After Amazon-Led Tax Rebellion, Seattle's Homeless Aid Stalls

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-09/after-amazon-led-tax-rebellion-seattle-s-homeless-aid-stalls

by pseudolus • 7 years ago

33 54 7 years ago

graeme3• 7 years ago

Are there any types of tax that are:

1. Reasonably within the means of cities to levy, and 2. Economcially efficient?

This per employee tax was literally a tax on jobs: it taxes a socially beneficial thing. Of course, many taxes are like this, such as the income tax. But adding a totally new tax is mort distorting than simply raising existing income taxes.

And, at a state /federal level, income taxes for some reason are more politically feasible than taxes on externalities, which are economically efficient

If efficiency is out of reach, are there any taxes cities can levy that at least aren’t lousy in terms of efficiency? It seems to me that municipalities generally aren’t given good taxation powers.

village-idiot4• 7 years ago

Consumption taxes on luxury goods usually aren’t very distorting at the local level, especially since its pretty easy to define luxury goods that aren’t locally made. The problem is that the max revenue that they can collect is much lower than income or common consumption taxes, which have a wider base with less ability to evade.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

Of course with luxury taxes the issue is avoidance more than evasion.

Sales based taxes are either regressive because it cannot be done without and are more or less fixed or avoidable because it can be done without.

Of course if reduced consumption of the given luxury is the goal it is sorta mission accomplished (too high and black markets may arise) but undermines the revenue generation goal.

Lazare2• 7 years ago

Are there any types of tax that are: 1. Reasonably within the means of cities to levy, and 2. Economically efficient?

Economic orthodoxy says that taxes in order of efficiency (from most to least) are: Land value taxes > property taxes > consumption taxes > income taxes > capital taxes > wealth taxes.

Cities in general are able to levy land value, property, and sales taxes fairly easily, and these are the most economically efficient taxes.

(And if you want to move from theory to empirical evidence, when relatively rich societies want to raise a lot of money, they almost invariably lean heavily on very large consumption taxes. If you need to raise a lot of money and don't want to burn your economy entirely to the ground, you can do a lot worse than a 20% VAT.)

graeme3• 7 years ago

Why didn't the city increase land, property or sales taxes? Did they just want to pick a big, popular target?

coryrc3• 7 years ago

If we have an obligation to house them, then let's house them where housing is cheap -- which is not near Seattle. The people in the homeless non-profits don't like this, because they like to live and work in Seattle. So nothing gets done and we have used needles everywhere.

village-idiot4• 7 years ago

I think you’re making up why homeless advocates don’t want to literally ship the homeless out of the city. There are a lot of reasonable objections to that plan.

sieabahlpark• 7 years ago

Such as?

elvinyung2• 7 years ago

Shouldn't cities be obligated to make sure they're able to have teachers and plumbers and piano tuners?

oh_sigh• 7 years ago

No.

If rent gets so expensive that plumbers can't afford to live there, then some plumbers will just start coming in from some cheaper area and charge customers probably an increased fee based on the trouble of getting into the city.

SpicyLemonZest2• 7 years ago

Do cities have the power to make sure of such a thing? It's not like the mayor can just go around setting prices and wages to the level she thinks is best.

Nasrudith2• 7 years ago

I know it was rhetorical but define "obligation" and "have". Obligation in a moral sense is a matter of opinion. In the practical sense: What happens if the obligation isn't fufilled? Piano tuners are of lesser importance than teachers in terms of consequences for lacking entirely.

There are alternatives for everything with their own price. Even if it is horrific like "die of rabies instead of getting vaccinated after being bit".

If availability of workforce in a broader area is high but in city housing they afford is low either they need to be paid more or traffic and commute time will increase and make the job less desirable which may affect skill level and harm labor availability. Underserving is technically also an option but there will be knock on effects - if the schools are bad then parents will be more likely to relocate.

com2kid2• 7 years ago

which is not near Seattle.

The city of Seattle has 0 power to force other municipalities to build housing.

Any attempts by Seattle to build shelters and low income housing projects outside of the city limits would be swiftly shut down, assuming those attempts could even get started.

Unfortunately Seattle has to pay the burden of the entire region. While some cities, such a Bellevue, are helping out, other cities around here have no real desire, or motivation, to start paying money in, and voters in those other cities would likely make that clear the second their elected officials started spending tax dollars.

epicureanideal2• 7 years ago

They don't need to force them. They can just pay to build housing in another city, and by contract give it for free to certain current residents of Seattle who are without homes.

seanmcdirmid• 7 years ago

The city of Seattle has 0 power to force other municipalities to build housing.

They also have 0 power in forcing people from the region not to come to the city to become homeless. It is a regional problem, Seattle can only do so much by itself, as you say.

brobinson• 7 years ago

The "Seattle Is Dying" documentary mentioned in the article: https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is...

I watched this a few weeks ago, and it was extremely eye-opening.

jxramos• 7 years ago

I was just thinking of that documentary. I agree it was very eye opening. Looks like it stands at 3.9M views currently. I read an article about it that the journalist brought a lot of ire his way producing that blunt exposition. If I remember correctly there was a PR campaign to undo his work or something along those lines.

Direct YouTube link: https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw

bill-nordwall• 7 years ago

Komo News is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a right-wing media organization that regularly forces local affiliates to air propaganda.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sinclair-requires-...

Here is a a cogent rebuttal to the documentary in question. https://crosscut.com/2019/03/6-reasons-why-komos-take-homele...

DoctorNick• 7 years ago

Watching the City Council meeting where the repealed the head tax was pretty remarkable. It was like watching a hostage video. Every council member (sans Sawant) stood up and said something to the effect of 1) this tax is absolutely necessary to combat the homeless crisis and 2) it must be repealed immediately.

The pretenses of liberal democracy vanish when the interests of the rich and powerful are threatened.

ryacko• 7 years ago

If FAANG didn't keep adding jobs to overpopulated cities but to rust belt cities, housing pressures wouldn't be bad as it is.

At least OCP invested in the community.

Thorncorona• 7 years ago

I live in Seattle and think that this tax was a joke. Seattle/King County has spent $700M+ on this issue over the last ten years with 0 results. They have given no reason to pour money into dysfunctional programs.

erentz• 7 years ago

This is not to be insensitive to the problem, but I don't grasp why we only talk about dealing with homelessness at the city level? Cities are small and surrounded by other cities, it's a terrible level of government to provide any kind of safety net or benefit. These need to come from states (if not the federal government). E.g. why for example should Seattle bear the responsibility of housing 10,000 homeless while it's rich neighbors on the east side can just wipe there hands of it?

ajmurmann• 7 years ago

To make it worse: Let's assume Seattle provides a great solution for the issue. Won't that attract homeless from other areas to Seattle, furthering the problem. It really must be solved federally. But we cannot do that because there is no way we can agree on something as complicated and probably nuanced like a solution to homelessness in the US.

xxxpupugo• 7 years ago

Are those homeless from Seattle or they travelled to Seattle?

The proposed head tax on Amazon isn't that much to solve the situation, it is probably more due to the fact Amazon is moving out of Seattle.

rayiner3• 7 years ago

If folks in Seattle of all places are expressing concern about whether the government is wisely using public money, maybe someone should listen?

I’m pro high (individual) taxes. But it’s a hard position to support whole watching municipalities piss away money. WMATA recently spent $141 million building a new transit center in Silver Spring, a DC suburb. The gleaming new building is now falling apart and covered in graffiti, less than four years later: https://wjla.com/news/local/silver-spring-transit-center-fil....

This is a $141 million bus station. That’s 25% of the cost of the new light rail networ providing transit to a similar outlying urbanized area of Copenhagen. $650 million for a new light rail system with 27 kilometers of track and 27 stations in Denmark. Versus $141 million for a single bus station in Maryland.

Maybe Americans aren’t crazy to believe that our government (versus government in the abstract), can’t solve problems if given more money?

gok3• 7 years ago

Where did that number for the Copenhagen Metro come from? Wikipedia says the most recent line is expected to cost $3.2 billion for a 15.5km line with 17 stations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Circle_Line

rayiner3• 7 years ago

That's an extension of the Copenhagen heavy rail line within the city. Obviously that's more expensive than building infrastructure out in the suburbs--Silver Spring, my point of comparison, is a suburb of D.C. I was talking about the Greater Copenhagen Light Rail: https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-articles/1426....

Although, I should note that the cost for building 10 miles of new track entirely underground beneath Copenhagen is less than what it cost DC to extend the Silver Line the same distance entirely above-ground through low-density suburbs along a pre-existing right of way.

fmajid• 7 years ago

Seattle's revenues went from $2.6B in 2007 to $3.8B in 2017, presumably thanks to the tech boom. They can fully fund the extra $200M needed out of that $1.2B windfall. It would be instructive to see what other expenditures were deemed a higher priority.

After Amazon-Led Tax Rebellion, Seattle's Homeless Aid Stalls

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