> City of Seattle revenues have grown dramatically from $2.8B in 2010 to $4.2B in 2017, and they will be even higher in 2018. This revenue increase far outpaces the Seattle population increase over the same time period. The city does not have a revenue problem – it has a spending efficiency problem
This seems a little silly - it's an irritation, but it's not big enough to amount to anything really. If anything, it hurts lower-end positions more than any other, since it's a flat head tax. If you're counting the beans closely, it starts to make sense to hire 9 people with the salary you might have allotted to 10, and so forth.<p>All this would really seem to do is piss off Amazon and Microsoft and the other big players, which is kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
So let me see if I understand this. Companies hire people, they become successful and make their employeees successful (at least their non warehouse, non call center employees) making the city and population at large successful; growing the economy. For that good they get taxed more? It’s no wonder AMZ for one is looking for an HQ2 location.<p>I know it makes people feel good, but honestly, the only answer to homelessness is a federal approach. Piecemeal approaches tend to attract people to homeless friendly places creating a positive feedback loop.<p>Why not go the whole hog and institute an “automation tax”. Tax companies for every job they automate which leads to an unemployed willing worker, avoiding the creation of a homeless pop. This would be less ridiculous.
One question comes to mind... I wonder if this will result in more companies allowing/encouraging remote work. Obviously, it won't work in every case. I just wonder if things like this will push companies more in that general direction.
I'm fiscally conservative and I don't mind the tax, it's just very poorly planned. $20M in revenue for businesses is not much. It's a regressive tax, and it is appropriated to homelessness which the city has done a very poor job of dealing with. Money will no doubt be wasted.<p>I do support a more fair tax in Bay Area that goes directly to transportation and infrastructure improvement
I'm not really against the tax but its use. Spending more money on the homeless giving them handouts is only going to attract more worsening the problem.<p>I think the homeless problem should be tackled on a federal level since it is easy for them to move states but not countries. Thus, any non-federal government that spends tax revenue to help the homeless will likely just attract more homeless people from other areas worsening the local populations lives through the negative externalities and the costs which only reduce other local governments homeless expenses.
The amount of dumb things I hear coming out of Seattle lately blows my mind. Every other city that wears it's "progressive"-ness on its sleeve should take a wait and see approach to what Seattle does, so that when these terrible policies do nothing to fix their problems and exacerbate others (like blaming tech companies for housing shortages in SF) they can hopefully avoid it.
Why not tie this to CEO pay... whatever multiplier the CEO earns (including bonuses) above average workers is what they pay, so say it's 400x they'd pay 400 per head, if it's 200 they'd pay 200... Then the company just needs to pay 1 worker less money to keep more for the business itself and shareholders/etc... Or the business could pay workers more to lower that 400:1 ratio.
How’re is this tax supposed to fix or ease homelessness?<p>Several years ago, some friends were looking to purchase a starter home in Seattle, maybe for $250k or so. But they had such a killer deal on rent, they opted to wait a few more years, <i>to save up more money</i>.<p>Well, in the next few years that dream quickly slipped through their fingers. Now you have to pay upwards of $500k just to get some as-is teardown that you’re not even allowed to look inside before you buy.
Shame on Amazon for hiring so many people in the Seattle area with good paying jobs.<p>How dare people blame the poor and beleaguered city government for not solving the city’s mental health problem. Record tax revenues? It’s still not enough.<p>Seriously though, isn’t this the deal? Business brings in good paying jobs and pays taxes, city lays down the infrastructure to support commerce. With record tax revenues the city government isn’t holding up their end of the bargain.
I agree that this tax probably won't fix the homelessness problem. Whatever has happened to Seattle is much deeper then just homelessness. Amazon and the like have ravaged the city of it's ability to provide functional housing even to service and support workers.<p>I know this is happening in every city, but it's very pronounced in Seattle. The city shuts down at 9PM because no one lives there and then the homeless spill over into the empty well scrubbed streets.<p>It's soul has been sucked out and been replaced with techno culture. A weird head tax is a reasonable ding for an exasperated set of natives, but someone has to find a way to balance these concerns. Or not... I shudder to think of what the bay, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Boston, etc are going to become without all the people that make up a city that aren't just there to get their next rung up on the way to be CTO for their own gig app.