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Delivering on the Promise: Amazon Moving Staff Out of Seattle
Seeing how Seattle values their company (or not), Amazon management announced this week that they will move their worldwide operations team from Seattle to Bellevue (across Lake Washington).
The move will take some months and will involve only a fraction of their total of 45,000 Seattle employees, but it sends a message to the socialist-progressive politicians who run the city, that they cannot count on Amazon’s taxes to fund their utopian agenda.
I cheered when I saw this story. I am hoping other big companies follow Amazon’s lead.
Published in Economics
I would like to see all big & small companies move out of progressive cities and states. A much better outcome for areas that don’t promote a progressive agenda. And rewards more conservative communities. Wishful thinking perhaps. But a nice trend.
This is one of the huge benefits of sovereign states. Don’t like your state’s income tax? Well Texas, Florida and. Tennessee don’t have state income taxes!
Another reason to love Amazon.
You’re dreaming if you think their employees will leave their progressive values behind them.
Seattle’s running into the same problem New York did back in the 1970s, in that the city implemented its own local income tax in the 1960s at the same time services were declining, crime and homelessness was rising, and the politicians of the day didn’t seem to care because they thought no one would want to leave Shangra La because of all the amazing things the city had to offer (at least for CEOs with money to spend). The company leaders and middle class taxpayers spend the better part of the next quarter-century proving them wrong, though the flood of firms exiting the Big Apple did slow a bit when the city and state began offering up crony capitalist deals in the same vein and the one Cuomo and de Blasio tried to give Amazon, before the plan was scuttled by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her allies (albeit not due to a total opposition to cronyism, just that Cuomo didn’t give AOC and her crew the $3 billion they thought he had hidden under the porch to give to Jeff Bezos).
Seattle’s spent the better part of the last quarter century having liberal outlets across the country gush about what a jewel the city is, to the point the local pols have the same attitude that they can Hoover all the money and impose all the regulations they can think of on local corporations, and none of them will ever move out. Amazon, on the heels of Boeing’s actions of a few years ago, is proving the Seattle pols are as wrong today as the NYC pols were a half century ago.
Like a plague
This video tells quite a tail of what’s going on on the ground in Seattle.
Well, we do have a Boeing plant in North Charleston, South Carolina. There’s room for more . . .
Boeing was showered with tax breaks to get them to stay in Washington. The fully-Democrat-controlled legislature in Olympia is not too fond of that, and some breaks may be withdrawn. Washington still does not have an income tax, but the legislature is working to change that. Any law they pass would be unconstitutional, since income taxes are forbidden by the state constitution. And we are aware of the 787 plant in S. Carolina. At one time I thought of asking Hubby to request a transfer there (he helped design the 787 from Day One), but later decided against it (I really don’t like hot weather).
LOLZ. Sure. I’m sure some liberal judges will find a way….
Nor does Washington State.
Limousine socialists without an income tax. What a bunch of geniuses.
Remember the head tax? All that is, is asset confiscation.
Personally I think Amazon is partly a creature of bad government, and they are really sticking it to them.
Seattle is trapped between water and mountains. There is only so much they can do about the price of land and housing. Then you have the Fed jacking up the price of land and housing. Super nice weather. Tech boom. They just have to get realistic about where their social problems come from, but they won’t.
Super nice weather if you don’t mind rain 300 days a year. The statistic is actually about Portland, but they both have the same Marine West Coast climate.
I lived there for seven years. You don’t even get wet when it rains. It’s mild all of the time. If you can’t handle the lack of sunshine move to North Dakota.
The people of Seattle elect their government, so they must approve of what their city council does. A fair number of those people who live in Seattle work for Amazon, yet they elect councilors who despise their company and want to bleed it dry. They don’t know how to think past their next DoorDash food delivery.
Actually, I got my love of rain from the five years I lived in Portland.
The summers are largely perfect in Seattle. It’s a good lifestyle as long as you don’t have seasonal affective disorder. My sister lives in the East Bay San Francisco area, and the heat index is clearly higher. I think they are less than 20 miles east of Oakland.
I would suggest that the good people of Seattle (and everywhere else) are largely indifferent to what their city council does and reelect people until such time as something gets done that they hate and it has a name attached to it.
None of us who live here do. That’s why we have AIR CONDITIONING!
We live in Aiken, and we have a symphony orchestra. Just sayin’ . . .
One of the few cities in the Southeast I didn’t build a restaurant in.
One of your life’s regrets that can be made up by opening one here. Any particular type of restaurant?
Taco Bells, KFC’s, Ruby Tuesdays, Spinnakers, and maybe a one-off or two. I estimated several Jack-in-the-Boxes, and we usually tried to visit the jobsite before we bid them.
As far as regrets go, nope, I’m concrete now, baby.
Just like Arizona, I would not live in a place where I couldn’t go outside for over half the year. We are totally spoiled out here in the Pacific Northwest.
I hate Arizona. There is no light when the weather is good weather is good. Seattle is completely the opposite.
Did @concretevol get to you?
Well, I work for him. And I stay firmly planted in the office in front of a digitizer or a computer screen.
Somebody’s got to . . .
I lived in Aiken 1992-94, got married in the courthouse ($2 and 24 hours notice!). Very much enjoyed my time there.
Bellevue will become a Utopia-wanna-be.