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Speaking as a Seattle resident, and despite my dislike for Bezos, this was a stupid tax - more connected to Seattle's dysfunctional politics than solving our ba

Speaking as a Seattle resident, and despite my dislike for Bezos, this was a stupid tax - more connected to Seattle's dysfunctional politics than solving our bad homeless problem. Among other things, it was keyed to revenues not profits (specifically to target Amazon) but it ended up burning the likes of grocers who provide decent jobs but don't have a lot of margin even with large revenues. Good riddance to it and a pox on our local Pol Pot that drove it.

dunpeal 8y ago
As a Seattle resident, what do you think of the argument that Amazon greatly contributed to homelessness in Seattle? I read somewhere that Amazon's explosive growth raised the property values in Seattle, which in turn caused a surge in homelessness. Is that true?
- pinewurst 8y ago
  My 2 cents is that Amazon isn't a major cause. There's a few things going on(1): - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues - Seattle does a remarkably crappy job of assigning the low income housing we build and/or contract for. Too many people get it who shouldn't qualify. Too many non-profits cherry pick their clients. Etc, etc. - It's super hard to get coherent services out of the system. Which makes it self-selecting in the sense of concentrating the worst cases. Amazon, to a certain degree, was/is part of running up the price of apartments and homes. Some homelessness is a consequence, but mostly that pushed people further (or totally out) of the area. I'm not at all convinced that if we raise 2x the money, we'll spend it intelligently enough to make a difference here. (1)My partner worked in the area homeless system and I'm getting a lot of my info from that.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    > - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues I think cause and effect are backwards here. Low wages and high housing prices seem like they'd naturally lead to homelessness and rates of drug addiction and mental illness among the homeless, although very high compared to the general population, are nowhere near as high as people would like to think.
    - lostmsu 8y ago
      We are talking about sentient people. Wages and housing prices may be an excuse, but they don't shove drugs down people's throats. Mental illness - may be. But one needs to know if it's the cause, or simply an exposing factor.
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        I don't think it's even controversial to say that people can turn to substance abuse due to adverse exogenous circumstances.
        lostmsu 8y ago
        It is controversial by definition, because you just disagreed.
        emodendroket 8y ago
        It's not controversial to say the sky is blue because you can turn up a couple people who say it is green. You've really never heard of people turning to drink or drugs because of, day, the death of a family member? You can't see why someone who sleeps rough might seek escape through psychoactive drugs?
        lostmsu 8y ago
        People turn to drugs because they decide to. You might blame circumstances, but I will always blame people.
        emodendroket 8y ago
        They are not literally forced to take drugs, but the idea of escaping reality is obviously more appealing if reality is unending misery.
      - throwaway2048 8y ago
  - rifung 8y ago
    > - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues Unless there's another reason we would expect mental health issues to increase I don't see why this would lead to more homelessness. I also talked to one of the people in charge of a non profit for providing housing to the homeless and he was saying how the longer people stay homeless, the less likely it is that they will ever be able to integrate with society again. I am much more inclined to believe homelessness is causing the mental health issues than vice versa. Or at least I don't see why Seattle's homeless problem would be caused by greater rates of mental illness than previously seen and compared to that of other cities.
- BryantD 8y ago
  It's a little tenuous to blame Amazon for this. Yes, the growth of Amazon raised demand, but the city's zoning laws are also to blame. https://medium.com/@15kwhm2a/a-brief-history-of-seattles-anti-urban-zoning-380e09fd0dd3 https://medium.com/@15kwhm2a/a-brief-history-of-seattles-ant... is very good. The Mises Institute has come to similar conclusions. When those guys and leftists agree, you gotta think there's something to it.
- rstupek 8y ago
  Homelessness is typically a mental health problem, not a property value problem
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    People always say this, but the problem is that it's not true. A majority of homeless people are not mentally ill.
    - lostmsu 8y ago
      This statement contradicts parent's. What is your source?
      - emodendroket 8y ago
        Here's one: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mentally-ill-homeless-20170807-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mentally-ill-homeless-201... > A relatively small percentage of all homeless people nationwide — 13% to 15% — are mentally ill, but their symptoms — paranoia and delusions — draw attention and mislead others into thinking their numbers are greater, Culhane said. > However, Los Angeles’ homeless population skews heavily to single adults who have lived in the streets a year or longer — a subgroup with a high incidence of mental health issues. Local authorities estimate that 30% of the county’s homeless people have serious mental illness.
- rifung 8y ago
  I recently moved away from Seattle but that seems correct to me. I don't think the problem is REALLY Amazon's fault per se, since they are just paying people more than other companies in the area which I think most people would agree is a good thing. I think the problem is more that we in the US treat housing as an investment which makes people more willing to pay higher prices and to borrow money to buy a house. When people see the housing prices increase then that further raises housing prices. The issue is that housing prices, and subsequently rent, increasing is not a good thing for society. Even though the value of the house has changed, the house itself hasn't changed at all, and yet people now have less money to spend on other things. The only thing it really does is make banks and people who were already well off enough to buy a house wealthier. Sadly I have no idea what we can do to solve this that isn't communist.
- blang 8y ago
  As a fellow Seattle resident the arguments seem to break down this way: (From the left) 1) Amazon contributed to homelessness by increasing property values by paying too many engineers too much money 2) We don't have an income tax, so that increase in wealth does not come back to pay for services (From the right) 1) Enforcement of laws about sleeping in public spaces is very low so people feel comfortable being homeless here. 2) Increases of property taxes have increased rents leading people to not be able to afford rents (From both left and right) Housing developers are buying up as many cheap places as possible and turning them into high end houses that only the rich can afford muscling out people that could have both those cheaper places. My take: If you isolate and fixated on one variable being the only cause of a problem, it's pretty easy to create a narrative, but the answer is probably more complicated and the solution is probably even more complicated.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    What a bizarre world, when you're a villain for paying good wages.
BryantD 8y ago
Let's go back a little bit further in the history. In 2010, Washington took a shot at an income tax for individuals making over $200,000 a year. Bezos spent $100,000 to oppose that (along with a lot of other wealthy Washingtonians). Bezos also didn't support the Seattle income tax, although as far as I know he didn't spend money to oppose it. The head tax was suboptimal and, yeah, stupid. Nobody would have proposed it if Seattle didn't have a regressive tax system. Compare us to Texas, another state with no income tax -- our property taxes are substantially lower. Seattle's infrastructure problems will continue because the city is underfunded to deal with them. Anyhoo, I'm glad Bezos is spending this money on the homeless. I would recommend that he divert some of it to a deep dive into Seattle's problems. I think that committing to solve the problem in one city would yield insights that would be very valuable when he expands the program elsewhere.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > Bezos also didn't support the Seattle income tax, although as far as I know he didn't spend money to oppose it. He did; Amazon was among the primary opposition (if we're talking about the same tax): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/technology/seattle-tax-amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/technology/seattle-tax-am...
  - seltzered_ 8y ago
    The nytimes article you linked is about the 2018 head tax. There were earlier initiatives: - 2017 - Seattle approved an income tax for high incomes, but was removed six months later after a court dispute - https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2017/december/seattle-income-tax-ruled-invalid https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2017/december/seattle-inc... - earlier years - there have been Washington state income taxes proposed over the years, which have been usually shut down. googling shows the last might've been Senate Bill 6559 in 2016 - https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article101115027.html https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article... The inability to pass a city income tax or a state income tax has been part of the arguments for why a head tax was proposed in 2018 - it's not ideal, but everything else in the past has been rejected. Yanis Varoufakis (fmr greek minister of finance) gave a talk in Seattle a few months ago talking about the head tax: https://youtu.be/Z0M24CEEMFk?t=2m16s https://youtu.be/Z0M24CEEMFk?t=2m16s
anthanm 8y ago
And will you say good riddance when he's extracting billions in tax breaks from the state in a few years? It was about 2% of a minimum wage salary per employee. I need more evidence that's unaffordable to a business that does 20+M in revenue.

dunpeal 8y ago

As a Seattle resident, what do you think of the argument that Amazon greatly contributed to homelessness in Seattle? I read somewhere that Amazon's explosive growth raised the property values in Seattle, which in turn caused a surge in homelessness. Is that true?

pinewurst 8y ago
My 2 cents is that Amazon isn't a major cause. There's a few things going on(1): - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues - Seattle does a remarkably crappy job of assigning the low income housing we build and/or contract for. Too many people get it who shouldn't qualify. Too many non-profits cherry pick their clients. Etc, etc. - It's super hard to get coherent services out of the system. Which makes it self-selecting in the sense of concentrating the worst cases. Amazon, to a certain degree, was/is part of running up the price of apartments and homes. Some homelessness is a consequence, but mostly that pushed people further (or totally out) of the area. I'm not at all convinced that if we raise 2x the money, we'll spend it intelligently enough to make a difference here. (1)My partner worked in the area homeless system and I'm getting a lot of my info from that.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  > - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues I think cause and effect are backwards here. Low wages and high housing prices seem like they'd naturally lead to homelessness and rates of drug addiction and mental illness among the homeless, although very high compared to the general population, are nowhere near as high as people would like to think.
  - lostmsu 8y ago
    We are talking about sentient people. Wages and housing prices may be an excuse, but they don't shove drugs down people's throats. Mental illness - may be. But one needs to know if it's the cause, or simply an exposing factor.
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      I don't think it's even controversial to say that people can turn to substance abuse due to adverse exogenous circumstances.
      - lostmsu 8y ago
        It is controversial by definition, because you just disagreed.
        emodendroket 8y ago
        It's not controversial to say the sky is blue because you can turn up a couple people who say it is green. You've really never heard of people turning to drink or drugs because of, day, the death of a family member? You can't see why someone who sleeps rough might seek escape through psychoactive drugs?
        lostmsu 8y ago
        People turn to drugs because they decide to. You might blame circumstances, but I will always blame people.
        emodendroket 8y ago
        They are not literally forced to take drugs, but the idea of escaping reality is obviously more appealing if reality is unending misery.
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
- rifung 8y ago
  > - exploding drug addiction and related mental health issues Unless there's another reason we would expect mental health issues to increase I don't see why this would lead to more homelessness. I also talked to one of the people in charge of a non profit for providing housing to the homeless and he was saying how the longer people stay homeless, the less likely it is that they will ever be able to integrate with society again. I am much more inclined to believe homelessness is causing the mental health issues than vice versa. Or at least I don't see why Seattle's homeless problem would be caused by greater rates of mental illness than previously seen and compared to that of other cities.
BryantD 8y ago
It's a little tenuous to blame Amazon for this. Yes, the growth of Amazon raised demand, but the city's zoning laws are also to blame. https://medium.com/@15kwhm2a/a-brief-history-of-seattles-anti-urban-zoning-380e09fd0dd3 https://medium.com/@15kwhm2a/a-brief-history-of-seattles-ant... is very good. The Mises Institute has come to similar conclusions. When those guys and leftists agree, you gotta think there's something to it.
rstupek 8y ago
Homelessness is typically a mental health problem, not a property value problem
- emodendroket 8y ago
  People always say this, but the problem is that it's not true. A majority of homeless people are not mentally ill.
  - lostmsu 8y ago
    This statement contradicts parent's. What is your source?
    - emodendroket 8y ago
      Here's one: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mentally-ill-homeless-20170807-htmlstory.html http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-mentally-ill-homeless-201... > A relatively small percentage of all homeless people nationwide — 13% to 15% — are mentally ill, but their symptoms — paranoia and delusions — draw attention and mislead others into thinking their numbers are greater, Culhane said. > However, Los Angeles’ homeless population skews heavily to single adults who have lived in the streets a year or longer — a subgroup with a high incidence of mental health issues. Local authorities estimate that 30% of the county’s homeless people have serious mental illness.
rifung 8y ago
I recently moved away from Seattle but that seems correct to me. I don't think the problem is REALLY Amazon's fault per se, since they are just paying people more than other companies in the area which I think most people would agree is a good thing. I think the problem is more that we in the US treat housing as an investment which makes people more willing to pay higher prices and to borrow money to buy a house. When people see the housing prices increase then that further raises housing prices. The issue is that housing prices, and subsequently rent, increasing is not a good thing for society. Even though the value of the house has changed, the house itself hasn't changed at all, and yet people now have less money to spend on other things. The only thing it really does is make banks and people who were already well off enough to buy a house wealthier. Sadly I have no idea what we can do to solve this that isn't communist.
blang 8y ago
As a fellow Seattle resident the arguments seem to break down this way: (From the left) 1) Amazon contributed to homelessness by increasing property values by paying too many engineers too much money 2) We don't have an income tax, so that increase in wealth does not come back to pay for services (From the right) 1) Enforcement of laws about sleeping in public spaces is very low so people feel comfortable being homeless here. 2) Increases of property taxes have increased rents leading people to not be able to afford rents (From both left and right) Housing developers are buying up as many cheap places as possible and turning them into high end houses that only the rich can afford muscling out people that could have both those cheaper places. My take: If you isolate and fixated on one variable being the only cause of a problem, it's pretty easy to create a narrative, but the answer is probably more complicated and the solution is probably even more complicated.
- SilasX 8y ago
  What a bizarre world, when you're a villain for paying good wages.

BryantD 8y ago

Let's go back a little bit further in the history. In 2010, Washington took a shot at an income tax for individuals making over $200,000 a year. Bezos spent $100,000 to oppose that (along with a lot of other wealthy Washingtonians). Bezos also didn't support the Seattle income tax, although as far as I know he didn't spend money to oppose it. The head tax was suboptimal and, yeah, stupid. Nobody would have proposed it if Seattle didn't have a regressive tax system. Compare us to Texas, another state with no income tax -- our property taxes are substantially lower. Seattle's infrastructure problems will continue because the city is underfunded to deal with them. Anyhoo, I'm glad Bezos is spending this money on the homeless. I would recommend that he divert some of it to a deep dive into Seattle's problems. I think that committing to solve the problem in one city would yield insights that would be very valuable when he expands the program elsewhere.

forapurpose 8y ago
> Bezos also didn't support the Seattle income tax, although as far as I know he didn't spend money to oppose it. He did; Amazon was among the primary opposition (if we're talking about the same tax): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/technology/seattle-tax-amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/technology/seattle-tax-am...
- seltzered_ 8y ago
  The nytimes article you linked is about the 2018 head tax. There were earlier initiatives: - 2017 - Seattle approved an income tax for high incomes, but was removed six months later after a court dispute - https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2017/december/seattle-income-tax-ruled-invalid https://www.mossadams.com/articles/2017/december/seattle-inc... - earlier years - there have been Washington state income taxes proposed over the years, which have been usually shut down. googling shows the last might've been Senate Bill 6559 in 2016 - https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article101115027.html https://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article... The inability to pass a city income tax or a state income tax has been part of the arguments for why a head tax was proposed in 2018 - it's not ideal, but everything else in the past has been rejected. Yanis Varoufakis (fmr greek minister of finance) gave a talk in Seattle a few months ago talking about the head tax: https://youtu.be/Z0M24CEEMFk?t=2m16s https://youtu.be/Z0M24CEEMFk?t=2m16s

anthanm 8y ago

And will you say good riddance when he's extracting billions in tax breaks from the state in a few years? It was about 2% of a minimum wage salary per employee. I need more evidence that's unaffordable to a business that does 20+M in revenue.