Slashdot Mirror
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 Today, The Associated Press reports that Seattle leaders have repealed the tax on large companies such as Amazon and Starbucks after they fought the measure.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.
Except the homeless aren't counted as part of the unemployed -- many haven't been looking for years. They need a leg up and training, and money for this doesn't come from thin air.
MS-13? Name the school and neighborhood -- you're likely exaggerating.
Economics and history suggests that the most motivated people are the the people most willing to abandon their old lives and risk everything to establish themselves somewhere else that offers better opportunity for them to succeed.
As such, the most motivated people will relocate to be whether the greatest opportunity is.
This brings :
- Motivated people
- Opportunistic people
These people will either work as transients, meaning that they will work 2-5 years in the area, earn money and move back with their winnings to settle down. This requires strong markets. For example, if I took a job offer I have in Redmond right now, I would relocate and buy a house immediately. I would stay at my job for long enough for that purchase to show me a solid return on investment which would depend on housing prices rising and therefore screwing all the locals. Then I would sell and leave. The person I sold to would do the same thing.
Or they will settle down.
The transients will come and go and they are a burden on any local economy, but what's important is that many of them will settle in the end. Or at least they'll strengthen the market making the company the area more attractive to draw more people.
Highly motivated people who settle down will raise their children and place importance on their motivations. They'll participate more in schools. They'll provide better tutors for their children. They'll invest more in the local area and improve the infrastructure... and the values of the properties.
And that will draw more people.
The problem is, this cycle of development is excellent for the city but not for the people in the city. Prices rise, inflation is horrendous. I was in Seattle last month for a trade show and I was horrified at how cheap so many things were.
The salaries of all my peers was $150,000+ but the food and prices at Target were suitable for areas with economies closer to $40,000. That means that the people shopping at the stores should be paying more and the stores should be paying their employees more. Instead, they were very definitely minimum wage workers.
That means that the pay gap is INSANE!!! Even with $15 an hour minimum wage, the property values are so ridiculously high that people have to spend an hour commuting or live in squalor to make ends meet. $30,000 a year is simply not enough to survive in Seattle given the relatively small size of the city and the relatively high demand for real estate.
That said, homelessness in Seattle was amazing. There was A LOT of it. I grew up in New York back in the days when trying to get into Grand Central in the morning required carefully climbing over homeless people while attempting to not step in puddles of urine.... The difference is, NYC hasn't been developing... it's a lot of old buildings now. Seattle is under mass construction and is really clean. It seems and feels wrong to have massive urban renewal going on with homeless people just all over the place.
What was worse is that they weren't begging. I've never seen anyplace where homeless people don't beg. Someone explained to me that there's a possibility that the city has invested so heavily in caring for the homeless that many homeless people are attracted to the city so they won't have to beg. So it's interesting because homelessness is/was almost a fashion in San Francisco, but now that the system is even better (it seems) in Seattle, the homeless are migrating to the better system.
I think the city of Tempe should bus them to SF.
Right now they move into Papago park, leave trash everywhere (really, that place practically became a city dump until Tempe spent a few million to clean it up) and they're known to assault joggers, hikers, and bikers who come too close to their "house". I don't know how somebody can be expected to avoid that, because these "houses" in every way resemble every other trash heap in that park. They were also very aggressive towards volunteers that were helping clean it up. This is why we can't have nice things.
Bussing them to SF would be a perfect solution: The reason homeless people go there in huge numbers is because they get the most welfare there (and yes, it is draining both SF and LA, but politicians are either too afraid or too PC to bring up the fact that 20% of their population is homeless, and they won't dare propose scaling it back even one bit.) Once they arrive and you show them where to go to get welfare, they'll never leave. As another benefit, the ultra left will catch wind of it, name and shame us, tell the world about how they'll be welcoming to all homeless people, including the violent ones, which will enable us to export even more!
It's a win-win situation for all!
fixing it is removing it. its not on a business to support there massive homeless problem. maybe if they actually started housing rather then take those billions they get to do so and buy themselves all new privet jets.
if they are SUCCESSFUL, its entirely because of the infra that they received FOR FREE from america.
therefore, they should pay their fair share; their success is based on the ability to do business here and not worry about electricity, workers strikes, invading wars, crime like africa has, etc.
they are freeloaders and they NEED to pay their share.
else, it will continue to fall on the poor and middle class. and we're fucking tired of paying for EVERYTHING in this country; while watching the land owners laugh all the way to the bank.
amazon will not move. they know better. but our lawmakers, sigh, they only know how to accept suitcases of cash ;(
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."