
After Amazon-Led Tax Rebellion, Seattle's Homeless Aid Stalls - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-09/after-amazon-led-tax-rebellion-seattle-s-homeless-aid-stalls
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erentz
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
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.

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coryrc
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.

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

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SpicyLemonZest
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.

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elvinyung
Why not? Isn't public/social housing basically that?

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SpicyLemonZest
Public housing generally does not come with a nice enough environment that
teachers and plumbers will agree to live there. Maybe there’s some way to
build public housing which doesn’t come with drugs and petty crime, but if
there is I don’t think American cities know how to do it. The conventional
wisdom is that the right way to do affordable housing is distributing it
evenly among all the new complexes in the city.

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rayiner
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...](https://wjla.com/news/local/silver-spring-transit-center-filth-
cleaning-wmata).

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?

~~~
gok
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Circle_Line)

~~~
rayiner
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...](https://www.intelligenttransport.com/transport-
articles/14266/the-biggest-light-rail-project-in-denmark-is-on-track).

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.

~~~
gok
I see, I think that link is referring to this project?
[https://www.dinletbane.dk/in-english/stations-and-
trains/](https://www.dinletbane.dk/in-english/stations-and-trains/) In which
case, looks like it won't open until 2025 and it's now up to $920 million. But
yeah I certainly agree that construction in most of the rich world is
dramatically cheaper than most rich US cities.

~~~
rayiner
Looks like it went up a bit, but that figure also includes $150 million in
reserves, while I’m not sure the original $650 million was factoring in the
reserves.

Maryland is currently building a suburban light rail system that’s almost
exactly the same length, with fewer stations. It’s closing in on $6 billion
with no reserves.

~~~
gok
Yeah the Purple Line is an exceptional boondoggle.

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graeme
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.

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Lazare
> 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.)

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

~~~
Lazare
Well yeah. Or probably even more importantly, a tax that most people wouldn't
be paying.

Efficient taxes tend to 1) be broad based and 2) be very hard to avoid by
changing behaviour. And _that_ means they will impact a lot of _voters_ , and
voters don't like paying taxes. :)

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DoctorNick
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
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.

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brobinson
The "Seattle Is Dying" documentary mentioned in the article:
[https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-
is...](https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is-dying)

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

~~~
jxramos
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](https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw)

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fmajid
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.

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xxxpupugo
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.

