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Is the Amazon-Led Economic Boom Wrecking Seattle?
reifman writes: Seattleites are struggling with massive traffic, rising housing costs and declining diversity. Amazon's building and acquiring enough office space to triple its local headcount by 2020. Facebook, Google and many other tech companies are now expanding here as well — it's the San Franciscoization of Seattle. Downtown is filled with 75 cranes — some blocks look like mining towns. Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation and hate crimes against gays have shot up in a formerly LGBTQ neighborhood. Politicians can't agree on reforming impact fees and taxes to address these issues."
An interesting piece of recent advice from a long time Amazonian to the company's interns: avoid full-time employment there.
Actually, the framing of this is 100% accurate. I was born and raised here and Amazon and its asshole-geek army, who don't have ANY FUCKING MANNERS, have ruined what used to be a great place to live. Fuck Seattle and Fuck Amazon.
The only anti-gay that crosses tech is from conservative male Indians, everyone else in tech embraces LGBTQ and generally IS it. Amazon and Microsoft are and have always been pretty accepting. I'll say Amazon has made poor decisions, I hate the South Lake Union area and refuse to go there (Hey lets build a big company right in the 'central park' of Seattle). The housing in Queen Anne and Capital Hill has been overpriced for over a decade, so nothing really new there. Queen Anne looks like a shitty old Boston neighborhood with no parking and Capital Hill is a dirty overrated Portland neighborhood. Please, everyone move there...
As for development, this is exactly the opposite of SF, the reason why SF is fucked is because of the NIMBYs like who wrote this article. Building denser is the only solution to more populace. Oh noes, no pretty skyline.
Traffic in and out of Seattle sucks more from bad geology/geography than anything. Its population density is incredibly low compared to other metros. I do think Amazon's choice of location is insane, and since they move all of their real logistics elsewhere, I guess they agree. Google has a bunch of offices around the area much like Microsoft smartly does and plans on expanding on east side, so I am not sure why they matter. Facebook is small and Oculus is east side too (until they still birth).
seriously. traffic is logical to complain about. even the rising cost of housing.
but literally everything else he complains about in here is a non issue. we shouldnt care one way or another who our neighbors are, if that means less diversity so what? all the nordic countries that the leftists love have little to no diversity so why should that matter?
and why the need to bring up "white males" Its as if the submitter wanted a flamefest
This kind of trolling does not belong here, and i dont usually complain about what should and shouldnt be on the front page
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Yeah, I've lived and worked in/around Seattle since the 1980s - awful traffic is nothing new. Even back around 1990 it was ranked the 6th worst in the nation.
The people who think it's recently gotten much worse have likely moved here during the past five years or so. After the 2008 crash, traffic in Seattle improved a fair bit because a lot of people were out of work. It still wasn't great, but it was significantly better. Now that the economy is booming again, traffic sucks again.
I will say that, prior to the past year or so, northbound traffic jams heading out of downtown were a rarity... but nowadays they're pretty common. Thank heavens the U-Link light rail will be starting up soon.
#DeleteChrome
"Amazon's hired so many white males that King County is now the whitest in the nation"
OK. So what? if King County was 80% black there would be no complaint about a "lack of diversity". if King County was 80% asian there would be no complaint about a "lack of diversity".
Diversity is simply the latest code word for anti-white male.
You're obviously American, so I can make some allowances for your deficient education, but those "non diverse" Nordic countries are more diverse than you.
Ahhhh....more pig ignorant American cannon fodder. Gotta love 'em and their naivety.
That is laughable. Finland and Sweden are fairly diverse by European standards, but the entire European continent is not very diverse. A quick look at France, Germany, and Italy show they have over 90% of their population in their respective ethnicity. The United States largest ethnicity is German, with about 17%.
From Populstat.info:
Norway -> 96.4% Norwegian, 0.5% Laplander, 0.3% Finnish, 2.8% Other
Sweden -> 89.3% Swedish, 3% Finnish & Laplander, 0.8% Yugoslavian, 0.6% Iranian, 6.3% Other
Finland -> 93% Finnish, 6% Swedish, 0.1% Laplander, 1% Other
Iceland -> 98% Icelanders (Norweigian, Celts), 0.5% Swedish, 0.4% Danish
Denmark -> 97% Danish, 3% Other
United States -> 75% White (So much varied ethnicity the site doesn't try to list them all), 12% Black, 10% Hispanic, 3.3% Asian, 0.7% Native American
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Literally nothing you said is true.