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Comment by lev99 | Hacker News Reader

Increasing home prices in Seattle, where the median rent is $2,400 [0]. By bringing in people from out of state with high salaries Amazon is making the housing market in Seattle much more expensive as more people compete for a mostly static stock of housing. Zoning laws, mandatory parking, improved public transportation, affordable housing regulations, and new development could all improve the current situation so local and state governments play a role, but it would be naive to assume the largest private employer in the region didn't play a role in creating the current situation either.

[0] https://www.zillow.com/seattle-wa/home-values/

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:/ The math you are presenting is “One family gets a large raise. Another gets a slightly harder time finding affordable housing”. Multiply that by a large number and you get a large number of families cannot find affordable housing. But, a similar number got large raises. It’s not a universal win, but it’s still a net win. It’s not even a horribly skewed distribution.

If I could make a genie wish, it would be that there was a bunch of luxury condo&apt construction for the new residents so that none of the old residents would have any pressure to move. But, I can’t blame the lack of construction on Amazon.

How is increasing inequality a net win? The situation you've presented is even somewhat zero-sum, i.e. the first family's gain comes at the expense of the second. That's exactly what we should be trying to prevent.

It's not zero sum. One family makes more than before. The other makes the same as before. Net win. The extra money in the pocket of the first family is not coming out of the pocket of the second. It's coming out of Amazon's pocket.

The alternative is that no one gets raises. That's would be loss for a large number of families and no change for others.

You are not presenting a scenario in which one family gains and the other stays the same, you're presenting one in which one family makes more money (gain) while the other makes the same amount of money but is less able to find affordable housing (loss).

It's not strictly zero-sum because the gains and losses may not exactly offset each other, but one agent's gains still come at the expense of another.

I don't know what you are advocating. Amazon paid people a lot locally. That's usually considered a nice thing. As a side effect, that inflated prices locally. That's sad. So, to not be shamed by you, they should have been doing ambiguous something all along. What?

I suppose I'm advocating that we structure our society such that one person gaining wealth does not make it more difficult for another to live their life. I'm pointing out that, in a vacuum, this specific scenario:

> One family gets a large raise. Another gets a slightly harder time finding affordable housing.

is something to avoid, not strive for.

Sure. But, it feels like there is a lot of shooting the messenger here. There is obviously a fault in the housing market of Seattle. If there wasn’t, supply would have risen to meet demand. But, Amazon didn’t cause the fault. They just made it obvious. So, when shit gets bad, who does the pitchforks come out for? The ones who made the problem obvious.

> If I could make a genie wish, it would be that there was a bunch of luxury condo&apt construction for the new residents so that none of the old residents would have any pressure to move.

Seattle has had the most cranes in the country for 3 years now [0] and so much new housing has been built prices recently went down [1].

[0]: https://www.seattlepi.com/seattlenews/article/Seattle-three-...

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/smallest-s...

> Zoning laws, mandatory parking, improved public transportation, affordable housing regulations, and new development could all improve the current situation so local and state governments play a role

Wow! "Play a role" has an amazing undertone here; It's Amazon's fault for offering good salaries in Seattle; a better company would offer fewer jobs, at lower salaries, spread out (oh that's what's happening at the warehouses).

Local and State Governments (and the people they represent who are profiting from real estate in San Francisco and Seattle) should not be the distant second you're pointing at here!

Indeed, Amazon HQ2 is considered by many cities to be a giant opportunity for economic growth.

And this is to ignore that Amazon Seattle is located where a previously blighted community was.

Nay, I say, I've considered Seattle as having a higher cost of living since 'You've Got Mail' came out.

Might be hard to do all those things you're proposing when Amazon has tremendous resources to mobilize against any proposed tax.

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