Comments by "Chompy the Beast" (@chompythebeast) on "Why does Amazon want to leave Seattle?" video.

@HelloThere-jr6gd lol this is "learn to code" logic distilled to a comically pure essence
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You make a good point, Washington has some of the most regressive taxation in the entire country. Probably has a lot to do with the -envy- bevy of tech giants that move in here and price all the locals out. “Learn to code - and pay my burden in taxes!”
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Consume The Wealthy
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Attempting to blame the protests for Amazon’s bullshit and woes is the most ridiculous take since ”they’re burning Seattle to the ground!”
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Anarcho-capitalism just casually and carelessly fucks everyone who can’t afford to pay. “Sorry dock workers who lost a hand in an accident, struggling mothers whose spouses aren’t around, 70 year olds who can’t afford to retire, and people simply born into poverty - them’s the breaks! Now clear out, this is a Minimum Income Zone.”
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Seattlites didn’t like the idea of a company owning such a huge swath of ostensibly public-use land. Paul wasn’t willing to build it and eventually transfer it to the city, he just wanted to outright own and control what would have been one of the largest “public” areas in the city, and he would have displaced many homes and businesses to do it. The city was wise to oppose the proposals
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“Crimea voted democratically to join Russia (after the Russians, notorious vote-fixers, had already militarily occupied it).” lol, have another, why don’t you?
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Because Seattle has citizens that don’t buy into corporate lies about “contributing to the economy” when in fact people who have lived here their whole lives are being priced out of their homes while Amazon doesn’t pay nearly enough in taxes to offset all the harm their presence causes. They make money for themselves, cause rent to rise, don’t pay enough in taxes, and ultimately pass that burden to lower income citizens of the city. Meanwhile, Bellevue is rich and corporate as fuck and has been for a long time. One dude owns like a third of that whole town. They’re a lot less likely to make demands on behalf of the less fortunate because those people were and are deliberately swept out of that vapid, expensive district
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@sluggo206 @sluggo206 If we had a robust income tax with brackets that actually taxed the wealthy and didn't bleed the poor, we wouldn't even need a sales tax, and we'd all be better off. Very interesting comment by the way, thank you for taking the time to share it. As an example, it's nute that Sound Transit can't tax neighborhoods it serves less less, while taxing neighborhoods it serves more more. We really need to move forward from these Wild West ideologies, as you rightly put it. The myth of the "temporarily inconvenienced millionaire", aka the American Dream, has waned in its potency in the face of disparity so great that now even the white middle class is forced to acknowledge it
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The impact is pricing out all the locals who lived there before, especially low-income families. The vast majority of local businesses not patronized by yuppies in the tech campuses see little to no increase in profits to offset the increased cost of operations. Homelessness was already an issue for the city, but people are literally being pushed into the streets in many cases - an eviction moratorium enacted during COVID is the only thing preventing hundreds of people from losing their homes, and we have to protest to the city to keep extending it and to actually do something to help the people in that situation, so that when the deadline finally comes, they aren’t immediately boned. And on top of all that, they fire people for trying to organize labor and continuously attempt to gaslight the community into believing that this is all for their own good, when the only people making any money are Amazon themselves and the Tom Douglas restaurants in South Lake Union that most people can’t afford to patronize. It’s rare to hear anything positive at all about Amazon’s presence in Seattle
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