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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 12 2019, @11:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the with-the-power-to-tax-comes-the-power-to-destroy dept.

Amazon fails to unseat pro-tax city council members in Seattle

Amazon has suffered a setback in its own backyard as several candidates for Seattle's City Council won election despite a $1.5 million campaign by business groups to defeat them. That included Kshama Sawant, an incumbent and socialist who has been a thorn in Amazon's side in recent years. The vote was held last Tuesday, but the results only became clear in recent days.

The result is significant for Amazon because last year Seattle's city council passed a $275 per employee tax on large employers. Amazon, Starbucks, and other large Seattle businesses blasted the law and funded a ballot measure to overturn it. Facing the threat of having their law overturned by voters, the city council itself repealed the measure a month after it passed.

If business groups had defeated pro-tax candidates in last week's election, it would have made the city council very reluctant to consider taxing employers again. Instead, the election results have emboldened supporters of an "Amazon tax."


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 13 2019, @08:06AM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday November 13 2019, @08:06AM (#919755) Journal

    This must be one of the most stupid taxes I've ever heard of. Are they actively trying to increase unemployment in Seattle? It's not even socialist, as socialists are supposed to be on the side of the working force. Punishing companies for employing people certainly doesn't qualify as that.

    Note that I'm not anti-tax. Taxing businesses based on their profits is perfectly OK. Taxing them on the resources they consume also is reasonable. But taxing them for employing people is insane.

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:32PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:32PM (#919800)

    My guess is the logic is something like look at rust belt cities after "the factory" closed.

    All these crappy dotcom cities are, after all, the future Detroit of 2030 or similar.

    Actually Detroit is a bad example because they had hundreds of factories instead of single digit employers. I suppose if you have 100 factories and all 100 close, its about the same as "small town USA" having one factory and it closes, you get the same 90% unemployment and white flight and population collapse in the end anyway.

    Its kinda an anti-monopoly economic regulation from the opposite direction.

    Its not a matter of IF that huge employer is going away, but a matter of when, and the impact to the city will be catastrophic, so pre-punish them.

    Ideally, they'd use the money to diversify (in the good sense) the small local businesses by infrastructure improvements and so forth such that when Amazon eventually leaves the city doesn't turn into an even more hellish version of Detroit. Realistically they're gonna do the politician thing of wasting all the money and only use the wise choice as propaganda to tax even more. Kinda like the whole "global warming" scam.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:59PM

    by DavePolaschek (6129) on Wednesday November 13 2019, @12:59PM (#919809) Homepage Journal

    Not quite as stupid as it sounds. One of the problems in Seattle is that the area is full. The housing market is pretty dysfunctional and it’s nearly impossible for someone not working for a tech company to find an affordable place to live. Same sort of thing as Silicon Valley, complete with natural boundaries preventing the area from growing, plus manmade restrictions on building (open space laws) that further cut down on the places where new housing can go.

    The saner alternative would be removing some of the obstacles to building more affordable housing, but that would be political suicide due to the NIMBYs who already live there.