KTTH

What if Seattle Councilmembers Sawant and O’Brien get their jobs tax?

May 14, 2018, 11:38 AM | Updated: 4:19 pm

carrot and stick, head tax, addicts, jobs tax...

Seattle City Council members Kshama Sawant, center, Mike O'Brien, left, and Teresa Mosqueda, right, listen to public comments on a proposal to tax large businesses to fund efforts to combat homelessness. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Update: The Seattle City Council approved an amended head tax bill Monday, May 14, 2018. The jobs tax will be $275 per employee, per year.

Original post:

I-Wanna, I-Wanna (Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who says she is a Socialist) and her pet Mike O’Brien want to tax jobs at $500 per job per year for companies they have decided are big.

What if they get their jobs tax? This is not hard to predict. 

  1. The homeless industrial complex celebrates and demands their cut. Groups like S.H.A.R.E will actually build no housing whatsoever come forward to demand money to continue to store people in parking lots. They get it and more people move into tents and parking lots. 
  1. The city will launch a government-funded heroin den, more heroin addicted people who like the freedom of living in RVs and tents will move here, the homeless, drug-addicted population goes way up. 
  1. Amazon solidifies its plans to leave. But that’s not all. Businesses considering a move to Seattle will stop. Venture capitalists start suggesting other cities for the companies they fund, other companies outsource more full-time jobs to part-time contractors located in other states. Small businesses notice fewer people coming in for coffee, lunch and dry cleaning. 
  1. The Seattle City Council will ignore the advice of professional developers. These developers have spent years in the building and development trades. They say that Seattle should stop selling land — like the areas around Yesler and I-5 — and instead use that to build and debt finance to get ahead of the process (not that I trust Seattle with debt). The 14,000 homes Seattle pretends it will build will not get built as they dither.
  1. Eventually, the city council will find a place to build a few homes. Probably in a place effectively owned by a Democrat power broker like Frank Chopp and agree to purchases it at high rates or swaps it out for some tasty waterfront property. The 14,000 houses will still not be built. 
  1. The crony “specialty-developers” and “consultants” will waddle up to the trough. This will and increase the costs of the project with needless studies. Do we need an environmental impact study for a building in the 20th largest city in America? The developers will cram the project full of needless features, such as high-end art, landscaping and some mixed use tastes like coffee shops. Still not built?
  1. The City of Seattle will then apply for a long, insane array of permits one needs to build anything. This part of the process is worse in King County than anywhere else in the state. This will delay the project by three years or more, depending on whether the ACLU sues the city if the apartments are not sufficiently expansive or require any rules for living there. No houses built. 
  1. Seattle will eventually submit final plans for construction. But because so many years have passed, labor has become more expensive, the land they agreed to buy or swap will have gone up 100 percent in value, the property owners who actually know the business will have inserted break-up clauses forcing the city to pay more for the property. The city will not have the money and 14,000 house will still not be built. 
  1. The Seattle City Council will return to the people, explain that corporate greed has intervened again in their flawless plans, and that Amazon hates all poor people and they need to double the tax on jobs. They will want to increase the percentage of businesses paying the tax on jobs. Amazon announced the majority of its management team will move to HQ2, the smart employees follow the bosses, the company starts sub-leasing massive amounts of space and the price for rent drops in Seattle, triggering a cascade of downward economic shifts.
  1. Since the 14,000 homes have not been built, the city will announce it has no choice but to expand the services to people living on the streets. Even more homeless people will move here. The 14,000 homes will now be enough for only 50 percent of the population of people who like living in circumstances like this, the rest having accepted the help readily available in Seattle. 
  1. Wash-Rinse-Repeat: with Facebook, Google, Weyerhaeuser, Nordstrom, Bartell’s.
  1. It will all be Bezos’ fault.

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What if Seattle Councilmembers Sawant and O’Brien get their jobs tax?