Seattle City Council to consider repeal of head tax less than a month after approving it seattletimes.com/seattle-news/p… | Of course. The previous mayor sent an apology to Amazon (not a person, a corporation) in case its hurt feelings were why it launched its HQ2 search.
"Seattle hates business!1!" say the pundits and online commenters but that's hard to substantiate when a city government caves so quickly. At the very least, they could have used the head tax as leverage: work with us on something better or we go with what we have.
I still think about the Seattle Times magazine cover story a few months back — "Can Seattle Handle Prosperity?" Betteridge's Law tells us that any headline framed as a question can be answered with "no." And it applies here. Seattle has had 20 years to figure this out.
Over that same 20 years, how much money have developers and real estate investors made selling and re-selling Seattle by the parcel with all that money going to them, not back to the real investors, the taxpayers who built the roads and telco networks and schools and stores?
It's a lot and while it is gone, like water over the dam, Seattle could still switch from it's puny 1% tax on commercial real estate that encourages speculation and keeps idle land idle to a land rent that would get land developed, get people housed, and drive growth that works.
@cmkshama and @mayorjenny want some things in common: better living conditions for the people who live and work in Seattle, less inequality with continued prosperity. Maybe it's time to look at some new ways to make that happen.
