Seattle's leftist decline

[cbtengr]

Were I the head of a successful business in Seattle I would be pulling up stakes and moving to a more business friendly climate. The mayor is not a complete idiot but close enough.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...dquarters.html

Protesters swarmed Amazon headquarters in Seattle on Saturday to demand that the company fork-out millions in proposed taxes.

[7624U]

Just so they can get news coverage for #1 turd in the punch bowl

http://socialism.com/fs-article/meet...rty-candidate/

and local elections https://www.socialistalternative.org/about/

[cbtengr]

Originally Posted by 7624U

Just so they can get news coverage for #1 turd in the punch bowl

http://socialism.com/fs-article/meet...rty-candidate/

and local elections https://www.socialistalternative.org/about/

They certainly do not hide what they are all about, obviously the ding a lings in Seattle are more apt to show up at the polls and vote.

[Badger52]

Extend the fault line. For what Ye sow...

[Flagg]

I worked for Amazon in the very early days and spent some of that time in Seattle.

Seattle is most certainly “different” both then and now.

My only connection to the city was working for the company.

Anecdotally, I perceived it to have this “group non conformist” attitude that seemed to lack any real basis or purpose other than to say “I’m special”.

Having left the company long ago, I’ve kept a close eye on Amazon, e-commerce, and the tech sector.

In Amazon’s specific case, there is a rather significant problem.

For every $1 of potential profit Amazon generates(it doesn’t show much profit as it reinvests pretty much every penny), it probably destroys circa $3 of existing legacy retail profit.

The ratio of jobs gain/loss is possibly similar. For every 1 Amazon new employee it might result in as much as 3 lost legacy retail jobs. Amazon headcount is now over 566k and still growing at a circa 50% annual compounding rate.

That’s progress, but it is happening at an extraordinary and previously unseen rate.

Which will impact on local tax base(legacy biz and employee payroll taxes eliminated by ruthlessly more efficient competition).

Cities, nations, governments will need to adapt to the revolutionary and accelerating changes in commerce we’ve seen over the last 50+ years of Moore’s Law that has only become visually obvious in the last 5-10 years.

So many issues here:

More work being done by fewer(especially in the tech sector and other sectors that leverage tech). It no longer takes 100,000 workers in the car industry supply chain to generate $1 billion in profit for an innovative design, a single software engineer’s innovation can be tested and implemented to generate the same $1 billion in profit. They did build that and with far, far fewer humans involved in the supply chain. Forget the 1%, it’s really more about the apex 0.01% of the workforce who create massive value.

Continuing on with the 1% and 0.01% issue, 100 years ago the poorest and wealthiest humans all had similar amounts of time alive. This is changing with life expectancy and quality for life outcomes likely to widen, quite considerably with the growing disparity in health/fitness, nutrition(no one starved anymore), and very soon....genetic medicine.

Tech sector leaders pushing universal basic income(Finland’s experiment is ending, although it’s worth watching the privately funded experiment by Y-Combinator pending)

Rise of “sub state actor” influence/control(think 1975’s Rollerball where corporates literally rule). At what stage does Amazon(and others) become an existential national security issue?

Seattle is a strange ,strange place.

In a way it kind of reminds me of Berkeley, but weirder.

[rsdengler]

What a freakin Douche Bag POS...Does he really think that Socialism is fair to the "masses"? Or a remedy to social issues? Ahhhhh, NO......He needs a nice throat punch….there are some people in this Country today that are just plain useless. They have no idea of how dangerous and damaging leftist Socialist ideology is to mankind and societies as a whole. It’s their idea of Utopia….get over it, it is a flawed system……

[exsquid]

While I certainly have no love for Leftists or the Left Coast for that matter, let's not forget that Washington has no personal or corporate income tax. Also, while I don't support handouts to leaches, cities, states, and countries require tax revenue to make things run. It requires a careful balance between not being taken advantage of by big business and not killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

x/S

[WarriorDiplomat]

This consistent message of ignorance being pushed for socialism is ridiculous there are but a few truths that drive a collaborative functional society and the beauty of free markets

1. No person or group has a right to my labor, productivity, intellectual ideas, motivations or profits
2. Necessity drives innovation
3. Competition drives market quality and price

Bill Gates did not get wealthy by holding a gun to anyone head and taking their money it was done through a fair system of ideas and products in exchange for capitol people purchased his product to better their own situation

The 1% is not a group of people under the control of the bilderberg group who inherited wealth that has been kept in their families.....people move in and out of the 1% on a regular basis

If it wasn't for the market you would not be able to buy a hamburger from red robin or Wendy's you would need to grow the cow kill, dress it and grind the meat...in order to get the bun you would need to grow the wheat, harvest the crop, remove and clean the kernels and grind it into flour for the bread of course you would need to raise and feed the chickens for the eggs, grow the onions, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers (for pickles), a cow for the milk that would be churned into both cheese and so forth and for the fries why you would need to grow potatoes......but thanks to the free markets you can buy this for a few measly dollars on demand someone has decided that they could find a way to produce these products for a profit and as a result we can get all the above out of season from climates that are suitable to grow the above year round....profitability provided the inspiration for the innovation for the technology that makes this possible.

Socialist are a majority very young people or non producers who have no idea how markets function....it is with satisfaction we are watching the failed socialism in the Nordic countries especially with the U.S. providing the money that funds much of their self defense without other peoples moneys the social experiments they have adopted would have been failing much sooner....without OUR Fed tax money California and Washington and others would have failed sooner then they will and would have had to come crawling back to the Union sooner than they will already