Socialists Are Beating Jeff Bezos in Seattle (Again)

Since someone went ahead with the obligatory "they're gonna leave Seattle" comment I will respond to that. They might try (although they're extremely invested and this is a relatively small tax). But if you think every city should lower their taxes and living standard, to maximize short-term profits and therefore incentives for companies to move to or stay there, where does that leave you? The logical endpoint is racing to the bottom in a bidding war for corporate for-profit investment that most residents can't use. Or, in other words, recreating the off-shoring, re-shoring, and hollowing out of communities that has happened for decades in search of labor cost arbitrage. It's unsustainable and unhealthy. The political momentum to tax the ultra-wealthy can spread much faster than they can pack up and move. It's time to do that.

Yesterday, the council had the final vote and passed a big business tax 7-2. It will tax large companies, with Amazon as by far the biggest payer, about $240m/year, to pay for COVID relief and affordable housing.

This article is written by Kshama Sawant, a member of the city council. She, Tammy Morales (councilmember), and socialist orgs and unions organized the Tax Amazon movement over the last 7 months, to tax similarly large companies at $500m/year to fund social housing, COVID relief, Green New Deal retrofitting. Last week, after months of stonewalling by the city council on every aspect of that legislation, Tax Amazon announced they had 30k signatures, enough to put it on the ballot. The following day, in clear response to the pressure, the council voted 7-2 in their budget committee for this competing, smaller legislation, authored by a Democrat, Teresa Mosqueda. Tomorrow, all interested volunteers can go to a Tax Amazon action conference where they will vote on whether or not to continue with the ballot measure in light of this passing.

Big tech has led to an almost never before seen concentration of wealth and the political fallout is only beginning.