Comments

1

Bill is Round-Up ready! Reason enough.

2

"[B]est billionaire is a dead billionaire."
Correct. The damage caused by one human being assembling super-massive wealth is not forgivable.

5

@3 - Reductive ad absurdo

6

Don't like them, don't support them. Lest you be a Hypocrite.

7

@3

Hey, your favorite writer.

8

Why hating on McKinzie? Or maybe there are only seven billionaires in WA? This is kinda dumb

9

No Steve Ballmer? Martin Selig? You guys are slipping.

10

Katie, I normally like your work. But this is just fucking ridiculous, "the reason Washington state will never have an income and/or capital gains and/or employee head tax;"
1. Washington citizens have repeatedly rejected an income tax before Bezos even existed. And they continue to do so. Just because he donated some money to fight an income tax doesn't mean he is responsible.
2. The Head Tax was based on revenue, it would have charged Dick's burgers the same per employee fee as Amazon regardless of billions in profit.
This is why it failed. It was the stupidest tax anyone could come up with. Literally any other tax probably would have passed, but the Head Tax made no fucking sense. Which is why everyone and their mom pressured the council to get rid of it. But please, continue to blame Amazon for every little thing. Scapegoating Amazon is the new Seattle tradition. You know, like blaming transplants for being shitty drivers when it is really the people who fucking live here

11

i hate billionaires too, but isn't this the new "GRUNGE RUINED SEATTLE"?

12

@6:

Unless one lives a completely currency-free lifestyle on a remote homestead somewhere off-the-grid, it's virtually impossible to NOT support them to some extent, given they have their fingers in so many pieces of the economic pie.

15

@11,

Nah. Grunge "ruining" the PNW (which always felt a bit tongue-in-cheek, as far as mantras go) was speaking to it's cultural impact. The ruination inflicted by billionaires, and more pertinently by incomprehensible wealth inequality, is way more devastating and far reaching.

16

@13: Well, if the Seattle City Council has listened to anyone other than their echo chamber of homeless-industrial complex enablers, then things might have turned out differently. But they didn’t. They went ahead and passed a tax which had already been tried, deemed a failure, and revoked in the recent past. When No Tax On Jobs filed for a Referendum, the sneering from the Council and supporters was loud — they’ll never get enough signatures in time!

When they did indeed get all of the signatures needed, plus many, many more besides, the initial response from the Council was denial, followed by capitulation to the inevitable. Now, a majority of Council Members up for re-election this year have already given up all hope. They are despised by the voters they so cavalierly ignored, and it’s ending their political careers.

With or without the EHT, Seattle spends tens of millions of dollars annually in a failed attempt to house a few thousand persons. Why should anyone have believed throwing the EHT money atop the previous waste would improve anything?

17

Boycott Amazon & Starbuck's. I am.

19

Washington state was rejecting income taxes long before Jeff Bezos arrived.

22

And this, folks, is what an article from a dying publication looks like.

23

@20: Thanks to Paul Allen, it’s now damned near impossible to find a good, honest-to-God vacant lot strewn with garbage anywhere near Lake Union. Everywhere you look, it’s just another new medical institute, luxury residential tower, or office building full of highly-paid tech workers.

The nerve of that guy!

24

@18 jackass: When enough people stop buying Amazon and Starbuck's products, yes, it WILL show rabid capitalists such as Jeff Bezos and Howard Schultz, by hitting them right in their over-inflated pocketbooks where it would hurt them the most.
@22: ....said an inarticulate troll rotting in his mom's basement, dying of boredom....is it a couple more hours before Speed Racer?
@21: I think your MAGA cap is on a little too tight, Scottie. Get some fresh air before you have a stroke from givin' it all you bloody well CAN, Cap'n. Even your beamer's worn out.

25

@17, @24: It’s always amusing when persons with little to no disposable income threaten a boycott. Are you and Ivy going to continue telling each other your big tales of how — any day now! —you’ll take down Amazon?

My spouse and I each have a professional career. We also have a small child. Do you know what Amazon means to us? It means spending more time at home with our child, and less time in checkout lines. We’re willing and able to pay for such a privilege, and so are lots of other hard-working folks. Keep dreaming that you speak for us; soon enough, you’re going to start spitting nails at us for our daring to ignore your grandiosely foolish diktats.

Like we care.

26

Hot Take Herzog’s “enlightened centrism” snared ‘em again!

27

@25 “Won’t someone think of Tensor’s imaginary wife and child!”

You know the workers Bezos crushes under his sexy Allbirds also children and spouses. Why don’t you think about them? Why is your “family” more important that theirs? Your four minutes in a checkout line is so much more important than hundreds of other families?

But since you’re so worried about the quality time you don’t get with your mythical family maybe stop spending 12 hours a day every god damned day posting to SLOG.

Workers keep thier jobs, we don’t have to suffer another troll - AND - you get to jump your blow-up doll wife and pretend play catch with cardboard cut out Jr.

WIN! WIN!

Otherwise spare us your bullshit

28

@25 “Won’t someone think of Tensor’s imaginary wife and child!”

You know the workers Bezos crushes under his sexy Allbirds also children and spouses. Why don’t you think about them? Why is your “family” more important that theirs? Your four minutes in a checkout line is so much more important than hundreds of other families?

But since you’re so worried about the quality time you don’t get with your mythical family maybe stop spending 12 hours a day every god damned day posting to SLOG.

Workers keep thier jobs, we don’t have to suffer another troll - AND - you get to jump your blow-up doll wife and pretend play catch with cardboard cut out Jr.

WIN! WIN!

29

@25 tensor: How is an individual pledge--mine or anyone else's---to simply no longer patronize a corporate business such as Amazon 'taking [it] down'? Watch out for those trash fires before you really get burned, tensor. If nobody else, think of your poor spouse and child. They must be reeling from those precious four minutes saved.
@27 & @28 ProfessorHistory: Professor History for the WIN! WIN!! YESsssssss! Thank you and bless you.

30

@25 tensor: So you're spared time wasted in a checkout line. How long is your daily commute? Getting stuck in traffic must really suck. Are you employed by Amazon, tensor? You have my sympathy.

31

@11 Grunge didn't ruin Seattle. Grunge ruined Rock and Roll. Cobain and his nasal whine, and bullshit existential angst, was the death knell of rock and roll.

32

@31 Davell: I'll never let go of classic rock 'n' roll. Nobody, not even Kurt Cobain can kill that.

33

@30
For the last 30 almost 40 years I have not owned a car. Amazon has provided a huge improvement, Without a car going from store to store to comparison shop is tedious, and wasteful.
With Amazon I can find what I need without having to bus from Bellevue to Tacoma. It is delivered to me so conveniently I don't need to think about it.

So auntie grizelda, do you own a car? What's your carbon footprint like? As a non-car owning, non-driving person, I can tell you that Amazon has helped me keep my carbon footprint small.
What about you? do you drive around from store to store looking for the best deal? Or more realistically, drive around from store to store looking in vain for the item available on Amazon.

Sorry, I don't have time for your self-righteous arrogance.

36

@27: My wife and child are quite real, thank you very much. (Your lifetime of holding contrary-to-fact opinions has rendered your denials reflexive, eh?)

“You know the workers Bezos crushes under his sexy Allbirds also children and spouses.”

That may very well be the most coherent thing written against Amazon here in the Stranger, at least of late.

(While moving boxes indoors for $15/hour may be your definition of a crushing workload, many of us have done more for less in parts of our working lives.)

“...maybe stop spending 12 hours a day every god damned day posting to SLOG.”

Just because it takes you half the day to grind out a single, fact-free ad hominem here doesn’t mean it takes anyone else more than a tiny fraction of that time to write a factual, logical argument.

“Your four minutes in a checkout line...”

The only similarity you have to an actual academic is your keen appreciation for how things actually work in the real world.

@29: Good to see you acknowledge your self-declared “boycott” will have no effect. (It’s also good to see my incendiary strike about your trashfire commentary still has you burning. That was months ago, right? When someone gets your goat, it stays gotten!)

37

No mention of the harm Gates has brought to public ed. Apparently this is just click bait

38

This was a transparent humble brag about all the billionaires in Washington. Not very well executed. Billionaires arent everything.

39

@30: “So you're spared time wasted in a checkout line.”

Yes, and for those who can see beyond the blindly literal, I am also spared time shopping, going to and from the store, and other shopping-related activities which tend to take more than four minutes. (Also, persons who are in line do not have to wait for me to fumble with my purchases whilst wrangling my child.)

@30: “How long is your daily commute?”

About half an hour each way. What on earth has that to do with saving time via Amazon?

“Getting stuck in traffic must really suck.”

I use mass transit, and stay productive with mobile IT, so I really couldn’t say. Thanks for your concern.

“Are you employed by Amazon,”

Nope. Never worked there, and have no intention of doing so.

40

Hahaha, there will never be an income tax imposed by Washington State.

41

Ratings from someone who doesn't matter:

Katie: 9/10 for picking a topic that plays well to Stranger readers. Gotta respect that.

Chunga: 2/10 for implying that education reform is not needed or that Gates somehow had ulterior motives. Studies show that teacher quality trumps all, including class size.

On Amazon warehouse workers: 5/10. Yes they should be paid more, but the alternative will be more automation. I wouldn't want to be a young truck driver either.

9/10 on how we allow so much income disparity. Even Gates agrees.

5/10 on blaming the billionaires. Philanthropy will be the ultimate indicator.

5/10 for Tensor. That's only because I subtracted 5 points for personal attacks, I use Amazon for similar reasons. Saves time/gas, has reviews and prices are good to comparable.

10/10 for all ideas that advocate for equitable taxation. (I didn't say the "I" word, don't flame me.)

3/10 for attacks on the Stranger. It is what it is. I see it as innovative with a healthy touch of troll bait.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.