4 ms·

In Washington it is much broader than the tech sector. Washington is being buried in indefensibly bad legislation that is extremely hostile to large companies

In Washington it is much broader than the tech sector. Washington is being buried in indefensibly bad legislation that is extremely hostile to large companies and tech companies of every size for openly ideological reasons. It has rapidly become one of the worst business environments in the country when it used to be one of the best. Many companies have stopped or reduced hiring in Seattle and are moving operations to other States; there is a new announcement in the news every other day. I know several longtime residents that have recently moved out of State or are no longer domiciled there as a consequence. There was an article in the news just this week that housing prices are starting to decline rapidly in Seattle. It is looking like they couldn't help themselves and killed the golden goose.

Der_Einzige 8mo ago
Seattle and Portland OR are ground zero for the burgeoning anti-AI movement.
galleywest200 8mo ago
Golden Goose? WA has a massive budget shortfall.
- jandrewrogers 8mo ago
  There has been zero accountability for that massive budget shortfall. Revenue has increased 2x over the last decade with nothing to show for it. People are rightly skeptical of giving them even more money. And they have gone about trying to increase revenue even more in just about the most toxic ways possible, which will almost certainly erode the tax base. That state desperately needs to restructure its finances but the legislature is almost complete captured by clueless ideologues. Washington isn't California. Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment. I've lived a large fraction of my life in Washington and I'm watching the State commit suicide in real-time.
  - HEmanZ 8mo ago
    “ Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment.” How old are you? What propaganda told you this? In my generation (young millennial/genz) the attraction of living in Seattle, which pulled me and almost a dozen professional friends at this point has been: - high quality urban living in a temperate environment. Including access to great parks, waterfront, bikeability in the city - access to great outdoors and regional amenities like skiing, ocean fishing, hiking, wine country - liberal policies and general friendly society (it’s friendlier here than the east coast) - no state income tax (we’re all very high tax bracket) - a high enough income population that you can find a plethora of high-end products and services that cluster around high income earners (only a few us cities have this stronger than Seattle I feel)
    - 01100011 8mo ago
      Oregon ticks most of those boxes except the difference is that Oregon has very few jobs. People flock to WA because of jobs created by long-standing business friendly policies. That doesn't explain everything, obviously, but I think you need to take it into consideration. For decades I've heard this in some form from people: "Oregon is amazing, but I had to leave when I couldn't get a job." Meanwhile the Sea-Tac region has had amazing growth, packed wall-to-wall with a range of companies.
      - HEmanZ 8mo ago
        I agree, difference between explosive growth and “consistent draw” is large employers setting up in the region. Another interesting anecdote is that I know many people who work remote for companies all over the world who moved to the Seattle area once they had a remote job. I am one of these people who moved once I got a remote job. Im not sure what kind of impact this has long run. I think the flywheel drawing high skill people to Seattle is still very strong.
      - BeetleB 8mo ago
        Oregon is on the other end of the continuum when it comes to income taxes ;-) If you're not too high an income earner, the Oregon income tax is worse than California's. And no, Washington's sales tax doesn't come close to the Oregon income tax.
prh8 8mo ago
For readers not in Washington, there is currently legislation being worked on that is essentially a millionaire's tax, (simplified as) 10% income tax on income over 1 million dollars, inflation adjusted. There are a few very angry, emotional, and vocal opponents of this in most corners of the internet, although very few of them actually make a million dollars and there are many million+ income people supporting this. Demographically, there are over 3 million households in WA, and only 20k of them would be affected.
- garbawarb 8mo ago
  The bigger news is that it would be WA's first-ever income tax, along with the tax on capital gains income they just introduced. You can look at any historical example of introducing income tax in the US to see that the rates always expand to lower brackets over time.
  - prh8 8mo ago
    Ahh, another favorite talking point. Yes, because the tax burden is already carried by the people you claim to worry about
    - hparadiz 8mo ago
      Those people you wanna tax will just wfh from another state. Then you'll wonder why tax revenue is down and why no one is hiring.
      - prh8 8mo ago
        People aren't leaving Seattle to save a small amount in taxes every year
        qwerpy 8mo ago
        I lived in the Seattle area and would be affected by some of these taxes. I moved to California recently. WA lost its tax advantage, so If I’m now going to be paying the same taxes, I might as well enjoy better weather and schools for my kids.
cloverich 8mo ago
Which policies specifically? Certainly not the income tax on million+ income, seems pretty modest. We moved from TX. Property tax rate is low, no income tax sub million in income, schools are great (and almost all new), roads are fine and transit seeing massive investment. They definitely need to fix budget, but there's _ample_ wealth here to deal with it. I think they'll figure it out. _Oregon_ has bad policies (10% income tax on all, upwards of 14% on high income earners at 400k); schools are in a rough place, their legacy pension system is a disaster. But Washington seems fine imo. TX and such states will always be a draw while their cost of living is low, if you don't mind the heat and general lack of outdoors (relative to PNW). IMO the weather and housing prices are the main tradeoffs between WA and TX.
- dixie_land 8mo ago
  When did blatantly unconstitutional laws become modest?
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    Why are income brackets unconstitutional?
- jandrewrogers 8mo ago
  You can add in the increasing B&O (revenue) taxes, payroll taxes, data center taxes, and the expansion of the extremely high sales taxes to things that effectively make Washington uncompetitive. The cost of doing business has become unreasonably high and is so badly structured that it creates perverse incentives for how you organize business. And then you have a litany of new business regulation across every sector of the local economy. My recent favorite, which fortunately did not make it out of this session due to heavy lobbying by tech, was requiring data centers to turn-off power during periods of high electricity demand. It's insane that this is even being seriously considered. Oregon is also a mess but it has always been a mess. Texas isn't the only alternative. Turning Washington into California with worse weather even makes California relatively attractive.
  - 8mo ago
NickC25 8mo ago
I don't think they killed the goose at all. The tech companies killed the golden goose that was handed to them. They got too greedy. Amazon basically got carte blanche to build in Seattle, and plenty of tax credits to do so. Amazon and their founder then told WA gov that they were going to relocate to Florida. WA gov said "well, we paid billions for your infrastructure, so if you're going to leave, please partially refund us" and Bezos whined and whined and whined. Imagine, a guy worth (at the time) nearly half a trillion dollars being told that he should have to pay a few hundred million dollars for his broken promises. Imagine being given incredibly generous tax incentives for decades that allowed you to build a multi trillion dollar company, and then whining when the giver of those incentives asks for a tiny portion of that to be paid back when you tell them you're leaving.
Vegenoid 8mo ago
Will you elaborate on the “indefensibly bad legislation”?
tencentshill 8mo ago
Like poor people have always understood, assume taxes always go up. Time for the rich to learn this lesson as well.

Der_Einzige 8mo ago

Seattle and Portland OR are ground zero for the burgeoning anti-AI movement.

galleywest200 8mo ago

Golden Goose? WA has a massive budget shortfall.

jandrewrogers 8mo ago
There has been zero accountability for that massive budget shortfall. Revenue has increased 2x over the last decade with nothing to show for it. People are rightly skeptical of giving them even more money. And they have gone about trying to increase revenue even more in just about the most toxic ways possible, which will almost certainly erode the tax base. That state desperately needs to restructure its finances but the legislature is almost complete captured by clueless ideologues. Washington isn't California. Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment. I've lived a large fraction of my life in Washington and I'm watching the State commit suicide in real-time.
- HEmanZ 8mo ago
  “ Most of the attraction of living there historically was its extremely business-friendly environment.” How old are you? What propaganda told you this? In my generation (young millennial/genz) the attraction of living in Seattle, which pulled me and almost a dozen professional friends at this point has been: - high quality urban living in a temperate environment. Including access to great parks, waterfront, bikeability in the city - access to great outdoors and regional amenities like skiing, ocean fishing, hiking, wine country - liberal policies and general friendly society (it’s friendlier here than the east coast) - no state income tax (we’re all very high tax bracket) - a high enough income population that you can find a plethora of high-end products and services that cluster around high income earners (only a few us cities have this stronger than Seattle I feel)
  - 01100011 8mo ago
    Oregon ticks most of those boxes except the difference is that Oregon has very few jobs. People flock to WA because of jobs created by long-standing business friendly policies. That doesn't explain everything, obviously, but I think you need to take it into consideration. For decades I've heard this in some form from people: "Oregon is amazing, but I had to leave when I couldn't get a job." Meanwhile the Sea-Tac region has had amazing growth, packed wall-to-wall with a range of companies.
    - HEmanZ 8mo ago
      I agree, difference between explosive growth and “consistent draw” is large employers setting up in the region. Another interesting anecdote is that I know many people who work remote for companies all over the world who moved to the Seattle area once they had a remote job. I am one of these people who moved once I got a remote job. Im not sure what kind of impact this has long run. I think the flywheel drawing high skill people to Seattle is still very strong.
    - BeetleB 8mo ago
      Oregon is on the other end of the continuum when it comes to income taxes ;-) If you're not too high an income earner, the Oregon income tax is worse than California's. And no, Washington's sales tax doesn't come close to the Oregon income tax.

prh8 8mo ago

For readers not in Washington, there is currently legislation being worked on that is essentially a millionaire's tax, (simplified as) 10% income tax on income over 1 million dollars, inflation adjusted. There are a few very angry, emotional, and vocal opponents of this in most corners of the internet, although very few of them actually make a million dollars and there are many million+ income people supporting this. Demographically, there are over 3 million households in WA, and only 20k of them would be affected.

garbawarb 8mo ago
The bigger news is that it would be WA's first-ever income tax, along with the tax on capital gains income they just introduced. You can look at any historical example of introducing income tax in the US to see that the rates always expand to lower brackets over time.
- prh8 8mo ago
  Ahh, another favorite talking point. Yes, because the tax burden is already carried by the people you claim to worry about
  - hparadiz 8mo ago
    Those people you wanna tax will just wfh from another state. Then you'll wonder why tax revenue is down and why no one is hiring.
    - prh8 8mo ago
      People aren't leaving Seattle to save a small amount in taxes every year
      - qwerpy 8mo ago
        I lived in the Seattle area and would be affected by some of these taxes. I moved to California recently. WA lost its tax advantage, so If I’m now going to be paying the same taxes, I might as well enjoy better weather and schools for my kids.

cloverich 8mo ago

Which policies specifically? Certainly not the income tax on million+ income, seems pretty modest. We moved from TX. Property tax rate is low, no income tax sub million in income, schools are great (and almost all new), roads are fine and transit seeing massive investment. They definitely need to fix budget, but there's _ample_ wealth here to deal with it. I think they'll figure it out. _Oregon_ has bad policies (10% income tax on all, upwards of 14% on high income earners at 400k); schools are in a rough place, their legacy pension system is a disaster. But Washington seems fine imo. TX and such states will always be a draw while their cost of living is low, if you don't mind the heat and general lack of outdoors (relative to PNW). IMO the weather and housing prices are the main tradeoffs between WA and TX.

dixie_land 8mo ago
When did blatantly unconstitutional laws become modest?
- johnnyanmac 8mo ago
  Why are income brackets unconstitutional?
jandrewrogers 8mo ago
You can add in the increasing B&O (revenue) taxes, payroll taxes, data center taxes, and the expansion of the extremely high sales taxes to things that effectively make Washington uncompetitive. The cost of doing business has become unreasonably high and is so badly structured that it creates perverse incentives for how you organize business. And then you have a litany of new business regulation across every sector of the local economy. My recent favorite, which fortunately did not make it out of this session due to heavy lobbying by tech, was requiring data centers to turn-off power during periods of high electricity demand. It's insane that this is even being seriously considered. Oregon is also a mess but it has always been a mess. Texas isn't the only alternative. Turning Washington into California with worse weather even makes California relatively attractive.
- 8mo ago

NickC25 8mo ago

I don't think they killed the goose at all. The tech companies killed the golden goose that was handed to them. They got too greedy. Amazon basically got carte blanche to build in Seattle, and plenty of tax credits to do so. Amazon and their founder then told WA gov that they were going to relocate to Florida. WA gov said "well, we paid billions for your infrastructure, so if you're going to leave, please partially refund us" and Bezos whined and whined and whined. Imagine, a guy worth (at the time) nearly half a trillion dollars being told that he should have to pay a few hundred million dollars for his broken promises. Imagine being given incredibly generous tax incentives for decades that allowed you to build a multi trillion dollar company, and then whining when the giver of those incentives asks for a tiny portion of that to be paid back when you tell them you're leaving.

Vegenoid 8mo ago

Will you elaborate on the “indefensibly bad legislation”?

tencentshill 8mo ago

Like poor people have always understood, assume taxes always go up. Time for the rich to learn this lesson as well.