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Seattle Repeals Tax That Upset Amazon (apnews.com)
Last month, the Seattle City Council introduced a new tax that would charge firms $275 per worker a year to fund homelessness outreach services and affordable housing. This greatly upset Amazon, Seattle's biggest private sector employer, which threatened to move jobs out of the city. Today, The Associated Press reports that Seattle leaders have repealed the tax on large companies such as Amazon and Starbucks after they fought the measure. From the report: The City Council voted 7-2 Tuesday to reverse a tax that it unanimously approved just a month ago to help provide services in the city. The Seattle region has one of the highest homelessness numbers in the U.S. Amazon, Starbucks and other businesses sharply criticized the tax as misguided. The online retailer, the city's largest employer, even temporarily halted construction planning on a new high-rise building near its Seattle headquarters in protest. Mayor Jenny Durkan and a majority of the council have said they scrapped the tax to avoid a costly political fight as a coalition of businesses moved to get a referendum overturning the tax on the November ballot.
Having too many jobs in one place is a bigger problem right now in the US because that is what jacks up housing costs and increases commute times.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
American cities really need to stop catering to companies that aren't willing to lift a finger to help local quality of life.
No, American voters need to stop giving power and resources to municipal politicians that seem to be doing everything possible to destroy the local quality of life (say, by making their city irresistible and consequence-free to squatters camping and shitting in people's front yards, MS-13 getting sanctuary while taking over local schools, etc). The pressure to reverse idiotic moves like the now-dead Seattle plan was as much from regular Seattle residents sick to death of the city's deliberate infliction of problems like that on them. That the city was looking to fund even more of it by milking some of the town's bigger employers shows how much they were trying to avoid confronting their own absurd policies, which caused the problem in the first place.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You know, you can care about cops overstepping their authority while also caring about gang violence in cities. And yes, many, many American cops do overstep their authority.
It just goes to show you... in my many years of watching thing like this (and also from the accurately described observations of Milton Friedman), when you raise taxes, people (etc.) leave. Ultimately it spirals downward where there is less tax revenue, so taxes need to be raised more (or something needs to happen).
Look at the inversion which happened over time, as corporations (evil or not) moved their headquarters to other countries where the tax rate was competitive and much lower than here. Then look at what happened when the corporate tax rate was lowered.
This same thing is happening in other cities with higher tax rates, or ways that the municipality gets your money (via regulations, ridiculous fines, and so on). People will look to move to a place that doesn't nickel and dime them to death. This (obviously) isn't true for everyone, but it tends to lower the tax base if it goes on long enough and taxes, et. al., continue to increase.
Although what I am saying may not be popular, it tends to be true. Please don't blame the messenger.
MS-13 "taking over schools" is Fox agitprop. Stop repeating "faux news" for the stupid.
We had to move out of a neighborhood that was being overrun by MS-13. The police would no longer even enter our street without multiple vehicles. Moms from Central America started taking out second mortgages to get their kids out of the MS-13 recruiting ground and local franchise HQ that was the area's high school, and put them in private schools. Your witless, low-information attempt to blame that reality on Fox would be hilarious to me, if we hadn't had MS-13's local troops relive us of property, threaten our lives, and run our best neighbors out of their homes. You know all of this, but are trying to wish it away because it doesn't suit your personal political narrative. Stop it.
Homeless people -- what do you propose as a solution?
There are more jobs available than there are people to fill them. There's a reason that people congregate in places like Seattle and San Francisco to camp out and set up tent cities. Because those cities encourage it, practically and culturally and financially. You also know this, but are equally annoyed on that front, because it would mean confronting the reality of which sort of monolithic partisan political establishment totally controls places where that happens.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Government needs to A) GET OUT OF THE WAY, and B) Actually support industry.
"There's a reason that people congregate in places like Seattle and San Francisco to camp out and set up tent cities. Because those cities encourage it, practically and culturally and financially. You also know this, but are equally annoyed on that front, because it would mean confronting the reality of which sort of monolithic partisan political establishment totally controls places where that happens."
That's true, you don't see these tent cities going up in places like Mudville or Sticktown. I wonder why that is.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, I understand that you want people you don't like to die. That's standard issue progressive world view stuff, of course. You'd rather see people killed by organized criminals trafficking in opioids than confront those criminals if they happen to be from another country, because you're a childish, craven fool who thinks you'll score more pandering points inside your preferred echo chamber if you signal your compassionate virtue with regard to repeat felons in the country illegally. I get it. Carry on! You're the best possible thing to help keep progressive politicians from running the entire country, because your death-wish politics is toxic to normal people. So, more, please! Be MORE shrill! Tell people who aren't racists that they're racists - they love that! It makes them want to vote they way you demand, every time.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Having too many jobs in one place is a bigger problem right now in the US because that is what jacks up housing costs and increases commute times.
No, what jacks up housing costs is a lack of housing. This is usually due to regulation / zoning laws preventing higher density housing from being built. If you want cheaper housing you have to build more of it. Subsidizing it without fixing the supply just jacks up the price more.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Why not fix it? Because the politicians don't know how to.
No, that's not it. It's not complicated. "Fixing" it would mean actually recognizing that people who own and operate successful businesses aren't evil villains that should be torn down through taxes in order to subsidize (rather than fix) the problems that plague the cities in which they operate. They don't want to fix a bill like that (in the sense that rational people would consider it fixed). They think the bill didn't go far enough. So any movement the opposite direction is just caving in to Eeeeeevil Capitalists who should be treated like revenue dairy cows to throw some day-to-day cash at the social paradise of tent cities and rampant drug abuse.
What they don't know how to do is to sufficiently hide what they're trying to do, so that the lawyers at Amazon can't see they're about to be punitively taxed for the sin of being successful and employing thousands and thousands of people.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The bulk of long term homeless are mentally ill, studies I've seen point to near 80%, the other 20% are addicts. Short term homeless are often that way because they had a financial incident while living paycheck to paycheck. This could be as simple as a hospital visit that wiped out the rent payment. Short term homelessness is generally easy to fix with a little help and a leg up getting past that financial predicament.
You can't fix long term homelessness any more than you can fix drug addiction or mental illness.
We have gotten VERY far away from the basic principles this nation was founded upon. We are now in a place where the political class sees a problem and decides upon a solution THEY want, and then need to grab the money from SOMEBODY... ANYBODY (well, anybody ELSE that is). They make no real effort to solve a problem in a cost-effective way, nor any effort to undo piles of their previous bad actions that may have contributed to causing the new problem. They also give little concern to where they might have gotten the RIGHT to just grab somebody else's cash. They simply decicde on an amount of cash they need and then go looking for a targeted group who has that much cash and who they think will be unable to resist them politically.
By what right do these thugs take money from entity A and transfer it to entity B for the benefit of entity B?
This is NOT the model the nation was founded upon. The government is indeed given the power to tax for the GENERAL welfare (things that are there for everybody, like national defense, national parks, the courts, etc). This is a different thing; this is taking money from one person (or a legal entity that is incorporated and is therefore a legal person) and using it for the specific welfare of another person or a group of specific persons. This is just grubby armed robbery.
As a practical matter, it would cost the taxpayers a lot less to simply stop all the bad government behaviors that lead to such homelessness problems. There is no reason why a home today should cost more than a come 50 years ago. There are many more government regulations which have driven-up the costs to build homes, and driven up the costs to employ people, taken more out of people's paychecks (making it harder to buy a home) and so forth. Even basic inflation is an artifact of government, though that one is certainly not a local government issue. We have had many decades of politicians claiming they were doing all sorts of good by heaping rules and regulations and taxes on to the backs of the people and businesses and there has been very little consideration to all the burdens this places on sectors of the economy. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the increases in taxes, no matter how severe, cannot outpace the increases in damage done by these very same politicians.
I think you misunderstand supply and demand.
If supply is high enough then demand falls and prices follow. The GP pointed out that not enough permits were being issued. Your argument that because there are some, there must be enough is not convincing. The trend in the price is rising, this is a solid metric that can be used to determine that supply is low.
There may be other reasons, but you gave no data to support your position. In fact, your argument bolsters his position. Housing is in such high demand that investors are looking at multiyear projects (construction) and determining that the increase in demand will likely result in a high enough sale price that margin will be preserved even after all of the challenges of urban construction.
Hoist on your own petard, sir.
Just because you could probably survive giving me $1000, doesn't mean I'm entitled to force you to do that, does it?
And if your choice was to be around people who would say that it DID entitle me to force you to give me that $1000... call it, for the sake of argument, regional quality-of-life-benefits, suppose you were insightful enough to realize that there would almost immediately be another round for reduction of income disparity (which could be reduced better by fixing schools.) So I realized you STILL had another $1000, and could afford to give it, so I took that too.
Or you could move five miles, to an area with lower crime, better life quality, but a bit less central... and nobody regularly extorting $1000 payments from you because you "could afford it".
What would a rational person or business do? Just because they could afford it, doesn't mean it's something they may choose to afford or even should choose to afford.
Before you disagree, please remit that $1000. Because it's probably a rounding error on your 401K and I know you can afford it.
It's not just the head tax. It's all the other taxes and regulations and controls too. Just because a specific straw broke the camel's back doesn't make THAT straw the bad straw... there are many other straws there.
You can fix long term homelessness. We as a society are just not willing to do the things that will fix it.
First of all it isn't cheap. Second of all it requires an intrusion into people's lives that is aberrant to most people on both the left and the right.
Long term homeless who have addiction problems or are mentally ill are on the streets because they are incapable of taking care of themselves and are likewise incapable of making the decisions that will allow them to take care of themselves. They are not in shelters or programs because shelters and programs have rules they won't or can't obey.
The only way to get them off the streets is to incarcerate them. This what was done previously to the 1980s. Most were incarcerated in mental hospitals, which were closed down for a combination of cost and people like the ACLU pointing out that it was wrong to lock up people just because they were mentally ill or an addict.
So the only way to fix long term homelessness is to take long term homeless people off the streets against their will and place them somewhere in an institutional setting where their civil rights will be violated on a daily basis.
Pretty grim huh?
Tax business out of existence. Tax them so they canâ(TM)t start. Tax them so they can not expand. These low intelligence politians need to hit the bricks.
Amazon isnâ(TM)t the enemy. Itâ(TM)s an employer is a shit hole city. How about the homeless stop taking meth, stop committing crimes, stop physical assult on people, and work like every other decent human being. Stop making them everyone elseâ(TM)s problems. They are in control of their bodies. Let them work. Stop the hand outs.
sigh, ya those poor companies that can't afford tax increases but they can easily afford grotesquely excessive salaries and perks for all the executives. Sure. Oh, and perhaps if those companies paid the "workers" fairly, the workers would have the capital to be capitalists and improve their lives, and just maybe then the poor would have the resources to have hope and a reasonable prospect of a reasonable success, but I guess that's too much to ask for in your America.
Pardon me if I just see your comments as right wing fundamentalism...
If you shrink that ring down even further to only where the homeless are at the figure jumps to 100%.
What!? You can't be serious. There was just another dust-up about something President Trump said, calling these gangs "animals". The precursor was a sheriff complaining that they were being forced to release the detainees before ICE could pick them up, because of sanctuary city laws.
Please, pay attention.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
which is an extension of trickle down economics.
Yes, there is a point where people leave. But there's also a point where required services crumble and people leave. Settle is nowhere near the former. Neither is most of California. What's driving people out isn't taxes, it's the cost of housing.
What you're saying isn't popular because, well, it's made up poppycock that originates with right wing think tanks trying to get low taxes for the billionaires that fund them.
The biggest growth in American history was at a time when the top marginal rate was 90% for Pete's sake. If you want the economy to grow you've got to Invest in America (remember that slogan?). We need healthcare for all so our people can be productive and infrastructure they can use to get to and do work. We need schools for them to learn too (or we need to import more H1-Bs, that works too).
In short, if we want a functional civilization we have to pay for it. Civilization's like any other nice club. You have to pay your dues.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Seattle already spends more than a billion dollars on "solving the homeless crisis": https://www.bizjournals.com/se...
This is on an estimated homeless population of roughly 12,000 individuals: https://www.seattletimes.com/s...
This works out to around $88,000 a year per individual. Let that sink in for a second.
Their government is ineffective and inept, giving them more money to waste is not a practical solution.