ââwe remain apprehensive about the future created by the councilâs hostile approach and rhetoric toward larger businesses, which forces us to question our growth here.ââ
Translation: âThe creation of jobs, booming economic activity and prosperity may be what attracts the homeless to the cities in which we build our businesses, but weâll be damned in hell before we view taking responsibility for it and contributing to addressing the problem as anything other than persecution.â
Two things:
Yes! Yes, it is a tax on jobs!
If you donât like it, move your corporation to Kansas.
Amazon owner Jeff Bezos could simply park a small portion of his $132.4 billion fortune in a First Tech Federal Credit Union checking account and pay the entire $48 million per year tax with the interest without lifting a finger.
Of course, heâd then have to be rewarded with a tax cut to offset his community minded largesse.
before people get excited about the âtax on jobsâ line, investigate the massive tax breaks and easements they get from city, county, and state governments already.
Good for Seattle! These multi-billion dollar corporations can afford it when they chose to put it back into the communities that make their companies so profitable in the first place. Instead of clinging to their tax abatements as undeserved kickbacks to their top majority shareholders and bonuses for their tippy-top executives, they 'll now have to spread their wealth around to those most in need of that largesse. They deserve that much.
Iâm often reminded of the amazing speech Elizabeth Warren gave some years ago about corporations needing to give back to the communities theyâre in:
âThere is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didnât have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory⌠Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea - God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.â
Affordable housing is among just one of those basic needs. Kudos to Seattle for standing up to Corporate Welfare and saying âNo Way, not this timeâ.
The only thing I wish is that is wasnât based on simply on head count. On the one hand, head count is an important issue in terms of pricing ordinary mortals out of housing, but on the other hand â in general at least â you donât want to discourage companies from having employees. The problem is that courts have often ruled against taxes based just on the amount of money coming in.
Folks, welcome to the Amazon world.
There are numerous economic issues all packed into this minor attempt at redress, but much of little discussions are really coming out or even properly understood on all the externalities that Amazon has foisted upon society.
And you can bet, that their second headquarters extortion will come into play on this issue.
A little more context from a local:
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The city and county are prohibited by the state from raising local income taxes, hence this weird head tax
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Weâre building lots of new apartment towers and townhouses but they are all laid out for households composed of one or two working age adults- so the new luxury towers donât increase supply of family apartments.
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There are zero neighborhoods that are affordable for families with a household income of 50-79k ( local median income). Where do the half of households earning less than the median live? An increasing number of them are homeless
What a stupid idea. Let the successful support the unsuccessful.
They will need to resurrect the old billboard that was on I5 near Boeing in 1969 that said: " Will the last person out of Seattle, please turn the lights out."
Sad.
Eh, whatâs Bezos gonna do? Go running to tRump to help him get out of this jam? I think not. Bezos is on tRumpâs shitlist of top corporate bosses that refuse to give into the Great Leader regardless of whatever arm-twisting and threats of imposing taxes on his internet business. The state taxes are happening anyway. Bezos is at the root of the WaPo/Amazon falsely perceived nexus that is at the heart of tRumpâs animus with the press. Bezos can always move I guessâŚor if he wants to prove heâs a good corporate leader for a communityâŚhe can just learn to suck it up. That goes for Starbucks tooâŚbut since Starbucks is also so closely associated with Seattle, thatâs gonna be a tough one.
They tried their bidding war in Michigan and even got two locations to bid against each other without either knowing what the other was offered. I heard it on NPR months ago when Amazon was creating a bidding war around the country for their second headquarters and looking to eliminate various places that wouldnât conform to their demands. They used local politicians and even some in the legislature from keeping their terms a secret, away from FOIA requests, and without those communities realizing what they would be giving up by way of tax abatements. Amazon has some awful business practices to say the least. Iâm glad they turned down places in Michigan. Their rapacious business practices are divorced from the anything to do with the common good.
At least Ford thought people should be paid a working wage when he decided to go into the business of mass production. Five dollars a day for a nine-hour day a hundred years ago, believe it or not, was a pretty big deal.
Absolutely.
And of course the decision has yet to be made. So Bezos will milk this out for the maximum subsidies. From what I remember reading, New Jersey was up to Seven Billion dollars in various subsidies.
He is the worst of the worst in Modern day Robber Barrons.