Backwards In Seattle

20 North American cities (19 in the U.S. and Toronto) are currently vying to be chosen as the second headquarters site for Amazon, Inc.

Amazon says it expects to spend $5 billion to build a headquarters building and fill it with 50,000 well-paid high tech workers. Of course, that will lead to a cascading effect as additional doctors, teachers, waiters, carpenters and store clerks will be needed to serve that worker population. Those 50,000 jobs may each come to support three or four additional jobs in the local economy of the chosen city.

New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles are all in competition for the Amazon jobs. So are Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Miami and Boston. Washington, DC is on the list as are Northern Virginia and Montgomery County, MD.

Austin, Denver, Pittsburgh, Columbus, OH, Indianapolis, Nashville and Raleigh are also in the hunt.

Amazon, founded in 1994 in a garage in Seattle, now employs 585,000 people.

45,000 of them work in the city of Seattle.

The politicians who run Seattle are apparently not content with the good fortune that brought Jeff Bezos to Seattle to establish Amazon. They seem intent on "killing the goose that laid the golden egg."

The Seattle City Council is in the process of considering an employee head count tax that would levy a $540 "head tax" on each employee of employers in the city. It is expected to generate $75 million per year. Based on Amazon's 45,000 employees, that head tax would amount to over $22 million in additional costs for the company each year.

Amazon has responded by announcing that it is suspending construction of a new office building for employees in downtown Seattle and is considering subletting another building it recently completed due to the proposed head tax.

Is it any wonder that Amazon is looking for a "second headquarters site"?

The head tax proposal is scheduled for a vote on May 14.

Last July I wrote about "The Socialist State of Seattle" and the far left agenda that its city council is pursuing. You would think that these people would take a look at what is happening in Venezuela and realize that the socialist ideal never seems to be fulfilled no matter how many times it is tried.

It should probably not come as a surprise that the Seattle City Council is comprised of this group of men and women.

Credit: Wikipedia

Other recent laws and ordinances passed by the Seattle City Council include other prized progressive policies---a $15 minimum wage, a soda tax and a "secure scheduling ordinance" which mandates that employers set their employees' schedules weeks in advance and penalizes companies for changing them.

These were small potatoes compared to the income tax that the City Council passed last year targeting only those with incomes over $250,000 to be effective in 2019. This was done in violation of the State Constitution which I wrote about in detail in my earlier post. The State of Washington remains one of the few remaining states to not levy an income tax. The City of Seattle is not happy about it but only for "the rich".

The stated purpose of the "head tax" is to generate funds towards fighting the city's "homeless crisis".

However, the Seattle Times recently reported that the city has already doubled spending on such programs since 2013 (to $63 million) and has spent almost $1 billion on the problem over the last 20 years to no avail.

Local residents are increasingly angry about the city allowing unsanctioned homeless tent cities to expand into their neighborhoods with the city council doing little to police the violations. At last count there were more than 400 such tent cities in Seattle.

Homeless Tent City in Seattle
Credit: Seattle Times

Seattle's answer seems to be to make Amazon and other employers pay for this "injustice" but do little to enforce simple justice with zoning and vagrancy laws. I guess enforcing these laws is about as popular with liberals as enforcing immigration laws.

The logic of the supporters of the head tax is quite interesting. They are effectively arguing that Amazon and other employers are at fault by being successful and hiring many people at high wages that has had the effect of hurting other people.

“While Amazon didn’t single-handedly cause this problem, they have contributed to the growing income inequality, displacement and housing affordability issues facing our City.   It seems only fair that as so many struggle to make their way through a tax system that’s rigged in favor of large corporations, that we ask those same corporations to financially contribute to the public health and housing solutions designed to address those consequences said members Mike O’Brien, Lisa Herbold, Lorena Gonzalez and Teresa Mosqueda.

“It’s about large companies that are really benefiting from the economic growth in this region in a way that is leaving other people in Seattle behind,” "It's time for companies like Amazon to share the wealth they have experienced in Seattle" said City Council member Lisa Herbold.

Progressives always like to think they are the forward thinkers. On the contrary, the Progressives on the Seattle City Council seem to have it all backwards.

They seem to think that Amazon somehow benefited more from being in Seattle than Seattle did by having the good fortune to have Amazon based there.

They also seem to think that Amazon and other successful businesses are the problem because they have made so many people much better off.

They like to talk of inequality and injustice. True injustice occurs when there is no one left to pay the bills.

I guess they will only be happy when everyone is poor.

How happy is anyone these days in Venezuela?