Anti-Amazon Graffiti Increasing In Seattle (with Photos) (geekwire.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader reifman writes: If you're eagerly awaiting your city's selection for HQ2, you may want to check out GeekWire's photo gallery of anti-Amazon graffiti images from around Seattle. Animosity towards Amazon has grown in the wake of its threats over a per head tax on employees, which the city council passed and then repealed shortly after. The tax would have increased the budget for services for our 12,000+ homeless. Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos also fought the state income tax on the wealthy in 2010.

Comments

Re:Amazon, what is it good for?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

For watering Brazil? What it's doing in the US is a mystery, though.

Wow

[jwymanm]

You want to raise taxes on people working and employing people to end up bringing more homeless people in and pushing businesses out which will reduce taxes taken in ultimately. I heard a large portion of these good climate self made homelessaires are healthy mid 20s people. Meanwhile let's blame Bezos on this because um his leadership works but your govs doesn't.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. I was born in Seattle, but grew up on the East Coast. For work, I have been able to travel to Seattle a couple of times and I do not recognize it. It has been many years, but the homeless problem on the West Coast is self-made.

These governments are literally encouraging it by helping the homeless in the wrong ways. Most of them are able-bodied people who managed to become homeless -- likely without intending or otherwise wanting it -- and then never worked their way out of it.

So the government's idea to fix the problem is to tax businesses to discourage hiring so that they can afford to pay for the homeless, which this problem will create more of over time as workers eventually leave without getting replaced. It's no wonder that Amazon is looking for HQ2 instead of increasing their stakes in Seattle where yet again a liberal government proves that they only know how to grow themselves by leaching off of everyone else, with no plan to be sustainable or actually improve things for anyone else. It's all just for power. (That's not to say that Republicans at the federal level are much better, especially now that so many of them hardly qualify as conservatives after passing a >$1 Trillion budget; it's just sadly a matter of pace)

Re:Wow

[pots]

You... have no idea what you're talking about. The tax was not on working people, it was on businesses. The goal of the projects to be funded by the tax was not to bring in more homeless, it was to reduce homelessness. Even if those projects hadn't worked as intended (a prediction which you are unqualified to make), it's hard to believe that they would have increased Seattle's homeless population, seeing as the city already has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country.

Given that the tax only applied to companies which make $20M+ per year, and was only $275 per employee, I can't see how it would have pushed any businesses out of the city. If you found out that your electric bill was $1 more than you expected, would you move out of your house?

Re:Wow

[pots]

to provide all kinds of city services that benefit ALL its citizenry

This is a sentiment that I can get behind, I have expressed my dislike for discriminatory benefits on many occasions. However, a soup kitchen (for example) is not discriminatory. The fact that you don't need it yourself at this moment, does not mean that it isn't there for you if and when you do need it. Your children may not need an orphanage... yet. "But I don't have any children and never will!" you say? Helping your neighbors' children helps you in the long run, in the form of reduced crime and associated costs, and a stronger economy and higher property values. The same applies to helping your neighbors who are not children.

Here's a tip for you: fire insurance is not a waste of money, even though your house may not currently be on fire.

Services?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tax would have increased the budget for services for our 12,000+ homeless.

Not really. There was no plan in place to pass the tax revenues on to the needy. A few ideas about building city subsidized housing with an income qualification level of 125% of the neighborhood median (read: subsidies for hipster condos). Most of the revenue would have disappeared into the general fund. And be a camel's nose under the income tax tent.

Big is in, little is out

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually a big entity like Amazon creates negative side effects that people begin to realize are not good. People lose jobs, competition is eliminated and we have seen this before with big box lumber companies killing mom and pops yards, small hardware stores have died out, WalMart did its own share of killing small retail. It was inevitable that Amazon would eventually create some real imbalances that people would begin to be upset over.

Re:Big is in, little is out

[Anonymous Coward]

At least WalMart pays local taxes in the towns and cities they were located in. And despite paying relatively low wages on a national level, they were often on par and over to what the local small retail stores were paying their employees. Amazon, otoh, got the advantage of selling merchandise tax free for almost two decades consequently devastating local retail brick and mortar store and local tax bases as it became more popular.

Kill the goose that lays golden eggs ?

[Crashmarik]

These people want to kill it then sodomize and defecate on the corpse.

Seattle acts like tech businesses are the serfs when there's cities literally fighting each other to get them to relocate.

Re:Kill the goose that lays golden eggs ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love these whiners. Oh sure, they "care" about small businesses, they just don't "care" with their wallet. They'll care with their hashtags and the spray paint they likely ordered from PrimeNow or took an Uber to a big chain instead of using mass transit. They're going to spray up their city, maybe paint Bezo's head to look like a penis, and then order something from Amazon that they'd otherwise have to travel an hour out of the city to find. When they're done being mad for internet points maybe they'll settle in to a show on Netflix instead of visiting a bodega that rents DVD's. It's every bit as dumb, and every bit as useless, as those Starbucks boycotts that involved buying from Starbucks.

Rage Against the Machine!

[110010001000]

One of my favorite bands is Rage Against the Machine. They are very anti-corporate, just like these folks. I just bought their latest album on Amazon for $18.98. Free shipping too! I like to be different and fight the power!

Re:Techno salvation...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but the city of Seattle sees basically none of that money. But we do wind up dealing with the consequences of Amazon's hiring practices in terms of bringing in thousands of men to the area who are being paid absurd sums of money and given housing allowances driving up the cost of rent.

They also do bupkiss about helping the region deal with the consequences of their disruptive presence.

The city would be getting greater benefit from Amazon if they were located somewhere else.

Because OF COURSE it is!

[Chas]

Amazon is an enormous concentration of wealth.

Never mind that it done through hard labor and smart business practice.

There's always going to be people envious of that.

And there's always people who think they deserve a "cut" of it. Even if they don't.

And, considering the fact that Seattle is every bit as crazy socialist as the bastions in Commiefornia, and it's no surprise.

Remember, the money YOU earn is not YOUR money. It's OUR money...comrade...

Fuck these people and the horse they rode in on.

Re:Because OF COURSE it is!

[lucasnate1]

Money is a construct made by the state, and in general, assuming that things are yours as if it was a law of nature and not something you have to constantly fight for, is naive at best.

Re:fool

[LynnwoodRooster]

Dick's is ALWAYS hiring... Just swing by one of their stores and fill out an application. They pay well ($16/hour to start), offer full medical, tuition reimbursement, childcare assistance, and time off for volunteer work. Yeah, you'll work your butt off (they don't tolerate slackers), but it's a step up the ladder.

its not the corporations...

[sdinfoserv]

As a Seattle-ite myself, the “homeless problem” here has little to do with Amazon. It is directly in the laps of a socialist City Council and liberal voters who roll out the red carpet with freebee’s for homeless, (like doctor staffed heroin shoot up sites with free needles) a hobbled police force that is not allowed to enforce laws, arrest drug deals, site or tow broken down vehicles, a “no chase, no confront” policy towards shoplifters, homeless encampments that allow drug use. And the list goes on and on. Meanwhile working citizens see taxes skyrocket for various “studies” and $12 million dollar per mile bike lanes

Re:fool

[q_e_t]

I can't imagine that there are places for all homeless people. Many homeless people have too many mental health or substance issues (often the latter is self-medication for the former) to make that transition without assistance. Sometimes people are homeless (and I know someone for whom this applied) due to difficult family situations causing them to leave home when young, and then falling through the gaps of social provision (although that can be multi-factorial in terms of what that happens). Basically, it's complicated, and simplistic solutions are unlikely to work.