Posted on 05/15/2018 10:43:32 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
Seattles largest businesses such as Amazon and Starbucks will have to pay a new tax to help fund homeless services and affordable housing under a measure approved by city leaders.
The City Council unanimously passed a compromise plan Monday that taxes businesses making at least $20 million in gross revenues about $275 per full-time worker each year lower than the $500 per worker initially proposed. The so-called head tax would raise roughly $48 million a year to build new affordable housing units and provide emergency homeless services.
Etc...
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
The first are those who are homeless because of personal circumstance. This would include people who lost their job, health care costs, and drug use etc. Sometimes it was just bad luck or bad personal choices.
These people can be helped if the right help is provided.
The second group is the mentally ill. Some may be able to helped is properly diagnosed and given the right treatment.
It's likely many can't be helped because they're beyond treatment and can never see their problem and learn to help themselves. The only solution would be institutionalization.
The third group, the one no one talks about, are the people who want to be homeless because they don't want to be a part of society.
It's their choice but we don't have to let them ruin our neighborhoods.
That will take decisive action of laws to keep them under control.
No way. we in Eastern Washington don't want them. We will block the bridges crossing the Colombia River.
> It would serve Seattle right if Amazon fired all but three employees. <
Seattle would probably levy an “android tax” on any robots that take their place.
Maybe rural areas in Washington are willing to support people who contribute nothing to society-and have them climbing over fences, trespassing on private acreage, going into homes and stealing stuff-even stealing chickens, and veggies from gardens-hanging out in the woods trashing everything-and causing wildfires with their unattended campfires. That happened a few years ago and 100’s of acres of pasture and woods went up in smoke, as well as two homes. Since then, vagrants/homeless people who come out here and don’t want to do ranch work, cleaning, etc do not get handouts-they are told to move on and arrested if they trespass-leeches are not welcome in this rural area...
This is a way of negating the Trump tax cuts and give out the money for democrat votes.
Seattle has a _lot_ of folks on the street who are mentally ill or don’t want to “work for _the man_.”
Good luck throwing money at them.
Used to call them bums and hobo’s ...
Those living out of cars were “gypsies” (though a distinct racial-ethnic-cultural group in Europe.)
100 miles to the West should work as well! :-)
Amazon and others, Boeing, Microsoft, etc. came to the NW because there is no state corporate or individual income tax. Also there is a fairly stable, educated, very tech savvy work force here that is a result of workers that came for the defense industries of WWII.
The problem they created is the competition for available housing. Look at a map. Most other cities can grow in all directions, with commutable drives from suburbs spreading out in all directions.
The NW is landlocked, its population has no room to economically grow in any direction except to the south towards Portland, which it is doing, but with long commutes.
Supply and demand.... The competition for housing will only get worse and prices will go up. The big employers will continue to build satellite campuses while keeping a HQ presence in Seattle.
That is the future. They won’t leave the NW, but will expand by decentralizing, using the internet.
The homeless are simply people that can’t compete for a livable income, they can leave or compete for charity income.
A head tax is a socialist way of helping minimally productive people stay in the NW.
“Tax the rich, feed the poor, ‘til there are no rich no more” Ten Years After/Alvin Lee/1971:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBAwv49slC8
righto
Mine, too. But don’t you love it when their preferred policies (higher taxes to help the homeless, for example) are applied to them, and the squealing begins?
Still bad policy, but the schadenfreude is strong.
I’m enjoying it plenty, because the odds are 90-1 they did vote for the Dims.
I doubt if taxes were a major consideration when Boeing started in Seattle (or Renton) in the 1920’s. They moved their HQ to Chicago in the 1980’s, I think.
Oh, OK. When I read a similar article yesterday I thought Seattle wanted to tax the actual EMPLOYEES. I though THAT took guts. But no, they want to tax the company - for hiring people. Dumb. Then again, kind of like Starbucks and Amazon getting it in the teeth.
So youd dump the losers on the conservative communities to the East and Force them to stay there. Hmmmmm
100 miles East lies Ellensburg. I went to college there. Its a Republican cow town, rodeo and all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellensburg,_Washington
Just reported. Amazon has put on hold it’s plan to build a large downtown commercial project. This $275 per head tax is going to get a lot more people in the homeless ranks.
Thank you liberal Seattle.
Sort of, the Boeing family were farmers. Jr. used the family money to start an air mail business that took off and they got a huge contract from WWII buildup.
A major reason for staying was the tax freedom.
They have plants all over the US.
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