There's nothing wrong with Bezos: he knows city leadership will cave. They always do.

Um.... formatting problem with this post.

The quote from elsewhere also includes Katie's commentary.

He is on the spectrum.

"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."
-- Honoré de Balzac

Tax evasion, accounting fraud, wage theft, depraved indifference to human life, I could go on...

Given our terrible governance, it's not at all clear that the head tax would actually help housing affordability or homelessness. The City Council would make better headway towards solving those problems with solutions like rezoning Seattle and housing first. If Gates and Allen and Bezos were serious about helping people (right here, right now) they could solve Seattle's housing woes with change from their yachts' couch cushions.

But Amazon is an incredibly bad corporate citizen. They have a long history of not giving back to Seattle, so this shouldn't come as a surprise. If they can't break off a few grand to sponsor events happening on their doorstep, why would they give a shit about citywide issues? They will continue to operate in their (now, literal) bubbles. I doubt they will actually leave Seattle no matter what happens... They have billions in real estate here alone.

Regarding space travel, it is important for humanity. We're gonna fuck this planet up irrevocably (if we haven't already), so we will need to find new resources to plunder. We are essentially on our way to becoming the eveil alines that we've always feared.

Also: Blue Origin isn't even close to the weirdest shit Bezos spends his money on. He spent $42M on a clock: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now

"There are some legitimate reasons to oppose the head tax" you didn't list the squandering of hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars on homeless programs that have no demonstrable benefits. That's a good reason.

Seattle had a homeless problem long before Bezos decided to locate here. The City has had decades to solve the homeless problem and has failed every year. Now they are trying to pin it on Bezos. How fair is that? This is the Latte tax revisited again with the hope that people with money should pay the political expectations of others.

If the City Council held themselves accountable for how they spent the last bucket of hundreds of millions of dollars dealing with the homeless crisis then the City of Seattle would have some moral ground to stand on when going after Bezos.

As it is, our City Council spends like a drunk teenager in a French whorehouse whose parents are dumb enough to give him money to blow on blowjobs but thinks its being used on school books.

I'd like to think that photo is a fake.

@10 . . . it tells a horrifying story, eh?

Katie, liars lie. Net revenue = profits. So profits of $20 Million/year is actually quite a bit of money. And NO small businesses will be affecting. There is so much wrong in your article, that your license to report is being reviewed for possible suspension or limitation.

Nice rant Herzog. This is a city leadership problem. Invest your time getting the city electeds to be accountable and make good decisions. Stop blaming Seattle residents and businesses. Actually, do blame we the residents because we elected them, never mind.

Taking a step back from the specifics for a minute: city-based business taxes are risky. They tend to push business outward to the suburbs (or other cities), and that tends to generate sprawl, not to mention loses jobs and taxes in the city. Unlike Microsoft or Boeing, Amazon has wonderfully pulled jobs into the city and massively reduced sprawl (or would, if we would actually allow enough housing). City-based taxes threaten not just Amazon, but many other businesses locating here.

What we really need is a statewide income tax.

I assume he wants the movie "Elysium" to actually happen: All the wealthiest people abandon Earth and live in a luxury space station where the poors can't get to them.

Like a space age version of "Atlas Shrugged." Maybe they'll even name the space station "Galt's Gulch?"

"I got mine, the rest of you can go fuck yourselves."
-The Wealthy

I'm a center left opinion in general, think taxing the rich to help the poor is the right thing. Lisa Herbold came across as a stuttering fool on her KOUW interview just now. She um'ed and ah'ed through stock simple answers, and wildly obviously spoke from both sides of her mouth - "wealth rising causes the homeless problem" and "I think wealth rising is the main reason we are a great place for Amazon to stay." Is there no one crisp and cogent, who comes across as remotely competent, to represent the left leadership's POV here? Or is what we have, yeller's if bumper stickers with zero ability to intellectually defend the slogans? Because Herbold was just awful

Is what we have yellers of bumper stickers sorry

@10 &11

I believe that's a reference to the Marlon Brando Matthew Broderick movie The Freshman.

The Boss just wants a little respect, that's all.

"Seattle is unaffordable to basically everyone who isn't in tech."

Yeah, it's pretty goddamn unaffordable to plenty of us in tech too. Bezos is obviously way out of touch, but people get wacky way faster than you'd guess, when they're in a reinforcing environment like he is.

Sure, tax the successful businesses until they leave and then you'll have no homeless problem! Oh, but of course then you'll have an UNEMPLOYMENT problem!

This Councils is short-sighted and wasteful, I'd rather have good jobs and a strong economy than give them another $ to waste on social programs.

@12 Yep old Jeff created his money all by himself, with printing presses he built himself out of iron he mined himself. We are all in total awe of Randian ubermenches like Jeff Bezos and David in Shoreline!

My Learjet's leather seats have cracks in them and this man wants to donate to space travel? Think about us common folk!

He's not a dumb guy, maybe he's actually standing up to the head tax because of the legitimate reasons Katie cited, hurting small businesses being one. There are, after all, a lot more small businesses and there's only one Amazon. In this case, what's good for Amazon is also good for all the SMB's in the city.

I think corporations and the rich should pay their fair share and so should everyone else, otherwise it's unfair to one group or another.

Katie, while I certainly get the issues you're addressing here, please note that literally ALL of the money Bezos is "sending...to space" is in fact staying right here on earth. The minimal amount of unrecoverable hardware that goes into any rocket launch system represents a minuscule fraction of a fraction of the capital investment, the overwhelming majority of which goes to things like: paying salaries and benefits for employees and contractors, raw materials costs, manufacturing overhead, etc., etc, all of which happens way down the gravity-well.

As someone once pointed out to a similar query many, many years ago: "there's no McDonalds on the moon", that is, there's no place to spend currency up there, thus any currency related to going into space stays - for the moment (or at least until Capitalism continues its inexorable march to the stars in the form of exchanging labor for goods and services) - right here planetside.

Jeff Bezos is a much better and stronger argument against capitalism than any political economist or philosopher could ever dream up. If you're looking for an unassailable justification for developing an economic philosophy that competes directly with capitalism, Bezos is it.

Bezos is trash but spending more on homelessness when the city isn't accountable for the current resources already squandered mismanaging homelessness isn't progressive, its lazy and exploitative of the very tax payers they pretend to represent. Liberals should demand accountability and transparency and not just agree to throw more money down the hole of fiscal incompetence like the easy marks they are.

I am wondering where all you armchair authorities get your evidence that the city is 'mismanaging' its response to the homelessness crisis and squandering money. Maybe it is. What's the evidence? The increase in the homeless population? I would say the increase in the homeless population has vastly more to do with the insane increase in the cost of housing in this city than it does with mismanagement on the city's part.

Who are we to tell another how to spend their dough? I sure the &*$# don't want nobody telling me how to run my shit. I don't tell others, cuz mine ain't in all that neat a pile neither, certainly not enough to tell another how to stack theirs,,,...Just remember, all of our poop stinks..And the head tax is bullshit...most of the homeless are drug addict crooks preying on the "regular" folks,,,Why do we want spend dough on predatory creeps?

It's his money he can do whatever he wants with it. Elon Musk is also wanting to go to space. Its better that he has the money instead of the government. They might use all of it to study cow farts again. At least the space company will provide a service for humanity. We're close to having space tours.

@29 the lack of transparent books on the part of the City and the non-profits who are using tax payer dollars. Unless you can show us where the City holds detailed books of their spending as well as all the various organizations that use tax dollars have their books publicly available....

I can't decide which is more offensive... Jeff Bezos himself or the mindless support from the masses for Jeff Bezos.

@32:

If it's a 501(c)3 non-profit, their books are, by law, open to the general public to peruse. The fact you're too lazy to seek them out, doesn't mean they're not being transparent. It's actually pretty easy: go to their office or look them up on sites like Guidestar.org. Or are you another lazy fucktard like Raindrip, for whom the minimal effort required to set fingertips to keyboard is simply exhausting?

@32 I'm going to go with you are probably talking out of your ass here. What do you know about how 'transparent' the 'books' are?

I for one don't know how one measures the efficiency or success of the city's and the county's programs. This organization attempts to: http://allhomekc.org/system-performance/

Doesn't look particularly good but that's far from proving 'mismanagement'. The problem is immense. Also, the oft cited expenditures for addressing homelessness can be somewhat misleading: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/how-much-do-seattle-and-king-county-spend-on-homelessness/

@35 It's useless when places like Compass Housing hasn't posted their financials since 2013. That means they are missing 2014,2015,2016 and 2017. Though last year's they could still be working on.

Would you like to try some more of the agency's around town?

16 and #38 How right you are. Thank you.

Boycott Amazon bring it to its knees. Bezos is dead inside. He has no soul. Turn it over to the workers. To begin a new and better economy.

Bashing drug addicts for being sick is cowardly as someone did on this list, They and their families need treatment and compassion - something that appears foreign to that commentator. Offered not forced by the police state.

@37:

According to Guidestar their financials and 990's are available through FY/CY 2016.

Next...

So you’ve written like 50 extremely anti-Amazon articles, but you still shop there? Then I don’t feel at all bad for you. You’re contributing to their massive growth. Fucking Seattleites. Always bitching. They just love the sound of their own voice.

How many NEW affordable units will we get with the $290m levy from 2016? The fact sheet is vague about that. It says 2,150 new or preserved. They could just maintain 2,100 units and bring 50 online and the doc will have fulfilled its duties.

We should get more for our money before the city asks for more of our money.

Jeff Bezos is untouchable, or so it seems, but what an idea you've got there. I've sat through a Kshama Sawant graduation speech and I found it difficult to stomach even after four years of Evergreen State's world-class training in every possible nuance of critical theory and socioeconomic justice, even for us STEM students (who arguably need it more, at least if you're arguing from a social justice standpoint). This is far from an insult to either of those, I'm just saying, if I found it to be an exercise in patience, I guarantee you that most others would find it nigh unbearable if she let loose with everything she had. Respect to Sawant for knowing the value of the relentless grind as an argument style, few can pull it off with meaningful results but her record speaks for itself. Double respect for her voting record when it comes to telling Amazon what it can do with its complaints when it comes to city hall demanding to be coddled and protected from the consequences of its actions.

@41 you work at Amazon, and for some reason I cannot fathom, you take all this personally. But perhaps we are partly to blame. You know exactly what this city's residents think of you, and we know what Amazon workers generally think of us. When you wear your badge, you're just another guy we can pin all the city's current problems on. Whether or not that's true (more or less, it is), I'm sure it's self-fulfilling that you would identify with Amazon after being disliked for working there. You feel personally attacked by this piece poking fun at Jeff Bezos' spending habits.

I'm sorry that we put you in a position where you are identified with a man like that, that's cruel and unusual punishment.

@41 PS I want to personally thank you for providing us an opportunity to engage in our very favorite activity that brings Seattle natives of all stripes together: Picking on you and your co-workers. You are definitely helping to maintain Seattle's culture!

Not knowing so much about WA, I gotta ask... Why not just have an income tax and a capital gains tax?

@46- the answer is the Republican half of the state (largely on the other side of the mountains). You can't get past the Tim Eyman sorts who are constantly whining about government (while driving to work on government-funded roads and making sure that the government-funded police, fire etc are there to protect them) to actually get anything done. Somehow the red parts of the state are always willing to accept state $$ for stuff they want, but they keep sending people to Olympia to make sure the state can't raise the money to pay for it.

And I, for one, would like an honest accounting of how many people the City has actually housed in the last five years and how much each one cost. Any way you look at it we are paying a crapload of money and things keep getting worse. If the City Council had the balls to rezone significant amounts of the city away from SF5000, it might actually make a difference. But it is a lot easier to pass laws beating up on landlords that will just make things worse. Wouldn't want to make any of the NIMBY neighborhood groups mad.

Thanks for the straight talk, Katie. One small critique: Every other source I've heard says the $20M cap is based on gross receipts which is not the same as net revenue. That distinction would render the tax more likely to affect slightly more businesses than it would if it were actually based on net revenue.

@22 & @28: Well-said. Thank you.

I couldn’t agree more, Katie! He’s got way too much money and he’s destroying Seattle’s livability. Of course he should pay for, pardon the expression, crapping in his own bathtub, because he’s so blind with ambition that nothing else matters, and people certainly don’t. He’s put half of America out of business ruthlessly and he isn’t going to stop, so Seattle should dock him one and bring this nightmare to a stop. Now.

The liberal and progressive gods seem displeased with one of the most progressive corporate backers of “Hope and Change”. When liberal municipal politicians make deals with progressive capitalist devils, someone is bound to get burned. Too bad it will be the taxpayer and vulnerable. But one has to wonder - now that this fiasco is seen worldwide and the sheeple-minded democrats, progressives, and socialist municipal politicians and constituency of Seattle have seen the true sith nature of corporate dictatorship: Which new city will blithely sell its soul for an HQ2 and a corporate-backed municipal economy and will Seattle give into corporate construction that is bound to cap soon anyway because the Seattle metropolitan is a limited isthmus land mass anyway.

51: "... democrats, progressives, and socialist municipal politicians and constituency of Seattle have seen the true sith nature of corporate dictatorship... "

Corps ARE peeps too, my friend.
Autocratic faceless and soulless, but still....

Corps used to pay 40% of US taxes.
Now it's like 15%. Strip mining America.
It's what the worst ones do best.

You had me until Sawant was the chief negotiator. She hasn't proven she can convince anyone of anything. She just yells at people. She doesn't build coalitions. Bring in a real diplomat.

Fuck Bezos.

yeah F Bezos and his ridiculously successful business model! Him and his “company”, employing hundreds of thousands of techies, office staff, admins, delivery people and warehouse workers. Increasing local jobs by his multiple offices in SLU. Giving $40M to affordable housing, building and giving rent fee space to Mary’s Place Shelter for homeless and their families. What a dick! He should just pack up and leave so we can turn into Detroit. We should definitely continue to dictate to him how to spend his profits. Clearly he’s not intelligent enough to make smart choices. I just dont understand why he doesn’t want to give Seattle a big hug and continue to grow here!

And can we talk about the pot shops that are all exempt from this tax? Thanks to their buddy on the steering committee. Real fair there CC.

Let's have yet another "tax" so w can feed SHARE/WHEEL and LIHI with more money and zero accountability.

http://www.homelessindustrialcomplex.com

Hey

Amazon, is the Walmart that will put Walmart out of business. Think about that for a second.

Why? Because their retail operation doesn't need to make a profit, nor do they need pay folks a fair wage.

We are not just talking about Seattle here. Amazon is fucking this whole country.

Please just go to Nordstrom, Krogrer, whatever you can muster that is not Amazon. They are a plague.

@57 Too little, too late. The best we can hope for is that some other city deals with their second headquarters. To that city, all I can say is, my condolences. At least Amazon knows it fucked up here and is looking to avoid that in its second city.

It would have been more worth it to Seattle as a city if Amazon had never engaged in its hiring practices that led to a homelessness crisis. As it stands, $40M towards patching the problem after the fact is not much consolation. The infrastructure is already overloaded. It will take more than quick financial fixes on the back end to somehow make amends with Seattle as a whole, not that making amends is possible at this point. While these problems persist as daily realities, it's going to be hard at best to "get over it" or "get with it" or suddenly be really happy that we're not even worse off when things are already looking down.

In the end, we don't even really want his help, we just don't want him around. We've seen what Bezos' idea of prosperity involves, and who foots the bill. Whatever help he could render now, the damage has mostly already been done, or is a sure thing through the foreseeable future. Taxes at this point are similarly a band-aid on a deep tissue wound.

Most of city council is in love with the man and will gladly do whatever it takes to please him. Only a few members openly criticize Amazon the way average long-timers and natives do, and that's not enough. Plus, market forces have already essentially 'decided' in their blind way that Seattle is the next Silicon Valley. It was happening before Amazon got big, they just got big enough to be the poster child of the moment for corporations shitting where they eat.

Bezos doesn't deserve a big wet kiss for engaging in what can at his level be described as the bare minimum of philanthropy necessary to look like an engaged citizen. Whether or not he's criticized in local news is irrelevant to a man like him, he doesn't need people to come to his rescue.

This isn't just about Amazon. 500 companies would be affected, and most aren't nearly as flushed with cash as Amazon. As the $12,000,000 bike lanes and thoroughly bungled streetcar development show, the Council can't spend the money it has already appropriated responsibly. So why would it do any better with added funding for the homeless? Since Seattle is a one-party city, there are no partisan checks and balances on the Council's power. Amazon is providing this much-needed opposition. We passed a $290,000,000 levy for the homeless in in 2016. The city should demonstrate that it is spending that money responsibly before asking anybody, let alone the city's largest employers, for more money.

@44 @45 - you say I shouldn't take it personally but then you make several negative comments about Amazon employees. For the record, I worked at Amazon for a few years. I don’t anymore.

“You know exactly what this city's residents think of you, and we know what Amazon workers generally think of us”

Most Amazon workers don’t have strong feelings about the people of Seattle one way or the other. In general, they feel unwelcome and try to stick to themselves because of behavior like yours. I try to be nice to the people and most Seattleites are really nice back although it definitely takes them longer to warm up to you if you mention you work at Amazon.

While I get that Amazon’s major growth has been a major factor in rising rent prices and other economic hardship in Seattle, I don’t get why you blame Amazon employees personally. For most of us, it’s a good job with interesting technical challenges. If we didn’t take the job, someone else would have. We didn't do it to fuck you over and don't like that costs have gone up. While we're better positioned to afford it, it's not like we like throwing $2-3k/month away on rent. I have friends who don't work in tech and have seen them struggle financially. It sucks.

I also don't understand why you need to make fun of Amazom employees. What exactly do you make fun of Amazon employees for? You do realize that although they may all wear a badge, there is a ton of diversity amongst them, right? In the years I worked there, >50% are immigrants from all over the world. Not that many fit the "nerd" or "brogrammer" stereotypes. If you actually got to know a few, you might be surprised by the range of personal, ethical, and political beliefs you'd find. Just because I worked at Amazon doesn't say shit about me as a person.

If making fun of Amazon employees is maintaining the culture of Seattle, I'm glad I'll be moving away soon. Congratulations, you've made the world even more negative, and made a large heterogeneous group of people (many who are very nice) feel unwelcome in this city and made their lives slightly harder. By doing so, you haven't achieved anything - no one is moving out of Seattle because of your behavior - but hey, if it makes you feel better to bully people, I hope you got at least got that.

Maybe if Amazon employees found the courage to unionize and gain leverage against this reptilian piece of shit, they might get some respect. But since they seemed to be content with scraps from Bezo’s table? No sympathy for Amazon employees. Go play your tiny violin somewhere else.

I say kudos on Bezos. There are plenty of cities that would Love to have Amazon's jobs and business. Successful businesses and businessmen didn't get that way by letting leeches fuck them over. The question is, what is wrong with you. The Midwest welcomes you any time Jeff, or at least I do. Be sure to take with you any jobs people like this blogger clearly take for granted. The Seattle area is replaceable, which they clearly don't get.