Unless Mayor Durkan can tell us why all of our previous spending to eliminate homelessness has resulted in more homeless persons in our city, she has no business asking us for more money. Full stop.

Unless our City Council can tell us why all of our previous spending to eliminate homelessness has resulted in more homeless persons in our city, they have no business asking us for more money. Full stop.

(Also, I know we impertinent, snotty, disobedient voters elected Durkan contra The Stranger’s explicit orders, but there are pictures of her more recent than election night. Using that same image now just makes you look childish.)

Great... we’re only going to mug you... no rape this time...

Staying an 'hours tax' means it is regressive. It's 0.8% for a $30k employee and 0.1% for a $250k employee.

This is the kind of careful persistence needed to maintain the most regressive state and local tax system in the country.

Full stop? Say ranking full stop!

Brr-yeah.

Sounds like no matter what happens you don’t benefit unless you’re homeless or are the sort to cry for the students hitting up the food bank instead of working while attending a preeminent university.

Yes, the doctrine of self-interest does reign supreme when you have to take care of yourself.

Good plan.

We have reached the tipping point. No more taxes to pay for bums.

The tax is still a turd. Hire experts this time and then do what they say.tax@

Why don't they change the criteria to businesses that net 20 mil? That would eliminate the damage to businesses with a small profit margin.
Also, the tax should be on employee hours, not per head.

name another time in history the city budget was $5.6 BILLION. don't worry, ill wait.
complete fiscal irresponsibility and lack of accountability from this bush league city council.
http://www.seattle.gov/financedepartment/18adoptedbudget/documents/2018adoptedbudget.pdf
page 48: >$75mil already spent on transient dope fiend gypsy bums.
the last BUSINESS out of seattle, turn off the lights

@11: Having mentored many fine STEM students at our city’s colleges, seen them go on to get degrees from UW and Seattle U., and thence acquire good-paying, private-sector jobs, I’m all for keeping that pipeline pumping with more of my tax money. Such public investments create great wealth for all of us.

As for pounding more sand down the rat-hole of homeless services, forget it. The city can implement the results of two studies saying we can house everyone with the resources we already have.

Thanks for being a mentor @12, good on ya for helping young people improve themselves.

@1) - @15) It's so much fun to pick on the homeless, huh?
This proposal will have ZERO effect on your life, but a potentially POSITIVE effect on the lives on the homeless. So it costs you nothing, and here you are complaining like they just fucked you with a broom handle. You people are undeserving self-entitled snits. Get over yourselves.

And when companies start pulling back on hiring, they will say "oh gee, we didn't think of that!"

@16: I suggest you take a business course, it might even open up a whole new world of opportunities for you. Folks like you don't hold the copyright on compassion for the homeless - the best compassion is REALITY.

@6:

What makes you think kids going to college aren't working? Did it never occur to you they may be hitting the food bank because the cost of tuition these days is so astronomically high, particularly at four-year institutions, that even if they're working full-time, they still can't make ends meet?

@17:

The only reason companies will pull back on hiring is because they can't find enough qualified prospective employees to fill open positions. In case you haven't been paying attention, unemployment rates are at near-record lows right now...

See U.N.T. @16: By definition, raising taxes will cost citizens money. Where’s your proof the money so raised will actually benefit any homeless persons?

It’s fun to scold other people with false “facts” you just pulled straight out of your arse, isn’t it? Providing actual answers to real problems, now that’s hard work. See you later, indeed.

You’re a smug, worthless, self-entitled little snot. Get over yourself.

@19: No, it will have an affect. Maybe a little, maybe a lot, but it will. It's yet another factor that comes into their decision making. Logic dictates that it isn't conducive to more hiring than what was already anticipated.

@1: Because it's been like trying to boil water at 70C for a long time?

@23:

Cutting staff wouldn't make any difference, if it means everyone else has to work more hours to pick up the slack, because the head tax is calculated on a very simple formula of "# of employees times # of hours each works". The only way to pay less would be to effectively reduce total employee hours, which means the business would be less productive, run less efficiently, and presumably lose revenue - some of which potentially would be offset by lowered overhead costs. But I seriously doubt the "savings" would be enough to prompt any major employer here to gut their workforce, as all the Chicken Littles predict.

@24 No, reducing employee hours is not the way to reduce tax exposure. You are overlooking the fact that many companies can easily reduce employee hours in Seattle by shifting some operations to other, already existing locations outside of Seattle. A number of business have already said this is their plan (although Expedia, oddly, seems committed to tacking the hit). See, e.g., Amazon.

So, employee hours in Seattle will be reduced, and it's not likely to result in a significant loss of revenue or efficiency for most companies. Sorry to break it to you, but companies are always going to put profits first, and are pretty good at finding a way to avoid paying taxes.

Yeah COUNT, wouldn’t want to fat shame a starving college student or anything.

16, I’m not picking on anyone, although I am genuinely hateful of the permanent victim class pretending to be poor and representative of the working folk.

What am I undeserving of? What in the fuck am I self-entitled to, what’s wrong with that, what what else should I be entitled to?

Also, COUNT, your reasoning - including the price of tuition for being a prideless moocher - only applies if they’re paying as they go.

Not many of those any more.

I did take a free meal once. A buddy and I had eaten nothing but blueberry pancakes for well over two weeks. Thankfully it was from a gigantic bag of Krusteaz and not something less bougie.

You try a pancake and water diet.

The hamburger tasted like cardboard and the crinkle cut fries were god awful.

None of this compared to the stares of the old folks as their jaws worked.

We never talked about it and we never went back.

Cool that companies based on the Eastside evade any responsibility for any of this. It is clearly a Seattle only problem that must be solved using Seattle's resources. Let Seattle continue to house and pay for the homeless who are coming from Kent and Spokane and Redmond. Meanwhile the cities and companies located outside of Seattle keeps washing their hands....

Anyone have a clue as to what our latest troll-of-the-week is on about? Or are they just day drunk?

The only way you gain from this is being homeless or being a victim who always had more than most, demanding to pay less for nicer things than the every day folk.

They only let me stick around if I act as though I’m mentally disabled(went about 90% JeffK) or have a historical or movie figure as my avatar.

Other than that I’ll get booted for so much as a circumcision joke in a thread about the relation of rubbing your baby down with scented oils and bitch tits later in life.

Fuck it. Here’s what gets you banned without spam or anything.

“What ever happened to the first man you see hits you, the second man you see holds you, and the third man you see cuts off your weiner?

Any more you’re all just perfumed lords ;[[“

UNNACEPTABLE!

Literal nazis and the like are fine as long as you don’t harm the delicate sensibilities of whichever gem has their finger on the button.

Have a nice day!

Durkan rolls with the Dems ( you know; those sumbitches that shafted Bernie Sanders outta HOW many victories in 2016???!! Pah !! --- https://www.blackboxvoting.org & https://jampac.us ).

Okay, I'm definitely going with day drunk...

@32

I don't know which poster that would be.

There is no way I can say it better than this:

“Durkan’s $38 million a year and 24 new homes a year isn’t a bad joke – but it’s close.”
— Geov Parrish

@37: That would be the same Geov Parrish who spends four paragraphs demonizing anyone who dares oppose a head tax — all while he refuses to ask why our previous expenditures have
completely failed to improve the plight of the homeless.

Coupling affordable housing to rehousing the homeless was an approach specifically rejected by one of the consultants the city paid for a plan to end homelessness. Geov simply won’t educate himself on the issue, not when he can just get his hate on Seattle’s voters instead.