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Seattle has the 1/3rd largest homeless population and the city wanted a $500 per employee tax from amazon. Amazon said they’d move their business and also hault

Seattle has the 1/3rd largest homeless population and the city wanted a $500 per employee tax from amazon. Amazon said they’d move their business and also haulted construction on new building. 40k employees, that’s 20million a year. They then lobbied and got it repealed after city lowered to $250/employee. He than turns and donates millions/billions ONCE, but that’s specks of sand compared to what would be generated over time yearly and consistently. So... no faith in that city either and no faith in tech in general. Super sad.

SpicyLemonZest 8y ago
It seems perfectly legitimate for Amazon to question how much the extra $10 million would actually help. If homelessness could be solved just by throwing money at the problem, SF and its $40k per homeless person would be clean as a whistle.
closeparen 8y ago
If tech is a net negative force in the city, then isn’t inducing Amazon to leave “mission accomplished”?
whoisjuan 8y ago
People get the Seattle tax story wrong. The money was not a problem. USD 250 is a negligible amount for an employee that earns above $100K a year. The problem is taxing job headcounts regardless the amount. That creates a horrible precedent for any company trying to do business in a city. It's basically telling business owners that the jobs they are creating are not welcomed. It's penalizing the core of what makes an economy productive. Let's put Amazon out of the picture for a minute. Since the head tax was meant to tax large employers, it's kind of hard to see in the micro context what imposing a job headcount tax actually means. So for the sake of the example let's say that the head tax applied for any business owner (not hard to imagine since implementing it for large employers create precedence for taxing small employers). Let's imagine that the business that we are talking about is Mommy's Bakery. The head tax in Seattle was the equivalent of telling mommy to pay a USD 750 ransom for her three employees or to fuck off. Mommy is already collecting and paying taxes and fees. She is employing people that are putting money back into the local economy, but the city feels that the act of job creation is adding to their problems. So they decide that they want to tax those headcounts. This is more or less the equivalent of you helping a friend or relative with some money and they coming back and telling you, "hey thanks for the hundred bucks, but because I'm gonna get wasted tonight and gonna spend it all on drinks, I'd need 6 bucks more to get back home". Yeah sure, six bucks are not too much but just asking for them after you gave them a USD 100, it's utterly ridiculous. This is how the Seattle city employers felt when the head tax was proposed. They already contribute millions of dollars to the city economy in taxes and jobs, but the city still wanted to get more to justify their gross incompetence when it comes to dealing with the homelessness crisis.

SpicyLemonZest 8y ago

It seems perfectly legitimate for Amazon to question how much the extra $10 million would actually help. If homelessness could be solved just by throwing money at the problem, SF and its $40k per homeless person would be clean as a whistle.

closeparen 8y ago

If tech is a net negative force in the city, then isn’t inducing Amazon to leave “mission accomplished”?

whoisjuan 8y ago

People get the Seattle tax story wrong. The money was not a problem. USD 250 is a negligible amount for an employee that earns above $100K a year. The problem is taxing job headcounts regardless the amount. That creates a horrible precedent for any company trying to do business in a city. It's basically telling business owners that the jobs they are creating are not welcomed. It's penalizing the core of what makes an economy productive. Let's put Amazon out of the picture for a minute. Since the head tax was meant to tax large employers, it's kind of hard to see in the micro context what imposing a job headcount tax actually means. So for the sake of the example let's say that the head tax applied for any business owner (not hard to imagine since implementing it for large employers create precedence for taxing small employers). Let's imagine that the business that we are talking about is Mommy's Bakery. The head tax in Seattle was the equivalent of telling mommy to pay a USD 750 ransom for her three employees or to fuck off. Mommy is already collecting and paying taxes and fees. She is employing people that are putting money back into the local economy, but the city feels that the act of job creation is adding to their problems. So they decide that they want to tax those headcounts. This is more or less the equivalent of you helping a friend or relative with some money and they coming back and telling you, "hey thanks for the hundred bucks, but because I'm gonna get wasted tonight and gonna spend it all on drinks, I'd need 6 bucks more to get back home". Yeah sure, six bucks are not too much but just asking for them after you gave them a USD 100, it's utterly ridiculous. This is how the Seattle city employers felt when the head tax was proposed. They already contribute millions of dollars to the city economy in taxes and jobs, but the city still wanted to get more to justify their gross incompetence when it comes to dealing with the homelessness crisis.