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Amazon don't want to pay tax. They want to profit from doing business in a developed country. They just don't feel the need to help pay to maintain one:
$11.2 billion in profits means you pay -0.1% federal tax. Nice.

If by "always" you mean "mostly since the '80s and especially since the turn of the century" and by "normal" you mean "an uncommon phenomenon occurring mostly within a handful of specific megacorporations." The numbers and history don't lie:

https://itep.org/the-35-percen...

Does Amazon pay taxes? Here's some links from left, right, and center-tending media:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/may/03/bernie-s/amazon-paid-0-federal-income-taxes-2017/
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-not-paying-taxes-trump-bezos-2018-4
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/amazon-earned-5-6b-in-2017-but-paid-no-federal-taxes
https://itep.org/amazon-inc-paid-zero-in-federal-taxes-in-2017-gets-789-million-windfall-from-new-tax-law/
https://splinternews.com/amazon-made-5-6-billion-in-profits-last-year-and-repor-1823329221

[Property taxes] are the single most "regressive" tax we have

False.

But what we really need are fees proportional to the land parcel's burden on the city. For example, a property with a long street frontage requires more city money to maintain the street, the sidewalk, the sewers, and the trees, so a street frontage fee would be appropriate and give the poor a new opportunity to save money on their living expenses by living in a building with a narrow front.

Replacing property taxes with property burden fees would also make apartments more economical because adding the 2nd floor would not significantly increase the fee.

Property burden fees would also allow more properties to be built in a given land area, satisfying demand for housing and lowering the price of housing.

It would also make the city more tax-efficient in revenue versus city spending, allowing other taxes to be lowered, such as the much more regressive sales tax.

You mean the long history of peace between Iran and Israel is over?

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was a major setback in that conflict, and pulling out of the Iran deal is a risk for our peace with them, not to mention destroying our credibility for other such arrangements. Then there's the little matter of appointing a notorious extreme warmonger named John Bolton.

Keep telling middle class people that the extra money in their paycheck is "crumbs".

Since the average amount they'll see is $20, I absolutely will.

Maybe not everyone, but individuals know whether things are improving for them or not. Unemployed people see the help wanted signs. Middle class people see the extra money in their paycheck. Investors see their 401k balance.

Plenty of people recognize things are not actually improving for them. Aside from the question of how much credit Trump deserves for unemployment, which is a whole debate in itself, of the other two things you've mentioned one is propaganda unless you think $20 is significant. The other is mostly a benefit for the wealthy; and if you really want to claim the gains the part of middle class with 401k holdings have seen is worth everything Trump has done, especially looking at the net after accelerated health insurance cost increases due to repealing the mandate without implementing any other cost control measures, that's kind of a weak argument for all the harm he's done to the poor, to our credibility, to our reputation, to our environment, to minorities, to immigrants including some legal ones, to civil rights in his Sessions appointment... and on and on.

So-Called Locals: The Road to Corporate Taxation in Seattle


Over the past decade large capital flows --- frequently if not mostly of money laundering and speculation origin --- have poured into the Pacific Northwest, from Vancouver, Canada, to King County (Seattle), Washington, USA.

During the last mayoral election, candidate Cary Moon, along with Councilmember Lisa Herbold, raised the issue of external impacts on our local housing market. A logical critique, given reports by local realtors of a 70% unoccupied rate of recently purchased homes --- obviously not purchased to be lived in! The candidate for mayor who would later be elected, Jenny Durkan, along with other elected politicians, pushed back against any investigation into rampant real estate/housing speculation, citing that bugaboo of the political theater crowd, racism. (As Trump won the presidential election thanks to low voter turnout, an even lower voter turnout in Seattle --- at 37% of registered voters --- ensured Durkan's victory as mayor --- a sad day for the American electorate all around! Interestingly, they both won with around the same percentage of votes.)

When Gary Gensler was chief of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Obama Administration, he instigated a study of futures trades, long claimed to be done for "hedging purposes," and found that over 90% were pure speculation trades, only done for quick profit and market manipulation. (Price setting, which occurs in the futures markets)

Although so-called pundits at Fox may refer to Seattle as a "socialist hellhole" --- Seattle has long been run as the personal fiefdom of the rich through their influential Community Devleopment Roundtable (with tenant rights having been essentially missing over the past century).

http://archive.seattleweekly.c...

https://www.thestranger.com/se...

Along with that rampant money laundering/speculative capital flows into local real estate (also involving private equity/leveraged buyouts of local apartment buildings, etc.), many financial/economic forces worked together to drive up housing prices: the destruction of local affordable housing, with the replacement of high-end condos and rentals, while local jobs were displaced in the corporate rush to offshore labor, leading to an extreme tightening of the housing market, further aggravated by the recent surge and influx of new Amazon employees.

The employment picture was exacerbated by Amazon's (and Bezos') destruction, both locally and nationally, of thousands of book and record stores in its march to be the One World Retail Corporation! Add to that the cited 50% first-year turnover rate for new hires at Amazon (for whatever myriad reasons???) and consequently one observes a general rise in rental rates. (I.e., both supply and demand --- and turnover --- drive up the rates as landlords typically jack up rental rates each time an apartment becomes vacant.)

With Amazon's traditional history of tax avoidance,

https://itep.org/amazon-inc-pa...

it is no surprise of their strong push back against the recent city council measure.

As cities in Canada (and throughout the Americas and Europe) have raised taxes on foreign purchases of local real estate, it is almost logical that Seattle would follow a similar trajectory.

An excellent recent financial article in the Epoch Times further explains how the banking system drives up housing prices.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/...

Beginning in the first year of the 21st century, Seattle's local chamber of commerce, togethe

http://fortune.com/2018/04/07/...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...

https://itep.org/is-the-trump-...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/vide...

https://www.nationalreview.com...

https://www.nasdaq.com/video/t...

There yah go. Because you're a fucking idiot doesn't mean reality gives a fuck about what you think, it just means you're a fucking idiot.

https://thinkprogress.org/weal...

The top ten percent of earners in the United States took home more than 50 percent of all income in 2012, the highest amount ever recorded since data was first collected in 1917, according to an updated report from economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty.

While the wealthiest took a big hit during the financial crisis, theyâ(TM)ve almost fully recovered. Last year, income for the top 1 percent of earners âoeincreased sharply,â the report notes, growing by nearly 20 percent, while the bottom 99 percent only saw money rise by 1 percent. âoeIn sum,â the authors write, âoetop 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover.â

This follows a trend since the recovery officially began. From 2009 to 2012, income for the 1 percent grew by 31.4 percent, while everyone else only saw it grow by 0.4 percent. That means the 1 percent âoecaptured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery,â they write.

http://equitablegrowth.org/res...

"U.S. top one percent of income earners hit new high in 2015 amid strong economic growth"
"The top 1 percent income earners in the United States hit a new high last year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The bottom 99 percent of income earners registered the best real income growth (after factoring in inflation) in 17 years, but the top one percent did even better. The latest IRS data show that incomes for the bottom 99 percent of families grew by 3.9 percent over 2014 levels, the best annual growth rate since 1998, but incomes for those families in the top 1 percent of earners grew even faster, by 7.7 percent, over the same period. (See Figure 1.)"

http://billmoyers.com/2015/01/...

https://thinkprogress.org/the-...
Adjusting for inflation and excluding anything made from capital gains investments like stocks, however, shows that even that small gains for all but the richest disappears. According to Justin Wolfers, adjusted average income for the 1 percent without capital gains rose from $871,100 to $968,000 in that time period. For everyone else, average income actually fell from $44,000 to $43,900. Calculated this way, the 1 percent has captured all of the income gains.

Saezâ(TM)s new data show that income for the 1 percent did actually decrease somewhat in 2013 as compared to 2012: its share of income fell from 22.8 percent to 20.1 percent.

Note: The top 1% alone earned 20% of the entire nation's income. It's easy to hit 50% when you go to the top 10%.

here's updated 2015 data...
https://taxfoundation.org/summ...
Top 10% 45.87% of the total income.

The ENTIRE bottom 50% earned only 11.49% of the entire nation's income.

If you allow any kind of deductions at all, their taxes are going to be much lower because even tiny deductions are a huge portion of their income. But worst case, let them starve- the most they could pay would be 11.49%.

But given the crippling size of state and local taxes combined with social security taxes, many would starve and go homeless.

Here's a state by state breakdown of how much people pay in state, local, and excise taxes .

http://www.itep.org/whopays/fu...

Excise taxes are things like $2 on your cell phone bill and $70 a year for your car. Likewise, the poorest get no share of pr

Your assumption is that we didn't have roads and schools and such before taxing everyone to death (hint: we did)

Your assumption is that we are being taxed to death, yet death is demonstratively not necessarily caused by taxes. Unless you believe entropy is a tax, but in that case, your problem is with the universe at large, not with governments. In the most cases, you will find that people live just fine with the tax burden they have. Perhaps they even live better.

Because no, you can't prove that roads and schools and such existed before taxes, let alone that they would exist without being paid for, as that historical demonstration would require a time machine, which you don't have.

Your assumption that taxes we pay for these things aren't redirected to other things. (The government makes more on Gas than the oil companies)

In the US? Not for motor fuel taxes they aren't. Your assumption is that they are making money on gas and diesel taxes, when the spending on transportation infrastructure is greater, is readily demonstrated as untrue for the US.

You might be able to show a country where the opposite is true, but your assumption would be already shown not to be universally so.

Of course, if you want to see the benefits of a developed transportation network, that can be shown. Has the public been enriched or not?

Your assumption is that government is the only way to have these things (it isn't)

Your counter-assertion is merely a denial, thus you are assuming it isn't, without offering reasoning, let alone proof.

Your assumption is that oh wait, I see your point. You actually agree with me, just that you won't admit it.

Really, you have to have people agree with you by simple assumption? How desperate are you for affirmation that you make it up?

If the money was used as originally intended - to fund building and maintenance of the Interstate highway system - it would be brimming with cash. Instead, it's also being used for lots of other projects, like mass transit, bicycle paths, and landscaping for roads. About a quarter of the income from the HTF goes to non-highway projects.

What's your source for this?

I'm not seeing the numbers adding up. According to the Washington Post " In 2013, the trust fund disbursed $50 billion to states â" $43 billion for roads and $7 billion for mass transit, reports the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)."

But what was the revenue? This claims $30 billion from the gas tax in 2013.

That's a $13 billion shortfall.

State and local spending on roads is even worse.

You may want to do more research in this area. The 4th power rule for vehicle weight/damage to roads seems to indicate that cyclists cause negligible wear to the roads. Induced demand will explain why building more roads won't necessarily make traffic better. And the externalities of vehicle pollution, if you look into that, should be considered yet another subsidy to motor vehicle travel.

In TX, state revenues come from Sales Tax, which is inherently progressive because sales tax is not applied to food items

No, sales tax is not inherently progressive. Property taxes and sales taxes are most regressive taxes there is. Texas may make some allowances for food items, but that does almost nothing when it comes to making their tax system progressive. And while Texas is not the most regressive state, it is in the top 5.

Looking at Texas and California, for example, here is a comparison of how regressive their taxes are. Each group represents family income for non-elderly taxpayers. source

Taxes paid by:
Lowest 20% - CA 10.6%, TX 12.6%
Second 20% - CA 9.2%, TX 10.4%
Middle 20% - CA 8.2%, TX 8.6%
Fourth 20% - CA 7.6%, TX 7.4%
Next 15% - CA 7.4%, TX 6.1%
Next 4% - CA 8.7%, TX 4.9%
Top 1% - CA 8.8%, TX 3.2%

This shows the wealthy top 1% in Texas pay 64% less of their state's taxes as the wealthy in California. So while I do see why the top 20% of Texas residents really like this situation, I don't see how they sleep at night.

We need to make the undocumented workers legal so they can be taxed.

Exactly. (If you meant that in sarcasm, you're more right than you think.) Our government (feebly attempts to) turn back lots of good taxpayers who just want a decent wage and standard of living. We can put public records (and, yes, the NSA) to good use: gather info on the immigrants before they attempt to enter, and when they try and if they are able to learn our history without posing an imminent threat to lives, make them legal in 82 minutes--not 82 YEARS (WTF?). This would encourage upstanding behavior, bring in more taxes, bring in more ideas that would give more people here and abroad a job to keep busy, and leave the law enforcers free to properly fight real enemies of the state, like banks.

Certain 'Murican types say that Those Damn Illegals don't follow the law and Took Er Jerbs. I remind them that no one follows the law and we should update the law to conform with basic respect, common sense, and our dire budget--and maybe our new Americans can give them their next job.

A low income person will spend a higher portion of his income on food and housing than a higher income person -- things that are generally exempt from state tax. The higher income person will be eating out more, buying more "toys", buying an expensive car, etc and generally making more purchases that are not exempt from tax.

In the worst states the poor pay 7% of their income in sales/excise taxes vs 4.6% for middle incomes and 0.9% for the wealthiest. from ITEP:

States’ consumption tax structures are highly regressive with an average 7 percent rate for the poor, a 4.6 percent rate for middle incomes, and a 0.9 percent rate for the wealthiest taxpayers. Because food is one of the largest expenses for a low-income family, taxing food is a particularly regressive tax policy; five of the ten most regressive states tax food at the state or local level. Excise taxes on things like gasoline, cigarettes or beer take about 1.6 percent of the income of the poorest families, 0.8 percent from middle income families and 0.1 percent of income from the most well-off.

http://www.itep.org/pdf/whopayses.pdf