Amazon. "Build HQ2 in Washington because nothing another city has to offer is as good as being able to shoulder your tax burden on the bottom like you can do here."

You started out strong, but then you failed to come through with the real insight. Your housing problems are a function on your broken state tax system. Your misplaced energy is responsible for the lack pf progress you're seeing and feeling.

How many time have you shut Olympia down for a fair tax code.

This is your fault.

Stop getting mad at Amazon for taking their (trigger warning: I'm about to say "fiduciary responsibility") fiduciary responsibility seriously, because of fucking course they are! And they should. They have to if we're to have things we all love, like SEC and CFPB regulations.

Amazon isn't declaring war on your democracy. They're participating in it. If you don't like how rich people participate, go shut down Olympia, demand an income tax, and they'll have less cash to throw around. Some of them might even leave.

Also..."Cali"? Seriously? You're better than that, Charles. Come on now.

3

I hope they give you time to write a book someday, Charles.

One small quibble: mad scientists don't work in basements; they work in towers, the better to harness the elemental forces necessary to carry out their evil will.

Coincidentally, it also seems a more ripe metaphor for this situation.

4

Why isn't asking the City Council to open the books on what's been spent on homelessness over the past several years and have the various non-profits to open up their books as well (if they take in public funds)? I'd really like to see transparency with the hundreds of millions of dollars that's been spent and see how much of it is ending up as direct measurable assistance to the homeless and how much covers "overhead".

Or would we find American Red Cross levels of fiscal recklessness?

5

How did you come up with “H2Q,” Charles?

6

@5) dang it. fixed.

7

Charles, you write: "That mistake was revealed on Tuesday, when it shut down construction on two sites"

Actually, what the Amazon spokesman quoted in the Times article said was:
“I can confirm that pending the outcome of the head-tax vote by City Council, Amazon has paused all construction planning on our Block 18 project in downtown Seattle and is evaluating options to sub-lease all space in our recently leased Rainer Square building,”

So only pausing planning on one, and only considering sub-leases on the other. According to that, no actual construction has been shut down. How did you arrive at two rather than zero?

And why H2Q? You do realize it's HQ2, as in HeadQuarters #2, right? Head #2 Quarters makes no sense.

8

6) ...mostly.

11

@4:

If the non-profit is a registered 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization, their books are already open, as that's required by law.

12

It isn't just that one recent grad who stayed here because of the lack of an income tax. Jeff (money bags) Bezos founded Amazon in Seattle BECAUSE there was no income tax. If Washington had an income tax then Austin would already have HQ1 and Seattle would be pandering to get HQ2. Not having an income tax provides a massive competitive advantage for Washington in attracting talent. Having a SCC that views transparency and accountability as four letter words and taxes as the solution to every single issue is the real problem. We've doubled spending on homelessness as a City in the last 5 years, with basically nothing to show for it except for some well funded service providers.

14

@13:

If not a successful business employing thousands - then who? YOU certainly don't want to pay for it.

15

So you could sell a state income tax to suburbanites and eastsiders in Olympia as a way to screw Seattle?

OK. That sounds like a plan. Let's.

15

@14 I hate to break it to you, but if 1@3 lives in Seattle, he already is paying for it through property taxes and, to a lesser extent, sales taxes. This head tax is just one more source of funding. It doesn't replace any of the existing regressive taxes.

17

Oh my god chop up bikes!

I LOVE it when you guys think you've uncovered a "tweaker bicycle chop shop", and then post pictures of a bunch of rusting B.S.O.s somebody took out of a dumpster. Cranky old people think shitty bikes that even Bikeworks wouldn't take off your hands are being "chopped" and "sold for parts" by "junkies". Where to begin?

Did you guys learn all about chop shops on Matlock or NCIS something? Never change, nimbys. Never change.

18

Ugh, I wish we could just pull a fucking Utah already. As much as we rely on Amazon sometimes it feels like we're not too far from reaching full absurdity and demanding they buy an island, hire/house all the homeless there, and create the world's biggest Amazon theme park/shopping mall.

The homeless that underperform can be used to make a new popular flavor of Soylent to be consumed by Amazon's own techies.

19

@7, fixed both.

20

@2 Since when does fiduciary duty compel a company to strongarm the political process?

21

One day a few weeks ago, Charles Mudede had become a New Keynesian.

But that day was a very long time ago, and the red diapers of his youth show once again through the flimsy outer garments of yesterday, so fleetingly fashionable.

Once again, the deeply privileged child of Communists, Communists of the very highest social caste, rushes back to the comforting skirts of The Labor Theory of Value, to the mother's milk of Full Capacity Utilization.

These childish things were gently but quite firmly rejected by Keynes, and remain rejected by the wise groups of people following in his footsteps today. They quite sensibly have no patience left for people who insist the we must recognize the True value mystically imbued by labor into a weeks-old, half-rotted head of cabbage.

But the falsehoods learned in the cradle, the falsehoods that feel most like home: these will always be the hardest to acknowledge, the hardest to let go of.

As to the rest of it, as to "the point" that one might insist upon with a colicky little screech:

The most (or perhaps only) important thing HQ2 shares with "Kaiju" is the utter, over-the-top fictionality of the thing, of the very concept of the thing. There is no modern corporation that has an "equal" headquarters somewhere, anywhere, and there never will be.

22

The Chicago or Austrian schools of economics are totally gobsmacked by the bitcoin bubble. Labor theory of value takes it in stride and makes pretty good predictions about what can happen.

Good tool to have around sometimes.

23

@22

The freshwater economists do very much reject old Maynard, you know. Or maybe you really, really don't; it's hard to tell sometimes.

Keynes of course had a rather amusing little insight about hypothetical mining for literal money, but I daresay you haven't the look of a fellow who might appreciate it.

25

19) Ctrl-F is your friend.

”Cities in the running for HQ2 now understand that, one, even more has to be done to get that H2Q, and, two, they must avoid the mistakes of democracy.”

26

@20 they aren’t strong arming the political process. They are rethinking financial decisions in light of changing conditions and uncertainty. That’s literallly their job. Your cruising towards disappointment if you think they’ll stop doing their job to satisfy your sanctimonious outrage.

27

@20

You're confused.

That duty compels making the best choices for the corporate entity. Stopping construction pending a council decision that could be very expensive to Amazon us not strong arming. The council can decide what it likes and Amazon will react to that decision either by completing construction or going to a better business environment than Seattle as their judgement guides.

You're welcome.

28

Piles of shit bike parts that nobody would give two dollars for. How much heroin do you think anybody is going to buy with that? Seriously. Look at those bikes. They were bought Wal-Mart 15 years ago.

"Some really nice bikes". Identify them. Seriously. You crazy paranoids have got to come back to reality. If you can't figure out what you're looking at, find somebody who knows bikes to explain it to you. You're looking at salvaged junk that somebody in DESPERATE NEED is trying to turn into a bike.

You try to get the cops to bust up this shit bike syndicate and they patiently explain to you that those shit bikes are not stolen. And instead of listening to people who know, you invent a kooky conspiracy theory where the cops won't arrest anybody because of lizard people and evil developers.

It's so shitty the way you guys work so hard to kick people when they're down. Doesn't your conscience ever bother you? Identify these valuable bikes you think are being chopped and try to figure out how many dollars they are worth. (Spoiler: none)

29

@19:
I see you still say they've stopped "construction" on the one site.

The direct quote from the Amazon spokesman in the Time article is that they've paused "construction planning" on Block 18, which is a different thing. Have you confirmed that there's active construction that has stopped, workers have walked off a jobsite, anything like that?

It's not a minor distinction, because one can be bluffed, while one cannot.


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