Soon, gig workers can take a day off if they get sick. What a thought! HK

Comments

2

The pro-life party sure does love death.

3

Dogs can see in limited colors, mostly blue, yellow and grey. Was "Asteroid City" shot in Doggovision, from a dog's POV?

Secondly, could people please stop voting for Republicans? They're objectively horrible in every way I can think of. And almost certainly in ways I can't think of, because I'm not a Florida Man to whom being horrible in unimaginably weird ways comes naturally.

4

Hurray for the gig workers!

They now get this valuable benefit that all workers in Seattle have.

The employers must now pay for when they are sick, or when they just need a day off or just a rest from the work a day world.

Why are Uber's in Seattle so expensive?

In Seattle, the additional price spike for Uber trips comes after the company raised its rates by 50% earlier this year after the city's new minimum-wage law for ride-hailing drivers. The law went into effect Jan. 1, and Uber gradually increased its rates up to 50% on April 1.Jun 21, 2021

Average Uber Drivers Delivery Driver yearly pay in Washington State is approximately $66,000, which is 27% above the national average.

The price of delivery will rise to the consumer ... but hey, if you can afford to have your food delivered, then you can afford the increase in the delivery fee. Its only fair, as we all know most of those ordering delivery are probably the tech workers who sit in their expensive condo's with mountain views.

Oh and don't forget to tip!

Will higher and higher prices for delivery cause demand to drop....and what happens when we go into a recession.
Lets find out on the next chapter of worker conquests!

Next... The city counsel should fix the price of delivery so all of us can afford food delivered to our home, condo, apartment or homeless encampment. Delivered food is a basic human right.

6

I like to cognitive dissonance required to imply (without saying, which would require proof, which is work, and therefore hard) the current and former Mayors of Seattle (each of whom the Stranger hates) wasted tax money on morally-questionable consultants. Immediately after this is a plea from Paul “Fuck Parents Sideways And Hard For Trying To Protect Their Schoolchilden From Gun Violence” Chapman, demanding a whole new tax, one which totally won’t be wasted because he said so, that’s why.

“The City did not double the tiny house stock by creating 480 new units despite raising $4.5 million of a $15 million goal for the project.”

This is because no tiny house resident has ever exited to stable housing in Seattle, and it’s time to stop pretending one ever will. Anyone living in one of these below-code shacks will never have enough money to rent in modern Seattle. All residents of tiny-house villages should be given tickets to just about anywhere else, and LIHI told to clear out the shacks in preparation for real affordable housing to be built there.

“In fact, not only was the goal not completed, according to Council Member Andrew Lewis in this Times article, but the City disbanded the whole project and never spent any of that $4.5 million.”

Hey, Stranger, when you’re complaining policy-makers recognized total failure and stopped paying tax money for more of it, maybe it’s time to examine what you’re doing with your life, and why?

7

A new Wes Anderson film! Best news of the year!

8

A wealth tax is a dumb idea and has been proven to be ineffective. Even NPR thinks so:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs

I'm guessing now that the SC has stymied the progressives on an income tax they'll now turn to a wealth tax as the solution to our "income inequality" but of course they'll never propose actually fixing the regressive taxes. This is the 2nd time in two weeks The Stranger has now used one of Paul Chapman's tweets in a Slog post. Paul is hardly a Dem and the fact that he leads one of the local Dem district groups shows just how far the KC Dems have moved from the core of the party. Many of the "Dem" district groups have gone so far as to change their bylaws so they don't even have to endorse fellow Dems for offices, choosing instead to endorse fringe candidates like Nikkita Oliver or Shaun Scott. I pretty much ignore any of their proposals/demands/recommendations and encourage others to do the same.

10

WHERE IS THE HOUSING?

Vancouver has the same problem and they're massively increasing theirs.

Why can't do nothing Mayor Harrell do MORE?

11

@8 that's your barometer? "Even NPR thinks so"

they aint called Nice Polite Republicans for nothing

12

@10 but he wears a suit and looks very concerned and says words. what more do you want?

13

Ah. You gotta love a supposed analysis that treats “Europe” as a single entity but then omits sample cases of European nations that won’t get hammered into it’s preordaining conclusions.

Switzerland and Norway have had wealth taxes since the late 1800’s. And still going strong. Belgium, which is structured in a way I don’t really understand, also has a wealth tax still going strong though very flawed. As Belgium itself is flawed. And Spain had one since the 1970’s. Suspended it during the 2008 crisis and brought it back. The trick is in how they are administered.

But. Sure. France’s failed miserably because no provisions for real administrative and investigative mechanisms were put place because of course that was sabotaged the moment a new political establishment friendly to tax cheats was elected. There were even elements of the government actively assisting in circumventing it. But sure it can’t possible work here.

Because America is super special. Gun regulations can’t work there. Socialized health care can’t work there. Windfall taxes can’t work there. National rail can’t work there.

Because ultimately democracy can’t work in America.

14

@11 well the Google machine will provide you plenty of articles noting how a wealth tax is ineffective and hard to administer making it a losing proposition but don't worry with folks like Paul "the only thing I hate more than kids is golf" Chapman on board I'm sure WA knows something everyone else doesn't.

15

@4- sick leave is for when you are sick (hence the name), not for when you just decide you need a rest.

16

Yes to the wealth tax!
Let's finally drive all the billionaires out of Seattle.
Tax the living crap out of their ill gotten wealth.

Lets make sure that anyone who develops software, AI or things which make us highly productive will find Seattle a very unwelcoming place. We will have to make some sacrifices.... like not having high paying tech jobs, be firm as we see those billions of dollars go to other states who will enjoy prosperity, businesses will move out .... but damn it.

We can't have income disparity around here. I mean the thought of it is reprehensible. Somebody making more than $100,000 or having a nicer house than mine ... is well just hideous.

Think how many homeless we could put on Bill Gates compound.

17

@15 You don't have employees do you. That last statement makes it pretty obvious.

19

@17- not anymore. When I did, they rarely called in sick unless they actually were. Probably because I tried pretty hard to run a low-stress environment and they were not doing shitty gopher gig work. Look, if the City Council wants to mandate paid vacation for gig workers, it should do it. Better yet would be to get rid of the fiction that half of the employees in America are not really “employees”. The whole gig worker/task rabbit/food delivery etc. thing is a bullshit way for middle class people to act like they can afford servants, powered by creating substandard working conditions for millions.

20

@11: I think the wealth tax also targets tangible assets like the original Andy Warhol you have in your foyer. Pay up dude!

22

And they did not produce fucking mammoth meat. They added one mammoth gene (and not even a completely mammoth version) for a muscle protein to sheep cells. So it’s more like Lamb-oth, or Mammutton.

25

@19 I was talking about the mindset, work ethics and antics of today's employees who have "shitty gopher work jobs" as you so eloquently put it. ... judging from the use of the word "gopher" you haven't had an employee in quite a while.

I don't have a problem with "gig workers"... but if you are a "gig worker" then you are self employed. Nobody tucks you in at night, pays you unemployment, L&I coverage, pays your health insurance, paternity leave, sick leave, funds your retirement... or cries over your stress... etc.

Let's either be a "self employed gig worker" or "an employee" ... but lets stop the stupidity of a hybrid.

26

A letter from Southern California:

First of all, our experience has been a wee bit different than the storm experience has been in central California where the towns in the Sierra Madres have recorded the most snow ever in one year and in the Central Valley where spring and summer vegetables lie underneath inches of water, destroyed and unsalvagable. Skiers think they’ve died and gone to heaven (and some have, sadly, due to avalanches). Farmers are looking at big losses, and consumers will probably tremble when they see a $10 head of lettuce in grocery stores.

Down here, kind of a different story. Some of the folk up in the remote San Bernadino mountains and Angeles National Forest villages have perished due to being unreachable because of many feet of snow blocking access in or out. In the LA basin, it’s been wet…a lot, but not to the extent we’ve seen up north. With sympathies to those people who have lost loved ones in the mountains, and with respect to Indigenous Americans, I want to don a headdress and dance to thank the heavens for its gift of water. We’ve been awfully dry and awfully thirsty for an awfully long time.

As expected, the TV news interviews are filled with people bitching about, “enough already!” How shallow the emotion. How short the memory. And mudslides? Sorry, but that’s the price of doing business in Southern California. Don’t build on or just below a cliff. Don’t buy a house on a flood plain.

I’m hoping that Los Angelenos will continue to be wise about water conservation (wishful thinking?). LA County has been meeting and exceeded restriction demands. With the rains, some restrictions have been lifted, but this wonderful rainy season isn’t permission now to let those hoses run while washing your cars, or to plant and water thirsty Kentucky bluegrass in your front yards. Remember, the Colorado River is still in peril. With our near full reservoirs, though, we shouldn’t all have to have rock and cactus gardens for yards. Happy. Lucky. Grateful.

Audubon also enjoyed hunting. Those drawings of birds are quite spectacular, but it diminishes their beauty when you know he had to kill everything in order to draw it. Perhaps it was the only way, but I don’t have to like it.

The Dutch sperm donor sounds like a sick fuck. Wasn’t there an MD a few years ago who was discovered to have had almost 200 children nationwide? Maybe in the evolutionary cycle there has to be some who get off on creating progeny. Fifty children? Mmm. Gives me a warm glow in my scrotum. All those extra mouths to feed! All those dirty (disposable) diapers! And, of course, it’s women who get left with all the chores while Daddy goes to jerk-off into another plastic cup.

Why would one put a transit hub in the ID? Nothing against the International District, but who thinks it’s centrally located? Is the thinking that since that’s where the King Street Station is, that’s where the hub needs to be? I suppose that makes some sense, but the hub of a citywide transit system needs to be downtown, no? That is, when downtown gets all fixed up and pretty again.

28

Do you ever notice how "Europe" is the gold standard of proof for some policy when you can cherry pick examples form "Europe" that don't work?

But when you can point to study after study of policies in EU states that DO work, and are proven without a shred of a doubt to be superior to American rid-or-die market fetish disasters — like gun regulations, socialized healthcare, windfall taxation, social dividends systems and saftey nets —then, why, golly gee suddenly it's time to vivisect Europe into it's constituent nation-parts and play a game of selective "nuance." So the rightwingnuts can cherry pick why those policies do not work under the reality defying magic force field of America.

Europe is only the quintessential argument ender for rightwing shit bags if they think a given European policy didn't work. Of course that requires ignoring the individual states on the content of Europe where said policy DOES work.

29

@24- Manmutton could also be a fursona. You’d never have to get over a fence without help again!

30

WaPo statistics show most AR 15 owners are white men aged 40 to 65. They are what is known as the Spoiled Ugly Americans that want what they want and if you want to hear tantrums worse than any 2 year old in the middle of a grocery store, try taking away their AR 15 toys.

31

It's no surprise that Tim Burchett, a typical RepubliKKKan gun totin' bible misquotin' unborn fetus dotin' Tennessee RWNJ says 'Hell no, we won't fix it!' to ending senseless gun slaughter in schools and public places. The only way Burchett and everyone of his ilk might see reason about gun restrictions at all is by losing some of their own to gun related deaths. And even that is unlikely due to their Mitch McConnell-stubborn MAGAt stupidity.

Here's hoping that Washington DNR's plans to control burn in Klickitat, Kitittas, Okanogan, and Spokane Counties in Eastern Washington can effectively prevent wildfires and "smoke season" this summer. Fingers crossed.

Speaking of which....
A wealth tax on the rich? It's about time! Will it pass? Stay tuned.......

32

So, if a child gets shot on her Seattle school ground, the Stranger says it’s the fault of some Republican from Tennessee for not “fixing” this, but if she’s shot on her way to school by a stray bullet from a fight over drug money in a homeless encampment, the Stranger will quote Paul Chapman saying her parents failed to understand that violence-prone encampments are just a naturally-occurring part of city life we can’t even talk about addressing?

Did I get that right?

34

@2 Brent Gumbo and @31 cloudbusdaddy for the WIN!!

@18 70s: The environmentally conscientious magazine, Mother Jones agrees with Tennessee gun totin' RWNJ Tim Burchett?? Does Mother Jones have stock invested in the NRA?

@26 Bauhaus I: +1 Agreed. It's sad about California's agricultural, architectural, economic, and infrastructural losses due to climate change and history breaking weather severities concerning snow, rain, runoff, and mudslides. On the plus side, though, as you say, the reservoirs once again are nearly full (I wish the Colorado River was as fortunate, though). Hopefully Californian hills should be green with poppies again, like in Spring 1993 after a long dry spell.
That asinine Dutch sperm donor makes me sick, too. And another grim reminder of how lucky I am that I am well beyond the childbearing age. I don't know who to feel sorrier for---adolescent girls and women aged 15-45 and currently in their reproductive years, or little girls from birth to their preteens who have yet to experience their first menstrual period post-Roe.
It makes more sense to me, too, to put a transit hub downtown. Agreed, though--once the downtown area is cleaned up, that is. I dunno--maybe folks in the International District have different thoughts and are looking forward to getting around the city more efficiently? I swear, I just don't know Seattle anymore. And for me that's embarrassing, what with my being a native of Washington's biggest city on Elliott Bay. I wish I had magical answers.

35

@33 Some of the stuff I want from Europe is easily achievable for less money. Like how they get better results for less money per capita on virtually every health care metric. Yes please. And before you start yelling about waiting lists, let's consider what waiting lists are like here to see a specialist.

37

Darcel died. So glad I saw a few shows.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/26/entertainment/darcelle-xv-drag-queen-death-portland-trnd/index.html


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