Comments

1

What a shame that all this money is being spent to convince the citizens of Seattle that wealthy companies (and yes, $20,000,000 annual revenue puts a company in that "top 3 percent" category) shouldn't have to shoulder any of the burden of assisting our fellow citizens out of the abject poverty and homelessness their unrestrained Capitalist "economic Darwinism" contributes to creating in the first place couldn't be put to better use - like, say, helping people out of abject poverty and homelessness...

3

@2:

A single company hiring tens of thousands of employees and bringing them into the area in short order, thus causing a super-heated housing market where people are literally engaging in bidding wars or in some instances putting hundreds of thousands of dollars - in cash - on the table to purchase housing stock as fast as it comes on the market, not to mention tearing down affordable housing and replacing it with luxury homes and condos for those same workers ISN'T "of their doing"?

4

@3 Yep it's such a hardship, just about every city except Walmart-owned Little Rock is promising WHATEVER it will take to inflict this too-many-jobs problem upon themselves. It's almost like they know something you don't..

5

Nice to see a provocative Dan Savage post on Slog today: https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/05/31/26881911/fecklesscntghazi-or-fecklesscutgate

I'd really be curious to hear Dan's take on the whole head-tax thing. Based on his past stances on other issues, I'm uncertain where he comes down, if at all.

Goodness knows, there's a big contingent of Seattleites who, like me, were both (A) for the $15 minimum wage and (B) against the head tax for homelessness, and who see those two positions as thoroughly philosophically consistent.

6

@4:

Given how much they're willing to bend over themselves with sweetheart deals and tax incentives, we can deduce they know how to grovel to their Capitalist Overlords, that's for sure...

7

Seriously Comte, you should tell them how detrimental it is to have thousands of high paying jobs in an area. How can you expect to have strong & authoritarian central planners when the vast majority of its citizens can manage their own lives? It's diabolical.

8

@1, @3, @6: You’re really scared and angry about how Seattle’s voters are working to repeal the head tax, aren’t you?

@1: How’d the ten-year plan to end homelessness work out for you? Is that an example of helping the homeless you believe head tax revenues should pay?

@3: If you truly and honestly believe that a rent increase is the sole (or even major) reason for the difference between “stably housed” and “trading stolen bike parts for illegal drugs in an unsanctioned encampment,” then I’ve got a well-built structure in my native Brooklyn, the title deed for which I can supply to you at an astonishingly low price.

10

I'm waiting to see the Stranger put its impressive reportorial skills into examining just how much Kshama Sawant's personal "revolutionary" branding campaign--not just the posters, but all of the rallies, the sleep-ins, the police escorts/protection they require, the Seattle Channel production costs of her risible "response" to Trump's SOTU, etc., etc., etc.--has cost Seattle taxpayers since this megalomaniacal demagogue was first elected to office here.

And I'm waiting for the Stranger to examine how much time Sawant actually spends on the job she's paid to do, rather than travel around the country promoting "socialist alternative" candidates, or flying overseas to extol the wonder that was the Bolshevik Revolution. If she can demonstrate that a CM can be effective at half-time, then maybe we should be cutting all of their munificent salaries by 50 percent, and save the City a whole lot of money.

And I'm waiting for the Stranger to look into the work and educational history of all the "socialist alternative" apparatchiks Sawant has on her paid SCC staff, which she seems to be using as a welfare program for her adoring minions.

I suspect I'll be waiting right up until November 2019 at the earliest.

12

@1: clear demonstration of your lack of understanding commercial real estate, banking, and basic business. $20MM aint shit!
@3: you're ignoring the hundreds of local family owned businesses that have been here providing employment, insurance & retirement for people in this town longer than you've been alive.

Just curious, how much money have you put up personally? My guess is $0.00

13

However we want to assign "blame" in relation to the homelessness situation is irrelevant. The way taxes should work is if you earn more, you should pay more. If Amazon wants to come to Seattle because of all that's great in Seattle (and surprisingly enough, Seattle is still pretty great). They need to pay their fair share in taxes.

Also, it's bizarre that Sawant seems to be the lightning rod for all the anger here when she didn't even write the legislation.

14

Amazon already does pay their fair share in taxes, 250 million in state and local taxes in 2017. And Amazon is by far the biggest reason, directly and indirectly for the city councils recent gluttony in tax revenue, over a billion more collected from just the past few years. Plus Amazon has donated over 40 million to help the homless and is working with Mary's Place to hosue homeless family's in bulidings that Amazon owns. Mary's Place by the way is far more effective and cost efficient compared to anything the city council has done for the homeless. Plus this head tax is going to hurt most the people the city council says it is trying to help the, those in poverty. Seattle was just recently ranked second in the nation for most expensive groceries in the country, second only to New York. This head tax will effect all the large grocery chain stores whoes profit margin is only 1-3 percent. Operating a grocery store is already about twice as expensive as other city's and with grocery stores low profit margins they will be forced to pass on those cost to the consumers. We'll almost certainly be number 1 in most expensive groceries in the country if the head tax passes, as the previous ranking didn't even include a full year of the soda tax. Two grocery stores already closed in north Seattle and they said it was directly because of other taxes and regulations forced upon them by the city council and did not even inculding the head tax yet. It's economics 101, but the incompetent city council is trying to blame all the big bad corporations to distract from their own massive failures.


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