You won’t believe this mindless attack on Amazon

In a bit of petty and ungrateful news, a Crosscut author is taking issue with Amazon.com because they’re not philanthropic enough to Seattle.

So earlier in the month, Amazon told the Associated Press that it was donating millions of dollars for affordable housing in Seattle. The company did that to combat some of the bad press it had been getting from activist protesters who blame Amazon for the high cost of rent in the surrounding neighborhoods.

To be fair, Amazon is part of the reason why South Lake Union, Eastlake, and Capitol Hill are so expensive. It pays their workers a lot of money, in turn the workers, many of whom don’t drive, look for local apartments. They have the money, so developers and landlords charge them what they can afford. And that brings rents up across the neighborhoods.

So Amazon is like, ‘hey, we pay a ton of fees that go towards affordable housing.’ In fact, they’ve paid nearly $20 million in fees.

But Jeff Reifman at Crosscut is taking issue with this because he says this money isn’t a big donation. Amazon is donating out of the goodness of its heart. But it’s money the company is forced to pay by the city for building bigger or taller buildings.

Can you get any more petty than that?

Let’s just give the money back if you don’t want it &#8212 Amazon is paying nearly $20 million in fees for affordable housing, but you don’t want to give the credit because the company was compelled? Well, the company could have chosen not to expand business and avoid the $20 million in fees. Amazon could have decided to build those offices elsewhere, in a city they’re more appreciated and not demonized. But it chose not to.

And in this piece, Reifman continues to just get angry that Amazon has donated funds in a “less impressive” way. He complains it only donates to five charities a year.

He doesn’t tell us how much Amazon gave to these charities.

Reifman writes: “Amazon’s been called out repeatedly for its lack of philanthropy within the city. It’s very difficult to find any evidence of the gifts the company has made or their magnitude.”

Again, incredibly petty and incredibly irrelevant. Amazon doesn’t owe any charity any money. You know why? It already generates millions of dollars for the city and the state.

You know what the contribution is? An economy.

The Seattle economy is thriving because of Amazon. It pays thousands of workers big salaries.

Those salaries are the reasons why the barista at Cafe Ladro or the chef at Blue Moon Burger have their jobs.

It’s why the construction workers at the dozens of developments across the city have jobs.

It’s the reason why UPS is surviving.

It’s the reason why Seattle is what it is. That’s all it owes. That you, Jeff Reifman, thinks Amazon owes more is remarkable.

I’d love to see how much money he donates relative to how much he makes.