Honey, Scandinavian utopias pay income taxes!

Over 45,000 Seattle voter signatures were collected in 5 weeks for the repeal when it needed only 17,000. Put the responsibility where it belongs on the Seattle City Council. Some of the council have their own mini swamps. Hold them accountable quite blaming others.

I hate Amazon with a passion, after working there how could you not. However, I'm strongly against this tax. It was simply a bad decision. If the plan came from the State or King County, and levied taxes on all businesses, not just the ones in Seattle, maybe I could be on board. Seattle and it's taxpaying citizens are not here to solve the region's homeless problem on it's own. Hold other cities accountable.

Ah, fuck it. Dezone the whole city and watch Amazon employees brown their dry cleaned slacks as their city-enforced buffer between themselves and the consequences of their actions suddenly goes up in bureaucratic smoke. Zoning is the handle on Amazon's toilet, take it away and let them deal with their shit. What's it to the rest of us? We already deal with it as it is.

@4 Ayn Rand?

Bezos, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and their backers are bad people who don't deserve anything they have.

This is a childish and irrational post. The city council is incompetent and citizens had enough. Though, Bezos would most likely be an excellent city leader, far better than the dolts currently in office.

Katie:

I generally like your reporting but to say that Bezos is the sole owner of this disaster is well, it's naive. In reality, the city owns it. It wasn't like they weren't warned when Amazon started coiling its oily little fingers around everything. Plenty of people pointed and shouted and jumped up and down and did everything they could do to raise the parable of San Francisco as an early warning to the people in the city starry eyed and bamboozled by the idea of job creation and highly idealized expansion.

They ignored the already critical mass problems of the then existing low income crisis which would in a few years time turn into a brushfire of homelessness. They ignored a lot of things. They threw themselves into a relationship with Amazon like horny teenagers and are now suffering the consequences of realizing their super hot boyfriend is really just a Blaine. Sure, he's got money and something like class but he's a breathtaking, rapacious asshole, which was harder to see back when they were charmed so much by the first bits.

So now they're trying to leave this relationship but doing it in a way that's like some B-line soap opera plot: we love you, just kidding, we hate you, I don't mean it, get out, wait come back.

The way this gets fixed is Amazon admits that this HQ2 gambit is really just a ploy for what's really coming: a full up and out. Amazon is even admitting that they can't get people to relocate here because what housing that is available is too expensive and even with their sweetheart deal tax incentives, they're losing money on spiraling upward operations costs due to the rise of just how fucking expensive everything is here now. Amazon is going to bail and rape and pillage another city.

It's the city council and its dysfunctional establishment that let them in the door in the first place.

Last time I checked, we built the Seattle Mariners a brand new baseball stadium, and are currently planning on gifting the organization $180 million in tax revenue (i.e., more than the likely revenue from the head tax) to spruce it up.

Amazon is small potatoes in comparison. The Mariners have truly mastered the art of squeezing concessions from Seattle and King County.

The excruciatingly bitter tears in these headline posts is truly sweet water to a true believer in democracy. Expecting an easy victory, the head tax side lost so badly they may never learn why.

Anyone who knew exactly what reaction CM Sawant got from unionized Iron workers when she tried to sell them on the head tax could have seen this backlash coming from Seattle’s citizens. But so many people, the Stranger’s staff included, were doubleplus unallowed to have such knowledge. Knowledge is indeed power, and you were all self-castrated into abject impotence.

Enjoy telling yourselves Seattle is full of Trump-voting fascist libertarians who hate the homeless and won’t let you have nice things. That approach just worked so well for the head tax over the past month, didn’t it?

Why cant the stranger acknowledge that Amazon has pumped hundreds of millions into this economy and provides thousands with GOOD jobs? Or should we all be jaded baristas for a living? This us vs them fight that the Stranger has started over the past 5 years reeks of a bunch of ftw college freshmen pissed off at anyone that isnt like them. A business head tax is ass backwards and if it was something that the public wants they should get to vote on it, not have it rushed through by the far left fringe of this city. Hopefully by next year we could pivot back to the center.

Did Jeff Bezos sign the petition 45,000 times? I'm a long time liberal and I think the head tax was a half baked idea.

@16:

For one thing, we have a representative democracy with the ability for citizens to create or modify legislation via the initiative or referendum process. But, to operate under a classical Athenian-style direct democracy would literally entail every citizen who eligible to vote to do so on EVERY piece of public legislation - do YOU have time for that? Does anyone, really? That's why we elect officials to represent us in these matters: to deal with the mundanities of sausage-making, so the rest of us don't have to.

And yes, Amazon has pumped lots of money into the local economy and created tens of thousands of jobs, but for the most part those jobs haven't gone to locals, or if they have it's been at the lower end of the scale in the service and hospitality sectors. And the economic "benefits" have been decidedly unbalanced: it certainly hasn't been of benefit to the 42% of Seattle residents who have seen their rents escalate dramatically due to the huge influx of new people looking for places to live; nor have they benefited from the increased stress placed on infrastructure due to this same rapid population increase.

As is always the case in a Capitalist system, there are winners and losers, because Capitalism is viewed - and played - as a zero-sum game where those who win win BIG, and those who lose lose BIG.

@11:
Yes, exactly!!

"Amazon has pumped lots of money into the local economy and created tens of thousands of jobs, but for the most part those jobs haven't gone to locals, or if they have it's been at the lower end of the scale in the service and hospitality sectors. "

Huh? That makes absolutely no sense, on just about any level. And it's wrong. I can think of at least six "locals" I know who have gotten very good jobs at Amazon: A woman I worked with at the Four Seasons, two women from City Light, my unemployable neighbor's brother, and two friends from my .com days. Four of them went to high school here in Seattle (Franklin, Cleveland, Kennedy, and Rainier Beach) and only three of them went to college. And who says that jobs have to be saved for "locals" anyway?

But the idea that Seattle was some sort of utopia before Amazon/Starbucks et al is just hilarious. Seattle used to be cheap, but it wasn't all that nice, and we had homeless back then also. Make no mistake, we need a plan to fix this problem, and then some money to implement that plan (whether that be a head tax, income tax, or whatever) but the idea that things were dandy before Amazon is just laughable. No one who lived here back then (at least who is being honest with themselves) can say that.

Slog writers today read like a group of Mean Girls bullies who just cannot believe that their manipulable schoolmates aren’t falling into line to shun their declared target of the day.

This Bezos blaming is obvious reductivist garbage. Jeff Bezos is not the only person who benefits from Amazon’s growth. Amazon is not the only business that would pay this tax. Local business owners are not the only people who supported its repeal. Honest, reasonable, caring people are allowed to disagree that taxing large(ish) companies for every additional Seattleite they hire will be effective at putting people into housing without putting others out of work.

Head tax supporters, gve yourselves a day or two to pout if you must — but if you want to actually win this argument eventually, you should be prepared to do so with substance and persistence, not this petty harrumphing and bullying.

😂😂😂 this article is exactly what I need for a good laugh today! I'll never tire of this crybaby humor 🤣🤣

When I was a kid, "Boeing's" owned Seattle. Now it's that weird little dude with his billions. Same shit, different century.

Back in my day, it was Henry Yesler who owned Seattle. He made Jeff Bezos look like Mother Teresa.