it is just getting better and better to live here in Seattle. Legalization of weed, same-sex marriage, and now high-speed internet
It's still better overall than most states, but I'd prefer a different corporate income tax structure. Even a 5-10% corporate income tax, with no minimum, would be fine. The worst part about California corporate taxes is the $800 minimum; if you got rid of that, it would be pretty reasonable I think.
I'm personally pro something like a broad VAT with a $20k credit or $50k exemption, including property. In general, consumption taxes seem preferable to income or investment taxes, in that they deter consumption vs. deterring investment. Consumption has fewer inherent positive externalities than investment or income. And then add additional taxes for the purpose of capturing and offsetting externalities like pollution, traffic, etc., rather than strictly as revenue.
And I'd really like to see experiments on taxing status goods. Create or find things like they have in game economies, which are not really necessary or important, and which are purely purchased for signaling value, and tax those. Raising the taxes on those things, thus raising cost, is beneficial to the buyers and to society. (I think Scott Adams from Dilbert has proposed this.)
Another way of saying this is that it's regressive because it's flat, but it's a better tax overall if you could unflatten it.
The other benefit of a negative tax (negative consumption tax or negative income tax) is that we could then get rid of virtually all other benefits and entitlements -- just increase the base subsidy. There's no reason to administer a food stamp program if you just give everyone a $20-30k/yr income. Same thing with student aid; why give someone subsidized loans when you can just give them $20-30k/yr and tuition/etc. costs $10-40k/yr, so a feasible part-time job (or private scholarship) covers the cost of going to school at Harvard, and you can actually save money if you instead go somewhere cheaper.
I'm not 100% in favor of giving everyone free stuff, but I'd far prefer to just give everyone free stuff vs. build an expensive bureaucracy to administer a program which incentivizes poverty and disability (a huge fraction of the SDI payments are to people who are basically employable and functional, but who can't get jobs; if they had an independent $20-30k income, there would be nothing to discourage them from doing $5-10k extra in legal work.) Obviously services other than pure transfer payments would still be needed, but the majority of welfare programs are about the transfer payments; counseling and other support could be charity, commercial, or funded separately.
There's another huge problem that it solves besides just administrative costs. Currently marginal tax rates near the poverty line are very high due to loss of access to need-based programs like foodstamps (exactly how high depends a lot on individual circumstances). It's a horrible burden on the working poor that nobody seems to understand. More discussion here: http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-flat-t...
As an aside, OR to the south of WA doesn't have a sales tax at all, but rather an income tax, which would come out to about 9% for me if I lived there. In WA I pay about a 9% sales tax on things I purchase excepting housing and food. When you do the math, whether I'm rich or I'm poor; my taxes are lower in WA - unless I'm spending obscene amounts of money buying stuff other than housing and food (edit: or don't have an income but do purchase goods and services).
Also, I don't know if it's related or not, but WA does have a much more vibrant economy than OR and most other states with an income tax.
This is not a tax advice, consult a competent accountant.
the 0.5-1% rate on final sales is inconsequential; it's the tax pyramiding on every purchase before that. Admittedly it matters a whole lot less for a startup than for a purely local business (say a coffee shop who buys bread locally which is made from facilities, staff, and multiple other inputs, each of which is also produced within the state and has gross receipts taxes added.
It's particularly bad because it essentially discourages outsourcing and encourages vertical integration, counter to efficiency and new business formation. The same product can cost a lot more if you use the best components and best assembly vs. more expensive and lower quality things produced entirely in-house.
When I am shopping for hosting services or hardware, I am shopping across entire country, I don't care if the vendors had to markup this or that, and I don't have to buy local, and vendors don't mark up their prices based on my location within US.
When selling, I am paying tax only on sales to WA residents, which is like 1% of my world-wide sales, and on those I am paying like 0.5% gross receipts tax. So it's 0.005% tax rate total.
How did you end up with "for a software/internet startup who buys hosting from a single provider only, it is probably more like a 3-4% income tax." ???
Internet companies are a huge exception to normal businesses. (which is why they're so awesome and can turn into scalable startups so easily). Income tax is on profits, so if you have a low margin business, or an earlier startup business, you'd be paying low total income taxes even at the 3-4% rate., so a tiny B&O direct expense and higher costs for facilities, contractors, etc. translates to a much higher equivalent income tax rate.
B&O isn't a good argument against setting up your tech company in WA; it's just an unfair tax which penalizes some businesses (inherently local ones) while favoring others (prof services and internet). (the only good argument against tech startups in Seattle is the somewhat-smaller-than-Bay-Area pool of tech workers, largely better now than it was 10y ago when they were just Boeing and Microsoft, and the lack of great VCs (there are a few, but not the best in the world, and not many vs. SF, NYC, or Boston).
They're not quite as good as NV or some other states (SBR, automatic, etc. require a business engaged in that as a business, or a trust, vs. personal ownership), but essentially fine. I'd probably have an FFL07 side business if I were up there all the time anyway.
The relentless gray of which you speak is true of months like December and January.
I'll also take nonstop rain from Nov-Feb any day over the snowy winters in the Midwestern states where I grew up.
Finally, the key to not letting your plans get ruined by rain is to always plan for the possibility of rain. =)
When I travel, I always emphasize the rain, the cloud cover, the risk of death by volcano, the very real likelihood very overdue The Big One earthquake, how traffic sucks, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Watson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Seattle
That said, sometimes it does rain a lot in Seattle. Some years ago there was a stretch of 35 consecutive days of rain.
There are actually cases of people getting SAD from the over abundance of sunlight in the summer (http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2012/10/depression-from-too-mu...)
http://www.seattleweatherblog.com/rain/record-dryness-windin...
I used to live a few hundred kilometers away from Seattle in the same temperature area, I can say for sure I'm looking forward to this summer!
But, I agree with your sentiment. I love living in Seattle.
Marriage equality makes a little bit of legal paperwork more convenient and provides symbolic equality. An injustice, but a smaller one.
The traffic and lack of good public transport options is a serious negative :(
But yeah, the other forms of transportation (including plodding your own car through the traffic) kinda suck.
[1]: https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF8&msa=...
As for public transit there are two big problems. One, coverage outside of the core downtown areas is comparatively sparse and irregular. Two, buses generally get stuck in the same traffic as cars and metro isn't smart enough to figure out how to adjust the schedules. This can mean that the same commute by bus can take an additional hour depending on the time of day. Also, using public transit for anything other than commuting to/from a normal 9-5 weekday job can be a huge hassle. These problems are very slowly being fixed though.
Granted, there's currently no subway, but within the city there's light rail, a decent bus system, streetcars, and generally bike-friendly infrastructure aside from the steep hills. There may be a lack of an excellent public transportation system, but there's still a good one in place.
I've been using a combination of Zipcars and Uber for my other transportation needs.
Don't you get bored with the constant sunshine?
NO
(former Seattleite, and the weather has been the absolute greatest gain from moving away)
NYC has it beat, but how could it not?
It's serviceable for some contrived use cases, but a long, long, long, loooong way from "fantastic".
I lived in Belltown first, and then Capitol Hill (right along the Broadway corridor) - both transit experiences were pretty shitty.
The transit is serviceable during off hours, but during rush it is an absolutely, completely unmitigated clusterfuck. All buses leading out of downtown are at crush capacity, and the ridiculous rule that back doors can't be opened means that at every stop there is a massive pile of human bodies as people towards the back shove and squeeze their way to the front to get out - only to run into crowds of people outside trying to get in.
If you work in the central business district, and live in one of the nicer "trunk line" neighborhoods, and you can stagger your work hours to avoid the worst of the inhumanity of Seattle transit during rush hour, you can get to work pretty well. If any one of the three conditions is not met, commuting via transit is going to be absolutely dreadful.
The only place I've ever experienced transit worse than Seattle was in the industrial slums of London, Ontario.
There were drivers who were enforcing this with an iron fist.
They've since backed off, but it's pretty clear that the people making the rules at King County Metro do not ride the bus.
Also, unless the attendants with portable scanners are present, you can't enter the back of the bus unless you're willing to cheat -- it's a double-edged sword.
Eliminating the free-ride zone has solved all the problems from my perspective. I see no issue with only allowing people to enter at the front; it doesn't cause any hassle as far as I have seen. I guess it would be an issue if you really felt the need to sit at the back?
You are correct about rush hour busses out of downtown being absolutely packed though. While it can be an unpleasant ride, passengers are very rarely turned away.
I live 2.4 miles from my workplace -- Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square and I could run to work faster than the non-transfer bus that went between my front door and 2 blocks from work.
Now that they've changed the bus system (Sept 2012)? That's a transfer. Yes...between one of the most densely populated neighborhoods and a reasonably dense job district.
During rush hour, with bus transfer, that could take over 48 minutes for 2.4 miles -- that's 20 minutes/mile or 3 miles per hour. I've walked it in that amount of time +/- 2 minutes.
See http://discovermagazine.com/2012/extreme-earth/01-big-one-ea... if you don't know what I'm talking about.
The odds are high that it will not go off in the time that the United States of America is a country.
The odds are reasonable that it will not go off in the time that homo sapiens is a species.
If it does go off, it will be the largest disaster on record, the United States as we know it will be destroyed, and it will be a worldwide threat.
Let's not worry about it, shall we?
Either it happens, I have enough warning and I live, it happens and I don't have enough warning so I die, or it doesn't happen. No sense worrying in any case.
My point is just that if it goes off, the problem won't be just Colorado's.
Earthquakes are a good reason not to live anywhere on the Pacific coast. Hurricanes are a good reason not to live in the southeast, or apparently, New Jersey. And I don't want to live in "tornado alley"...
Edit: That article is just more FUD, designed to be fed to people who enjoy being afraid. There's no new knowledge there.
I absolutely know this to be false.
I grew up just north of you in Victoria. I was a teenager when they began piecing together evidence that earthquakes of that magnitude actually could hit the area. Before then there was no thought to preparation. And large parts of my home town are still on landfill, close to sea level. (Which is not what you want during an earthquake...)
Earthquakes are a good reason not to live anywhere on the Pacific coast.
The earthquake risk in California is well-understood and the area is prepared for it. That risk is quite acceptable to me. The Pacific Northwest is less prepared, and has the potential for an earthquake over 10x bigger than anything that California has to worry about.
That article is just more FUD, designed to be fed to people who enjoy being afraid. There's no new knowledge there.
It was one of the top links when I searched for "Cascadia superfault". I did not research it carefully. I would not expect it to contain novel information.
I respect your difference in risk tolerance, but don't think we're oblivious to earthquakes here. That's just slanderous :)
That's probably one of the top links because it's so new, but most of its details are from more than 20 years ago. It doesn't even mention the expectation of the "big one" triggering a reaction from Mt Rainier, causing a "burp" and a lahar landslide.
On the other hand, living in N. Central FL, there were several times where my life was disrupted for days by hurricanes.
Concern over the possibility of that earthquake happening in my lifetime is one of the reasons why I do not want to return there, or want my children to put down roots there.
I wasn't aware of any place that was particularly ~good~ for private health insurance.
It looks like agents are able to find a much better option, presumably inside group plans, but still.
I judge health insurance by the coverage for catastrophic accident or major illness; lifetime limits, access to best doctors, etc., not on the $0-20 copays.
I'd use leaky.com to do the comparison, once they expand from cars to health insurance (which I assume they will).