Why does Amazon want to leave Seattle?
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- čas přidán 5. 06. 2024
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Resources:
This video was synthesized from a these sources:
Amazon HQ2:
www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/te...
238 bidding cities:
qz.com/1119945/a-nearly-compl...
Wooing Bezos: archive.curbed.com/2018/12/27...
Kansas City mayor: mashable.com/2017/10/12/kansa...
Tuscon cactus: apnews.com/article/84b56066c1...
Seattle's tax breaks are a gamble:
www.seattlemet.com/news-and-c...
Record-breaking tax breaks: www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...
Boeing’s tax breaks:
www.latimes.com/business/hilt...
Also:
www.mackinac.org/new-evidence...
www.cheatsheet.com/money-care...
www.geekwire.com/2019/exclusi...
www.seattlepi.com/business/ar...
www.washingtonian.com/2019/06...
www.cnn.com/style/article/ama...
Nebula source:
www.seattlebusinessmag.com/ar...
Produced by Dave Amos in sunny San Luis Obispo, California.
Edited by Ryan Alva in Los Angeles, California.
Audio by Eric Schneider in cloudy Cleveland, Ohio.
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.
I’m waiting for Amazon to buy a small country and relocate there to completely avoid taxes
Ireland, The Caymans, Bermuda, Panama, Malta, etc etc
You don't need to buy a small country, you just have to have your official HQ with all the money in a tax haven country like Google and Apple do.
Great! Then we can annex them.
@@sor3999 Annexation of territory without consent is an act of war that carries immediate, mandatory international consequences.
@@tjmarx not if you're powerful enough. Notice no one talks about Crimea.
The "amazon spheres" are known as "Bezos Balls" to those of us who've lived in SLU
To most people who live in the area, not just slu or Seattle
The court may not have said much but we all know his ex wife owns one of them
Another comment on Bellevue's side here: Amazon has probably tapped the limit of their hiring pool in Seattle the city who want to live and work in the city. In Bellevue, they are able to attract more workers with families, and poach from Microsoft in Redmond more easily. It is also a way to diversify their risk.
I think you meant Redmond not Renton lol
@@cs-ce7hd Thanks. Wrong 10 minute drive on the freeway.
Seattle has more people with families than Bellevue. About 20% of Seattle is a family with Children. In Bellevue it is 29%. Seattle has way more people. Feel free to do the math.
The rest of your argument is solid. Companies have satellite offices pretty much everywhere. Seattle, San Fransisco, Bellevue ...
@@rossbleakney3575 It was an argument couched in my own experience. I need to kick the kids out to the yard throughout the day, but you can't do that in a downtown condo, and commuting to SLU from anywhere a $150k / year worker can afford with a yard isn't fun.
I agree with your assessment that Seattle has more total children, but lower density of children than Bellevue.
Also, for me, it's just as easy to live in Issaquah or Snohomish county if you're working in Bellevue. I was mainly trying to raise the point that by opening a second office on the east side of the lake, Amazon has access to whole new demographies of workers.
Yeah there are a lot of potential tech workers in the suburbs who don't want to live in Seattle, plus rising property values are pushing people further away. There's a reason why Microsoft has multiple campuses in the area.
Tax incentives to encourage businesses has always felt like a net positive race to the bottom competition between states/cities. Yay extra business/jobs for one place, but in the end the real winners are the corporations who are paying tiny fractions of the tax rate they should, leaving city/state budgets slim, infrastructure decayed and communities weakened
Would you rather have 1000 highly paid jobs or slightly better infrastructure.
US infrastructure is rotting not because of the lack of taxes but because of the super expensive car centric planning. Check out Strong Towns for this. It is city planning stuff
Corporate taxes aren't very smart anyway. Ultimately they're just a cost passed on to consumers and a tariff to local business.
@@Distress. and that is good, tax cut on corporations is passed on to non consumers.
@@danielsan901998 there are just better ways to tax corporations in general than corporate taxes.
@@krombopulos_michael Would you please be able to further clarify? I am very interested..
Well it's fairly easy to imagine a Seattle without Amazon. Just checkout Portland.
Is that supposed to be scary? Because that’s kind of scary. Portland isn’t doing hot 😢
Are we talking about pre or post anarchy Portland?
@@lukeschilperoort9934 Portland is only going downhill because police decided to tear gas the shit out of everything, but overall I think they got things right as far as American cities go. Great compact grid, community-centric policies, transit and cycling infrastructure.
@@finnk1289 They decided to tear gas communo-anarchists in Antifa and BLM who were destroying federal and private property. Sure they have infrastructure but why would anyone care when they’ve become magnets for crime incentivized by city policies? It’s why rent dropped by almost 20% in Seattle this year. People collectively said “fuck this” when they realized they could work from anywhere and fled the city for the suburbs. One of my old classmates had to evacuate his apartment last year because Antifa decided to set it on fire. I’m sure that’s just an expression of how oppressed they are though right?
@@lukeschilperoort9934 I lived in Portland from '70 to '74. They should be shooting on sight the idiots that are ruining Portland. Keeping it weird is great. Destroying it sucks.
Companies rarely seem to actually quickly move out of major locations in response to political events. There was some similar stuff with banking and Brexit in London. Most financial institutions announced they would be moving operations away from the UK, and did to some extent, but for the most part it was a few hundred positions out of a few thousand they had employed and mostly just to move their official status elsewhere. The reality is that its not easy to just pack up and leave and then find thousands of skilled employees in another city. Any move like that will happen gradually if at all.
The UK is special and might see much more rapid shifts than you would usually see mainly because lack of equivalence makes certain types of business impossible, not just more expensive.
@@Taladar2003 Like our banking laws being really lapse? So much so that a lot of it would be illegal in other countries?
It remains to be seen how many tech information workers can be readily shifted. I'm a developer, and I am getting a lot of queries for remote positions all over the US. Clearly physical infrastructure things can't be or are hard to move. But my personal computer is better than any I used to develop for by any company or agency I worked for. And code is usually hosted in the cloud, at e.g., GitHub, BitBucket or GitLab. Some people prefer to be colocated with their team, but I'd only like that if my commute was very short (20mins or less).
In the US the situation is quite a bit different because Americans have a tendency to move many times throughout their lives, so aren’t bothered as much by changing cities for work (a lot of statistical data shows this )
@@AlohaBiatch The difference is likely not big enough to have an effect. I'm a software engineer myself and everyone I know in the industry is looking to put down roots, not be a leaf in the wind. Yes, a lot of us are transplants who live hundreds or thousands of miles away from our hometowns, but not b/c we're looking to become the next Frank Abagnale or something. And specifically in Seattle's case, Amazon isn't the only game in town and there are enough Seattle employers who'll gladly swoop in to poach Amazonians.
7:10 I might rephrase that as "locals saw that they would at best gain only low-paying jobs, while their housing costs skyrocketed."
Exactly
I like how this channel basically acknowledges that political decisions directly affect people’s lives.
A lot of others would tip toe around that.
Why do people keep leaving leftist Utopias?
I mean Bill Gates and every other billionaire in the world have been pushing these policies/agendas ... please someone ... tell me these DAVOS devotees all have wisdom on the same level as Jeffrey Epstein !!
That big business doesnt like being impeded or paying its fair share like everyone else and so leaves and keeps doing it til it cant anymore or moves countries to abuse a new network. Yes these leftiest cities have alot of issues and we need to address those issues as well but the abuse of large business on the communities that live in the region does hurt and create a big issue as well.
@@pride2184 "Yes these leftiest cities have alot of issues and we need to address those issues "
Name one of the issues you want to address in these leftist cities?
@@poweraccountabilityleague6877 high crime rate, large homeless population. Lot of abandoned buildings yet no room for homeless hmmm. More jobs and more infrastructure. The list goes on
@@pride2184 What's your solution for high crime? Because it sure as hell isn't law enforcement.
Amazon is definitely relocating some teams to Bellevue and making a big presence there, but the net migration out of Seattle is still pretty much zero at this point (They still have 7300 job openings in Seattle). They've invested quite a bit in the South Lake Union Campus (They own more than half of the buildings), so they will probably never "leave" Seattle but more likely they're just done with rapidly growing their SLU campus. Which might not be a bad thing... (even apart from not having to kiss their arses with tax breaks). Having one employer be that big of a chunk of the Seattle jobs market makes the city very dependent on that one employer, and we already have evidence what happens if that employer runs into problems. In the 60's and 70's, Seattle was pretty much just a Boeing town. And when Boeing laid off nearly half its workforce in the 1970s, Seattle took a big hit as a result (See the famous "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn out the lights" billboard). Better that Seattle have a broad base of companies and industries to make up its economy than simply being an "Amazon Town". And that is already happening to a certain extent. The buildings you can see in your backdrop from SLU Park are actually all Google offices. Facebook and Apple have also leased a number of office buildings, Expedia moved the campus to Seattle from Bellevue, Microsoft is plugging along stronger than ever, etc. I think the reason the City Council felt emboldened enough to target Amazon for some tax dollars is they were fairly confident they'd be fine without having to kiss the ring.
As an Amazonian I can neither confirm nor deny that there are talks to cap Seattle hiring altogether in the next 2 years.
I absolutely agree, and there needs to be some sort of cap on the maximum number of employees. That being said, Seattle is so much different than it was during the Boeing era, with Microsoft and Nintendo etc, they're likely won't be another problem like that, and any people that move due to failure of Amazon probably came to Seattle because of Amazon in the first place
@@sjhsoccer I actually think it is harder than the Boeing era but still possible. The tech jobs in the city are very diverse company wise but they are all tech jobs. If the tech industry as a whole faces economic hardships (just like the auto industry in Detroit did) I think the city could face a massive decline of both employment and population and basically Seattle could face the problems Detroit is facing.
This… plus I’m it sure that part of the reasoning is the infrastructure in Seattle hasn’t kept up with the explosive growth. Before the pandemic SLU and downtown Seattle were overwhelmed.
@@mrsmiley_1468 You mean like a semiconductor shortage? :p
As a Seattle area resident, I am LOVING your swing through the PNW and I'm hoping to see more!
There's one more Seattle video coming in two weeks!
Me too!
Same here, love it!
@Kabalen International already have and still are
@Kabalen International I think taxes alone isn’t the deal breaker there’s more than just taxes when companies and businessmen decide where to locate if Texas wants to take on California it has to attract talent to the state, invest in its schools and universities, invest in infrastructure and R&D, and grow their own tech hubs and business hubs.
Amazons HQ2 search was a joke honestly, ultimately it was "who will let us pay less taxes" and ultimately they didnt even choose there advised choices, there final top 3 were Philadelphia, Chicago, and i beleive Raleigh. Then the executives threw those 3 cities out the window and chose, D.C metro, and NYC (which rejected them) But regardless of that, this video was amazing and i cant wait to see more!!
Mayor: "So Alexa, where should Amazon build its second headquarters?"
Alexa: _i swear to god, if I have to hear this joke one more F___ING time--_
Bezos already had homes in DC and NYC. It was a foregone conclusion from the start but the mania around it got them better concessions
Not just pay no tax but get money from the city and other benefits!
@@jamesedghill3726 LMAO, for a second you had me... but I'm pretty sure he could have bought a house wherever he put a new HQ. Sure, he would have had to skimp some; buy generic cat food, reuse his dental floss, take the bus instead of a cab... but I think he could have swung it.
@@bubbafug00gle51 I honestly can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic but to expand on james’s point, dc and nyc made a lot of sense. Bezos had considerable investments in DC with the aforementioned purchase of dc’s most expensive house and the Washington post. But more so, dc provided Amazon what they were looking for in AWS expansion. AWS has quickly become on of Amazon’s largest sectors and the federal government is one of their largest purchasers. Couple that with the considerable number of AWS employees already in the region, the large amount of tech talent, and an urban culture Amazon was looking for, dc just made sense.
i grew up in seattle in the 2000s and the amazon construction COMPLETELY changed the skyline. none of the SLU buildings even existed 10-15 years ago and every time i go home i’m shocked by how different the skyline is
Governments (local or state or national) should never "give incentives" to private individuals or companies or other governments. Governments should only "invest," in other words giving away something of value with no strings attached is for suckers!
"Do you want a break on some land? Great! We have some land, you can build here, in fact, we will even pay for some of the associated costs! But if you ever leave, we get to keep it. And in the meanwhile, you have to keep it in good condition and environmentally sound."
That's the smart way to do it. If they don't like it, they're probably not the sort that deserves to be here.
IMO giving crazy tax breaks to huge companies for jobs is like if you're tired because you haven't slept and instead of actually going to sleep you just take a shot of espresso. It's effective in the short term but in the long term you're just better off dealing with things naturally.
If you have one employer that is basically "too big to fail" for your city then they practically own the city and you'll never be able to make them do anything you want them to do and they can even effectively cancel programs that have nothing to do with them if they voice their opposition. Further, they often cause excessive growth in the city which severely strains the infrastructure and housing. You end up with insane commute times and tons of homeless people.
There is nothing wrong with just having a nice city, you don't have to be the biggest city in the world if it makes the lives of people in the city worse.
The problem with having large tech companies like Amazon headquartered in the city is that is just promotes income inequality and drives out existing residents in favor of people moving there for work. It's a bit of a double edged sword as they provide great jobs and a lot of tax revenue (assuming no subsidies) but the social cost is also high. Do we want cities to be the home of the upper and upper middle classes where they live in shiny glass towers drinking $15 lattes? Or do we want diverse cities with mixes of all classes but economic opportunities and social mobility are much harder to come by. It's definitely a balancing act to find a good middle ground.
Either way I think it would be great if there was a law against corporate subsidies with very limited and strict requirements about which companies could qualify and for what reasons. Right now cities and states are in a race to the bottom to see who can give away the most money to secure jobs. In the end only the corporations will win that race.
They don't have to push anyone out though. Increasing property prices are a result of bad planning and refusal to adapt to new circumstances. If you bring in thousands more people without increasing housing density to accommodate them it will drive up prices. In general though, you want that money in your city for everyone. The rich new tech worker making $150k is going to be spending most of that money in the area in local shops and on services, which helps all social and economic classes.
A lot of the time the issue is just that people in cities shoot themselves in the foot by refusing to let the city adapt. Anti-gentrification activists mistake the symptom of new high-end housing for the cause of problem, even though additional housing would alleviate problems, and existing upper and middle class landowners like their property valued ballooning so oppose new housing that would prevent the inevitable shortages.
And a far worse place to be in is a city that is dying instead of quickly growing. Most people would rather have Seattle problems than Rust Belt problems.
@@krombopulos_michael Agreed. Anti-development/gentrification almost always has the exact opposite of the desired impact. Not building just means there is more housing demand with a restricted supply driving up prices.
People fail to see that it takes decades to reshape a city's housing. They complain when new towers are built because they're unaffordable without realizing that our existing lower ~30 year old affordable apartments were expensive when they were built too.
Yes it sucks when someone gets demovicted to build a shiny new highrise that they can't afford to live in. But the alternative is much worse. The situation has escalated to the point we're at now because of the years of pushback on development. And additional delay just compounds the affordability problem.
That being said, adding a lot of high paying jobs can still cause problems for income disparity, affordability, and have other arguably negative consequences for the community. Even with adequate housing the lower classes will still need to deal with the increased cost of living for everything else too. They also may not be able to afford to live in their old neighborhood any longer. Many small mom-and-pop stores won't be able to afford their higher rent.
Like you said though, this is preferable to a city where there are few job opportunities and people are leaving. It's more of a question of how to balance and manage the growth.
Georgism can solve that.
I’m from northern Virginia and I’m currently attending Virginia Tech. Our school is spending tens of millions of dollars on a shiny new CS-focused campus next to the Amazon headquarters in Crystal City instead of focusing on our main campus, which I can point out multiple crumbling buildings in need of repair for. In my opinion, corporations are definitely due for a power check, they can’t just sell their people’s lives for the needs of corporations. Interested in how the tax will play out in Seattle in the upcoming years.
@Killer Miser why not both?
@@spacetoast7783 this is why the shareholders should also be the workers, the workers should be the shareholders. Everyone has an incentive for the business to do well because everyone gets dividends. Their wages/salaries aren’t viewed as merely a drain on the returns because they are also seeing them directly. You almost never see the board of a corporation voting to reduce their own pay, after all. Ensuring workers’ interests are represented in top-level decisions also increases the long-term stability and prosperity of businesses, and there’s a number of studies showing that. To give one examine among many, you avoid the issue of the board making a boneheaded decision that causes workers to leave for a competitor, which can sometimes completely destroy a business, as those affected can directly influence the policies they want to see.
@@kaitlyn__L That doesn't solve anything that OP was complaining about, but I suppose I don't disagree with you.
@@spacetoast7783 no, it wasn’t about what OP said, only about what you said. I’m not entirely sure why you brought up corporations and their workers when OP talked about schools misusing their money, but nevertheless, I replied to your point. (Which is missing from my screen now, did you delete it?)
@@kaitlyn__L It looks like my comment got deleted by City Beautiful or the CZcams spam filter.
It has been crazy watching the Seattle skyline change from across Lake Union over the past 7 years... and watching house prices balloon up around us
It’s for the better in my opinion. It’s a sign that an entirely new tech community is emerging, like a Silicon Valley 2.0, that will be able to compete on a global level. Where people go, capital follows.
If Seattle rezoned their single family housing (e.g. Queen Anne) to multi-tenant, more people could live downtown in cheaper housing. It's not rocket surgery, but the city council can't quite seem to grasp the obvious.
All while the crime rates balloon around you making it pointless to stay. Fun times.
@@DannerBanks As someone coming into Seattle, the single family housing and its close proximity to the urban centre baffled me at first. Especially compared to New York and LA. Multi-tenant just makes sense, but try convincing the residents there otherwise.
It hasn’t been for the better at all. These new arrivals don’t know how great the city was before it morphed into this thing. The house prices have skyrocketed, the number of homeless has increased exponentially, and our pos city council actually took our 4 lane roads and shrunk them down to 2. All the arterials are now 25 mph too, which is ascinine considering how fast we’re growing. We don’t have reliable public transportation like New York, so it makes no sense. You’d have to be crazy to move here.
In Europe we call tax cuts for specific corporations "Illegal State Aid".
Well good thing this isnt Europe then.
Yeah wheres the competition americans love to tout about? This is just public money going to private interests yet again.
Ideally, every company and individual would get a tax break.
Here in America, we call that corporate welfare, which is ok but universal health care isn't.
Bad Hombre - How is letting a company keep its money the same as forcing the public the pay for everyone's health care?
Corporate America: We're eventually gonna automate and outsource all your jobs anyway. But for now we want all the corporate welfare (tax breaks, subsidies, bailouts) we can get.
Exacly.
@@jokubas3391 Wrong!
Consume The Wealthy
@@chompythebeast or just learn a skill that can’t be replaced by a computer. Or outsourced. Who do you think pays your salary? A poor person? Or do you collect your paycheck from taxpayers?
@@HelloThere-jr6gd lol this is "learn to code" logic distilled to a comically pure essence
Amazon only looks good for Seattle if you don't live here. For those of us that actually live in Seattle, Amazon is a scourge that has been steadily destroying the city and we want them gone.
god it's SO embarrassing how giant corporations hold such a stranglehold over entire cities and governments. definitely not worth it in my opinion. invest in your people and their neighborhood-serving businesses instead.
Oooo, this is going to be a spicy one.
No it won't.
Not actually spicy
I can already hear the communists coming.
@@fullmetaltheorist Dem commies is alweady here, Dank.
Seattlite here and long time watcher. I’ve also wanted you to visit Seattle. It’s insane how much seattle has changed because of Amazon. The area just north of downtown used to be mostly parking lots, but now, it’s almost a second downtown. It’s just wild.
As much as i hate Amazon being here i think this change is for the better
Amazon should relocate to Detroit. Miles of land to be gentrified, international airport and diverse.
Do Amazon workers want to live in Detroit? I don't.
@@kevincline9155 Then don't.
@@weirdshibainu Amazon has to compete with other employers for people with a lot of options. I expect relatively few would choose to live in Detroit.
I’d live in Detroit if it wasn’t so damn cold same goes for Pittsburg. NYC has gotten to yuppiefied
@@kevincline9155 You don't know that. Michigan has good universities. With the land available, housing wouldn't be near the issue that it is in Seatlle or New York. They could literally reinvent Detroit. You're forgetting that Detroit was an incredibly vibrant city at one time.
Feels like cities need to collectively bargain for tax rates to keep from undercutting each other. Perhaps even through some sort of "union" of states. Ah well, doubt we could set something like that up...
@Killer Miser it sucks that the other states are willing to pay stupidly large amounts of money to attract jobs.
In this case you’re only as smart as your stupidest competitor, and there are lots of dumb cities and states.
@@NickCBax the phrase "race to the bottom" sums it up pretty succinctly.
@Killer Miser ok time to force amazon then
Yep then all housing prices explode and that city will have a homelessness problem and other problems and then they will go to the next city sounds really sustainable the current business model of cities.
@Killer Miser Whoosh
For more context, Arlington County voted on $23 million, and Virginia voted on $500-750 million*, in tax breaks and incentives to Amazon over the 10 years after HQ2 moves here. (* the range is because there's about $250m to transit and schools/colleges specifically to help Amazon -- I'd count it but it can be debatable.)
Meanwhile the county is completely behind on its own low affordable housing goals and rents/costs still keep going up. So when Amazon offers like $1m or $2m "back" to affordable housing grants it's still orders of magnitude less than what they would pay if they actually paid their taxes.
But hey, it made the nebulous "business community" and real estate developers here happy, and Amazon has had a direct line to everyone on the county board, and the folks getting pushed out of the county won't be able to vote, so the board doesn't care. Slap a glass poop emoji down and distract everyone from how they're taking $10 for every $1 they put in.
Seattle born and raised here: I actually moved to San Francisco because there were better opportunities in tech and it wasn't all that much more expensive.
Seattle is pretty much unlivable for the average person. Bellevue is itself an even more expensive city. The idea that people can just move to Bellevue is a joke because the floating bridges choke off commute time. With offices from Google, Facebook, and Adobe nearby, they're probably trying to avoid the company hopping that happens in Silicon Valley.
Also boohoo 0.7% to 1.4% tax, muh communism. Remember, Washington state has no Income Tax and neither does Seattle.
You make a good point, Washington has some of the most regressive taxation in the entire country. Probably has a lot to do with the --envy-- bevy of tech giants that move in here and price all the locals out. “Learn to code - and pay my burden in taxes!”
@Johannes Tesssema SFO median home price is >10x median income. 5 years ago, a tiny 450sf studio apartment cost $3k/month.
Insane
$4K/month to live in a swanky 2 bedroom apt. near Amazon HQ in Seattle. Ya, most people making under $200k/year can't afford that.
@Johannes Tesssema Not if you don't have the $200,000 down-payment.
@Johannes Tesssema I feel like you're not familiar with how absurd the housing market has gotten here.
"Housing prices over double the national average"
A day later...2.5x the national average
Another day later...3x the national average...
Well the national average is also rising quickly
@@adanactnomew7085
I'm just waiting for the collapse. You think people can continue these house payments for 30 years? No way! And the tax rate will remain high forever!
@@pigjubby1 Having lived in Vancouver, I doubt there will ever be a crash. Just an endless increase in prices. I hope I'm wrong.
@@pigjubby1 You don't seem to understand how house payments work. I am paying the same now (in 2021 dollars) that I was paying 15 years ago in 2005 dollars.
As time goes on and inflation takes effect your effective house payment goes DOWN as a percentage of income. As long as you didn't overpay or buy at the top of a bubble, anyway.
@@adanactnomew7085 there is only a crash if people are willing to sell at lower prices. What usually happens (unless accelerated by lending practices) is stagnation. Most people refuse to take more than a small loss. They just won't sell at all.
Its like when Dallas condos took a dip in value on paper 10 years ago. Sure, on paper they were worth less.. but there were none on the market other than a few repos and estates - and those were snapped up QUICKLY by institutional and investment buyers..
The crash was due to lending with little down, not houses actually dropping.
In the middle of the video you can mention how Applebees moved from Kansa City MO to Kansa CIty KS and back and forth as both citys' government giving incentives to move. The net effect is ZERO job gained (other than maybe office movers)?
Big corporations: handouts for me, but not for thee :)
The irony being that keeping homeless people off the streets downtown (the whole point of the tax increase) will make the area even more desirable and safe for said Amazon/Tech employees
@@CortezBumf hold up. You mean to tell me that society BENEFITS from lifting people out of poverty? I thought yelling at them till they went away was how it worked /s
@@SincerelyFromStephen most homelessness isnt a housing or an economic problem. Its usually drugs and mental health, which cities refuse to deal with...
@@NotKimiRaikkonen a multifaceted approach is definitely needed to tackle the issue
@@SincerelyFromStephen I agree, it's obviously not a simple fix, but I lived in LA for twelve years where the rallying cry was 'build more housing', which seemed baffling to me.
Considering the greater Seattle area spent like $1.5 billion in homelessness and doesn’t really have an impact I think that all this is going to do is drive corporations out of Seattle
@Kabalen International Yeah, well familiar with the whole spending thing here in San Francisco. The budget keeps increasing dramatically every year, the homeless also keep increasing every year and the politicians keep screaming that the only thing that will solve this problem is more money. And it's been going on for many years now.
@@Synchromesh123 I'm sure we would see some actual progress if other states didn't ship their homeless to the west coast.
well here's an idea... Keep the homeless where they grew up... Send them back to all the red state shit holes they fled. we're not growing these people you know... We inherit them when conservative towns do nothing for them... Rural areas have PLENTY of crazy uncles, drugged out cousins, and sexually abused daughters... They hide them in the back bedrooms till the mental illnesses become too much... then they kick them out... So they go to cities that try to help... Because republicans sure won't. Too busy giving Trillions away to the mega rich donor class for that.
@@bosatsu76 so the solution is stop enabling them and they won’t get here.
@@russ1376 There's them Pro-Life/Family Values we've all come to know... I imagine Jebus didn't feed the poor because they were 'Lily's of the Field', deserving to KEEP living because they were already alive, but because he was so superior to them, it pleased him to make sure they new how useless they were...
It's a complicated issue without easy answers... An issue that shows who YOU and I are as well... Compassionate, or cruel...
Paul Allen's city commons was an interesting proposal. It was rejected (twice) by Seattle voters who were not keen on the redevelopment aspect and the possible displacement of existing businesses and housing. Despite the residents not wanting any redevelopment, Paul Allen then took his land and with his development company, Vulcan, transformed the area into what it is today.
I thought Paul Allen was dead. Guess he did go to London then.
Oh Patrick, you're a cheeky one. I had lunch with Paul last week, in London.
Seattlites didn’t like the idea of a company owning such a huge swath of ostensibly public-use land. Paul wasn’t willing to build it and eventually transfer it to the city, he just wanted to outright own and control what would have been one of the largest “public” areas in the city, and he would have displaced many homes and businesses to do it.
The city was wise to oppose the proposals
@@chompythebeast Most people that opposed the Commons didn't care about who controlled it or if it's private or pubic areas or even who is displaced. The measure failed because homeowners didn't want to pay 100 million in property taxes (approx 48 dollars a year) Which is interesting because they were ok with spending a billion dollars for 2 stadiums. Granted, the funding came from other taxes, not property but none the less public money used for private business. Seattle has a long history in being conservative when it comes to self taxation and it has cost the city. It lacks green open space in the downtown core and for many years a good mass transit system. The public's apprehension and city government's inability to make the case for years meant countless failures at the ballot box going back to 1968 and federal funding going to Atlanta for the MARTA system instead.
He also tricked voters into approving sports stadiums that made him richer and didn't help the people. I've hated Paul Allen since I was a kid.
"Amazon's South Lake Union campus completely revitalized the area" - Shows pictures of Google office buildings. 😂
Yea that was funny. Although to be fair, Google and Facebook moved in because of Amazon creating the tech talent pool.
I was wondering if someone would catch that... I tried to hide the Google logo on the building. haha
@@workerworker7961 Microsoft created the tech talent pool.
@@profd65 Not in SLU and Seattle proper, but yes Microsoft was first. Chicken and egg problem
Datk dank and ugly.
I am not sure Amazon is leaving Seattle, they are just shifting their new growth to be outside of the city. A smart move, as their more tenured employees are looking to the suburbs to afford a house. Also, the available commercial space is absurdly expensive.
I doubt it. The Eastside is more expensive than Seattle.
I wish they would, they wouldn't be here if they weren't taking more than they give.
@@skitzthegemini When you expand "Eastside" to include Newcastle and Woodinville, not really. Those are very normal commuting locations for downtown Bellevue, whereas you have to go much further from downtown Seattle to find similar housing prices.
@@Jack-fw4mw Seems like a bit of a stretch to me, but I guess that’s fair.
They're pushing out a pseudopod in case Seattle continues down the crazy leftist path, in which case Amazon can bail. See, e.g., the financial industry moving some operations out of NYC to Charlotte, NC.
there should be national laws against incentives or taxes regionally targetted at specific companies. Seems ridiculous.
I see no problem with targeted taxation as long as they are consistent in taxing or incentivizing an entire class of businesses and not just one company. When Walmart was the "Big Evil" of the day there were places that created tax laws (not sure they were ever implemented) intended to hit only their stores. They did this by having stuff like an increased tax rate on any retail establishment more than employees. I'm not a fan of these kinds of laws... However, I think its should be legal as long as a competitor will have to pay them as well (or be incentivized equally). For instance if Target opened a store in the same tax jurisdiction. Leave it up to businesses to decide if it's worth leaving the town/state over.
If you give the federal government control over local taxes you eliminate the local government. The states fought a war against one another in the 1860s because of that bullshit.
@@matthew8153 thats not what that war was about.
@@the500mphtortoise
Actually states’ rights was the purpose of the war. But schools these days teach racism so we stay divided.
I'm a carpenter working on the new Amazon building in Bellevue right now. When the building is done it'll be the biggest building in Bellevue.
yay?
Is that where that insane asylum is? IF not it should be.
Thanks for the great content :) greetings from Switzerland
I had friends who lived in those "scattered housing". They called it a neighborhood. I miss those friends.
I live in Seattle and work in Bellevue, remote now from covid, and saw the Bellevue clip on Nebula. I can't stand Bellevue. It feels sterile and cookie cutter, designed only to work in and not live or be a human in. The best thing I can say about it is that Bellevue has great views of a much better city. Even Redmond which is basically a company town for Microsoft is better.
Not sure what you expect from a suburban city which basically grew out of a strip mall town center. Even Redmond actually had a real town center before it boomed from Microsoft and other tech employers. I work in Bellevue and honestly its great. Its safe, clean, and easy to get around with lots of promising development on the way. On the flip side I worked in downtown Seattle and it was dirty, unsafe, and not as easy to get around. Used to watch homeless break in cars in broad day light along with drug deals and fights. In our post covid times downtown Seattle is pretty dead so it lost the energy and benefits of being there too. I'd rather work in Bellevue any day in post covid times.
I absolutely agree with these taxes, especially if they are used for public housing, but this is an example of why these policies need to be done nationally and not left up to localities. It is far too easy for Amazon to move a few miles outside Seattle and avoid the tax, or any corporation to move out when the city tries to impliment policies the corporation wouldn't like. This leaves the policy to be, at best, underwhelming or, at worse, make the city look like it is driving out jobs. This stuff needs to be implemented and handled nationally so that the policy can do its intended job while having one less thing on the table for corporations to dangle over the heads of cities
Perhaps you are right. Nonetheless, the problem with homogenised city, state , and county tax structures across the nation is that
1. You can ‘t enforce them.
2. It will promove a barrage of lawsuits and lead to deadlock.
3.Any tax earmarked funds will aft towards ineffective bureaucracies such as the HUD and be seen as s social entitlement program.
Best way to make it a policy is to mandate large corporations to actually invest in market rate and Subsidized housing In areas they are considering relocating to. . They used to do this, during the British Empire with their railroads.
You should do a video on the corporate welfare that goes on between cities in the Kansas City area. Talk about no net gain. Companies move back and forth across state line, sometimes just a few miles away and get tens of millions in tax breaks.
That ended a few years ago, with a agreement between Kansas and Missouri, right?
Thanks for the Seattle series. I've lived in the area since 2012 and it really has changed so much in just those 9 years.
Sure it has changed. Soon nobody will answer 911 calls if you have a burglar in your garden. Beautiful process...
@@FCVP71 Wow, so nothing will essentially change. Great!
I left in 2011 and it has changed even more than you know.
@@FCVP71 “hur dur liberal police crime”
As someone used to living in Europe and East Asia, the way these regions are comprised of smaller units competing despite all taking advantage of the same amenities and infrustructure, is baffling. Not only that but the comments about who they can attract based on which part of the metro area they live, highlights the poor connectivity of US cities. I can't imagine either of these things being serious arguments in other parts of the world. I also see the way American city centers are not seemingly family friendly (or not at least perceived as such) is a factor too.
Your comment just shows how little you know about the USA. Blindly believing everything you hear in the media can do that to someone. At least most Americans (people, not the government) don't assume they know everything about the rest of the world based on the media, like many dummies around the world, like you apparently, do about the USA. The US also protects all of Europe and East Asia militarily. Get some knowledge before leaving such uneducated and frankly incorrect comments.
@John M. but you can compare the US to a country like China, which is similarly sized.
I don't know if you have ever been to China, but little known cities like Chengdu have more than 15 million people living in their metropolitan area. While there are distinctions between different neighbourhood, the cities themself are still a cohesive whole and incredibly easy to navigate, since they are so well connected by cheap public transport (bus, train, subway and even bikes).
China also has an amazing train system, the high speed railways can get you from Beijing to shanghai within 4 hours (that's 1300km within 4 hours), those high speed trains are not super cheap, but there are price options for everyone.
Of course china and the US have widely different pasts and starting points, but investing into public transport, even in a huge county or a huge city, can make live much nicer.
Most large Chinese cities are surprisingly bike and pedestrian friendly, save and you definetly see a lot of families and young people mingle around the city centres at the weekends to relax, eat and have a nice time:)
6:52 DID YOU KNOW? This stadium is fit for the professional team and the collegiate team. It has a mechanism that causes the field to switch to the other field at the same point. It's directly west of the country music festival that was interrupted by a shooting which made 1 October be established as an event just days before the Vegas Golden Knights' first game. And it's named after an airline!
The flipside: if cities do their best to keep their books in order, and taxes down, they shouldn't need to engage in the sort of idiotic corporate welfare that's all too common in the US.
Taxes that attack employment, and exploit corporate citizens are no better than subsidies that are paid out to supposedly create jobs. They're both unhealthy distortions of the economy that tend to enrich either public sector unions, or businesses.
Yep. Dont expect much out of Seattle tho. Politicians create absolute garbage conditions for any bussiness, and then act surprised when companies want to leave. Then they give off welfare to incentivize companies to stay
Totally true. IDK why Amazon end up choosing Seattle (probably tax break or something along those lines) and now is leaving.
Here in Canada British Columbia got 3 warehouse, Alberta got 2, Ontario got like 6 (2 in Ottawa and 4 in the GTA) before Montreal, the second biggest city in & second biggest province got it's first warehouse. Why? Because the other provinces were all too happy to give incentive (like tax break and whatnot) to Amazon while Quebec/Montreal didn't. They had to move in Montreal not because politician gave them a break but out of necessity to serve the 4M population area.
Also all those government giving Amazon a free pass are actually making it unfair for other companies like online retail & delivery company because they don't get tax breaks. Amazon's fast growth is partially due to government helping them in what is called crony capitalism.
Well said
Are you seriously complaining about “exploiting” big companies? They are so rich in the first place because they are exploiting the people and community they exist in. Low taxes on big corporations is itself a subsidy on the taxpayer’s dime.
I'm old enough to remember when Amazon was a small office on 2nd Avenue and the warehouse was on S. Dawson Street
I think Amazon could have had a better relationship with Seattle if they were a better neighbor to the communities surrounding South Lake Union. Entire neighborhoods of people in marginalized communities have been devastated by gentrification from people moving here to work for Amazon.
Many people have lived in Seattle long enough to see Amazon choose not to invest in the surrounding community. This distinction from the behavior of Jeff Bezos vs Bill Gates (who has invested in local communities), has put Amazon on rocky footing. Seattle used to be a place for artists, people with big ideas, and working class people dreaming of a better life. Amazon has exacerbated inequity in the puget sound region and turned Seattle into a playground for tech workers. It is really sad to walk around and watch this city lose all of the things that once made it special.
The Amazon tax will reach the homeless in the same way that fuel taxes reach the roads.
Which means that after it filters through Congress (and the Congressman's pockets) very little.
@@reggiebenson9172 thanks bro, i wouldn't have understand the original comment without yours
The same way that tax money from river boat casinos and state lottery go to public schools in Illinois.
After all these years, public schools in the state (in general) still suck and the state is broke.
It will used to fund more studies. We need to do more research and accounting. Create a task force and CEO, CFO, COO, CMO; internal legal department, marketing, accounting, IT department, workspace maintenance of homeless outreach. These are all high priority pre-requisites before any work can be started.
The corporate behavior in America might be justly be described as, "kingly."
Right, Because Corporations should want to be squeezed by incompetent progressives Councils to pay for Social programs that keep failing, for problems the progressives created, while their employees quality of life falls because of a crime wave resulting from "Defund the Police"
Fuedalistic*
@Roundfrenchcheesey you are not rich. You don't know what you're talking about. Stop embarrassing yourself.
Attempting to blame the protests for Amazon’s bullshit and woes is the most ridiculous take since *”they’re burning Seattle* *_to the ground!”_*
@@Stratigic_Cheese_Reserve little too much glue in that last huff?
As a Bellevue resident myself, it’s so incredibly cool to see you focus on my city! I’d love to see your opinions on its urban design, it’s something I think about every time I drive around!!
Can you guys pronounce the name of the city in the correct French way? 🤔
@@Forlfir No.
It's horrible because there is no space for pedestrians anywhere in Bellevue. Every trip requires a car.
As an LA resident, it's weird seeing people getting excited to see their city featured in media.
Thank you for posting this and explaining many key points in Layman's Terms.
If there's one thing corporations hate: paying their fair share. They benefit from all the city services, but they want to be paid for it.
If Amazon leaves 50,000 workers in Seattle, the chances seem very high that the tax will be a major net benefit for the city - instead of handing corporations money for little benefit (hinting at various forms of corruption that underpin these deals).
I dont agree with the endless tax incentives that cities offer corporations, but corporations as a whole still contribute greatly to the tax system and economy. Incomes are taxed. Incomes are spent in the cities. Mindlessly raising taxes isnt going to solve the problem - its a lazy answer that doesnt work. America has a tremendous tax revenue, yet there are virtually no social services relative to the revenue. Tax revenue is being wasted left and right. That is the problem that should be addressed before even beginning to think about if more money is needed or not.
@@SuWoopSparrow Problem is, Washington state doesn't have income tax either and made it constitutionally illegal for cities like Seattle to create one despite multiple attempts. We have higher sales tax here but we can't just rely on regressive sales taxes that hit hardest against those with lower incomes who pay a relatively higher portion of their income in sales tax than those who can better afford it.
@@telaferrum I agree there are a lot of issues like that, but I am more referring to the federal tax and the duties the federal government should be handling.
@@SuWoopSparrow There are definitely ways the federal government can raise more money without the income tax. Appropriately funding the IRS would result in more revenue total by closing loopholes, for example. Also, I saw a proposal for an unrealized gains tax that would tax gains on stock holdings valued over 3 billion dollars. That way billionaires would be taxed on the main way they hoard wealth without ever impacting anyone else.
If Jeff bought a Sonics NBA franchies he could hold the city completely hostage
Bezos or no Bezos, the only thing that matters to me is that the Sonics are back, tbh
If Bezos had his name attached to any sports team, you can bet voters would oppose any public funding for the team or stadiums. Sports are great, but Seattleites don't want to subsidize the teams' wealthy owners.
He's already sponsoring the arena they will play in
@@Maoilios12 they already have a stadium it won’t be necessary
@@samelmudir Amazon is sponsoring Climate Pledge Arena, but a different for profit company that reconstructed a city owned arena.
Love your channel and especially this video!
A correction is needed. At 1:12, that is a shot of Rosslyn, VA, not Crystal City.
6:27 Mayor Sly really living up to his name here!
Great video! Keep up the great work
You should cover corporate HQ’s that have moved out of their long time downtown buildings way out to a sprawling suburbs where transit isn’t an option. ExxonMobile, Dr. Pepper, Toyota, etc., maybe Apple too.
Big brain move by Exxon: make employees drive more, buy more fuel, more profits for Exxon
@@bluemountain4181 Maybe the employees preferred not to commute to the congested city center with all those trashy leftist urbanites.
@@kilobyte8321 "Trashy leftist urbanites"? Do you know what channel you're on here? 😂
@@danmccabe2529 Noooo get out of my safe space! 🤣
you can stay with Seattle who actually lost the corporate HQ of Boeing to Chicago over taxes in early 2000s
Bellevue side here, I live in Covington though but work for amazon's shuttle company, downtown Seattle is also losing its mind
Is it another Democrat heaven?
@@pneron2032 Actaully the majority of the suburbs of Seattle lean right with the downtown metro making up the majority of our crazy dems
@@KarterBigs How they vote? (I don't know what "lean" means)
@@pneron2032 Lean means which side they are more for without being super on that side
@@KarterBigs ...well what do they VOTE for?
So essentially there's no point in trying to cater to huge companies because ultimately that money does nothing for the city services they'll eventually overwhelm. I wonder which force will win out in the end.
Amazon proves that. They got the head tax repealed during an illegal private meeting.
Overwhelm? The city services are overwhelmed by the mentally ill homeless. Working professionals do not consume a lot of city services.
@@kevincline9155 Well if a bunch of people move to an area you eventually have to be willing to deal with infrastructural maintenance such as traffic, housing, pollution, as well as electric, gas, and water use. The current setup is that we use tax dollars to fund these things so if a business doesn't contribute to those taxes or provide private development...which is usually spotty anyway, then it's in a cities best interest to not overwhelm it's own managing ability. We should probably invest in housing the mentally ill but our shabby healthcare is a whole other topic.
@@FreyaEinde Americans don't seem to believe that publicly funded healthcare and mental health services are worth the expense and as a result companies, employees, and their tax dollars never do much for those issues.
@@ZodiacEntertainment2 it would be easy to write that off as pure ignorance except when you recall what a punishment game our government has made social services since the Reagan years and so you can understand why some people might be wary to accept a public help. Can we get it without trying to get people to suffer for taking it and are we willing to not allow businesses to abuse customers. No penalty public works would be radical for the US.
Boeing moving HQ to Chicago was the start of them making the mistakes on how they run their plane engineering business
they did that because Obama wanted them to move to Chicago so he could get votes and popularity.
The Amazon is in South America, bro. Not Seattle, smh...
not for long
meanwhile in Greece:
Badum tss!
If the jungle trademarked its Greek name, this wouldn't have happened.
@Doesn't Exist ?? Not for long? The Amazon is a river and it's not drying out. The Amazon Forest wouldn't disappear because of one broken government either. But I'm sure those information would be hard to learn in the US...
Same reason the rest of us do. The city government has become radicalized to the left and forgot the interests of the majority of the city’s residents.
@@ice3753 that’s hilarious! “Blazing Gun” LOL
Amazon headquarters initially was located on Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood.
I live in Beacon Hill, super expensive now
My company moved me from Redmond to Miami in 2002. I sold my 1800 sq ft Redmond house for $300K. I recently looked up the house on Zillow. Current value $1.1M. That’s nuts, and no, I don’t regret selling.
How do you like Miami?
Wow, the tax is only 2.4%? As a european that sounds like too low, not high at all.
as anyone that sounds too low
That's one tax. Not including national and state taxes...
Corporations are legally obligated to maximize profit for shareholders. They will fight even a penny. If they are going to fight so much we might as well go for the throat instead of this tap on the wrist.
That's an *extra* tax on labor. It's not their entire tax bill.
Remember that Amazon would have to pay county, state, and federal taxes as well.
I think the right answer here is obvious. Stop competing with each other to give ludicrous incentives to big companies. But don't treat them as resources to be extracted from to pay for pet projects.
Yes great take. Government should not have say who pays taxes and who doesn't. And government should not have a say who pays more taxes or less. EVERYONE pays taxes equally. That's the only fair way
@@jokubas3391 There is nothing fair about taxing everyone equally. Some people are born rich without working a day in their lives. How is it fair that they get taxed the same as a poor working class citizen? Progressive taxes are fair that is why they are implemented in every major country in the world.
@@chemteacher4637 "There is nothing fair about equality" is what you just said. Some people are born rich and that's okay. It is your right to gift your wealth to whoever you want. And poor shouldn't taxed the same amount. They should be taxed the same proportion. Wealth redistribution is ALWAYS unfair.
@@jokubas3391 I noticed you left out the part about work. I guess you are all for free loaders. The working class shouldn't be paying the same percentage as those sitting on their ass.
@@chemteacher4637 1. There are no classes.
2. Noone's "sitting on their asses". Those who are born into wealth are likely going lose it
I do wish Seattle would adopt the Tokyo model of government where they have a metropolitan assembly which consists of representatives from Tokyo (or rather the 23 wards that make up Tokyo itself) and surrounding cities, towns, and villages.
As Tokyo resident, we are not American Democrat type of people in here. We have moral
and decent workers in Tokyo who built up our political systems.
Thank you for including your conclusion on here and limiting the Nebula content to bonus material.
I live in the Seattle area. I like your content in general and this video in particular.
Thanks! Final Seattle video (for now anyway) coming in two weeks!
You should def move out of that dump
It's gross when billion dollar companies look for handouts and when cities over tax there has to be a balance. Companies need to pay taxes like the rest of this country citizens. And cities and states need to be more responsible with tax revenue more common sense.
Are you under the impression that any person taking a check from Amazon isn't being taxed? Companies aren't citizens. People are.
@@hstapes Any earned income made in the U.S. is taxable whether citizens or a corporation....it's called a cooperate tax rate pretty basic. Just there's less loop holes for me than a corporation.
I think you misunderstand other costs associated with having a large company located in a city. The amount of traffic located in a city and at a certain tipping point the need to spend a lot of dollars at a certain point. Bellevue allows Amazon to spread out their impact on infrastructure and not concentrate that impact with its higher costs.
Hi, I'm a student studying in materials science however develop a great interest in urban planning, you've made lots of great videos with many well-explained concepts which I'm really appreciated. For a non-native English speaker I must say your speaking speed is a bit hard to follow. I do hope that you can load some subtitles to help others like me, since the auto generated subtitles suck. thank you so much for your interesting videos.
2.4% payroll tax is big??? Come to Europe. For example in mine country payroll tax is 15% for everybody and we have much more other big taxes. And yet I think our system is better. I hate tax breaks. They help only the big corporations to be bigger.
The American system shuns social safety nets in favour of individualism. As someone who learned how to code in 2 months, got a $150k job with no state tax (in Downtown Seattle), and get my healthcare paid nearly 90% off by my company, Seattle is quite possibly the best place to live and work as someone starting their career.
And yet corporations don't pay taxes, people pay taxes - any tax burden placed on a corporation will come out of raises of employees, hiring of new employees, or increase in product prices. (there are other options, but I kept the list short for simplicity's sake)
@@workerworker7961 for you (and I doubt you are telling the truth).... Not for the 11,000+ homeless and 11% of the population at the poverty line.
Also did you lie on your resume as what you said is just impossible, you need a bacholars degree minimum and a bit of experience, unless you lied about your experience, or alternatively you worked at your daddy's business.
@@OntheOtherHandVideos this is what they say, in reality that's not true find me a tax decrease that caused high job creation and a tax increase that reduced job creation. It'll just reduce the amount of stock buy backs they partake in.
@@Alex-cw3rz At FANG companies, all you need to do to get hired is pass a coding test and build a side project. The coding test doesn’t take long to practice for and the side project can be cloned from another one online and modified. As someone with a math background this was easy to do in 2 months
What this video is about is "capital flight." When cities are making these decisions that are as the video mentioned a form of calculus. Yet when people reason about it like with the minimum wage or automation they are thinking in absolutes. The idea that major policy changes like this wouldn't make a corporation consider moving or at least shopping around to see what cities will offer them is comical. But the idea that Amazon will just fade away because of a tiny tax is ridiculous and even if they did move out it'd be at an enormous cost to Amazon which would be a case study in what corporations will not do in the future. Incidentally, HQ2 is one of those situations NOT brought on by any raises in taxes that severely hurts Seattle position. So if you don't tax you get nothing, if you do tax you might lose some business. If Seattle understands what actually attracts business there in a way that benefits them then threats of capital flight don't matter. Finally actual capital flight is much more streamlined than this utilizing BEPS and would require national level policy to fix. Yet capital flght continues to be talked about at a local level as if that makes any sense.
Put another way, Seattle is only running off bad neighbors.
@@MatthewStinar I have no idea how you came to that conclusion.
@@Furiends Looking at the economic and social impact, Amazon makes a very bad neighbor. If they leave Seattle over this, good riddance, they're dead weight.
I'd even say we already have a similar case here in Washington state for what a corporation shouldn't do it in the future. Boeing tried to move some of its manufacturing operations to South Carolina to avoid labor laws in Washington state and now the planes that come out of the South Carolina manufacturing plant are some of the poorest quality planes the company has made in years, causing massive delays for the company on top of their troubles with the 737. Turns out moving out of an area where you've invested in in the local labor force and expertise for decades just to save a few bucks isn't a great idea (who would've thought?)
@@bernardo6715 My favorite part of this story is that now there are companies who refuse to buy planes built in that factory. This may change as I hear Boeing is closing their factory with a competent workforce that makes safe planes.
What’s the name of the Curiosity Stream
Channel cus I subscribed and I couldn’t find your content.
@City Beautiful thank you for the share
The question is why would anyone want to ever stay.
They have a lot of money to make. Washington doesn’t have any income tax and with all the very high paying jobs in both tech and in other industries, Seattle has a lot to offer
Also uts the best place in the country. Cascades, Olympics, San Juan's, proximity to Vancouver. Relationship with the Asia Pacjfic.
@@deankruse2891 shut up, already.
@@johngunderson5463 haha obviously those aren't things your into
@Hank Hendrix Where else in the world can you be making 200-300k with 0 state income only 3 years from school and be so close to all this natural beauty? Delusional maybe. But my quality of life has improved substantially after moving from suburban Utah
I am not from the US but when I have been to Seattle I was really surprised how green the city is! So many lakes, small islands and beautiful nature, but prices are super high even comparing to megapolices like Hong Kong, Singapore and London, and i was shoked how many homeless are there even comparing to poorest countries and LA 😬
It's called the emerald city for a reason you know
I hope that if you return back to my home of Seattle that things will be better. The homeless problem is a product of Amazon, Microsoft, and other huge companies driving native and local Seattleites out of their home and gentrifying places like South Lake Union and Lower Queen Anne.
Also, Seattle is nicknamed “The Emerald City” for its year-round greenery ;)
I hope you do come back to Seattle though. I love it when people visit my green home!
There are 356 metro areas in the US with 100k people or more. In the absence of a federal tax that negates the benefits of moving you're going to have state and local tax giveaways.
Please do a whole episode on Sound Transit 3 and Cascadia HSR
That would be interesting. I'm a huge transit supporter and voted for ST1/2/3, but ST3 is turning out so mediocre I'm ambivalent about it now. They're choosing the worst alternatives in the Seattle alignments, and Tacoma and Everett are not as necessary or useful as they think. It would take an hour to cover ST3 and the HSR concept, and I'm not sure an outsider could get it right. He made a number of mistakes in the last video about Seattle transit, things you wouldn't know unless you lived here or followed it closely.
To be clear, Arlington "near" Washington DC is literally right across the river from downtown DC.
People here have been rightly concerned about property values ballooning because of Amazon, but unlike in Seattle, Pentagon and Crystal City have had expensive real estate long before Amazon became one of many major employers in the area, so I don't think it'll be as bad as some fear.
Amusingly, what's driving property values up even more is the construction of a new Metro station down the road in Alexandria.
I don't think a lot of people realize that Arlington and downtown DC are so close - maybe because of how distinct they are. Probably think it's as far as Bethesda or something.
Arlington is a joke. There are wristwatch factories in Hong Kong that have more tech talent than all of Arlington. GUARANTEED the only reason that Amazon is having anything to do with that town or the DC area is that Bezos is terrified of Amazon being hit with an antitrust case and broken apart the way the Bell System was. HQ2 is a bribe.That's probably why Bezos bought the Washington Post as well.
@@profd65 I think it's a mix. Agreed that it's not like the region abounds in tech talent in a way that sets it apart from others.
I think Crystal City won the bid because Amazon already has a massive AWS presence out in Loudon County. Crystal City also has solid transportation infrastructure, which was a major requirement for HQ2 (bus, metro, commuter train). VA has friendlier business taxes overall than DC or MD. And yes, I think Bezos, who reportedly spends more time living in DC than WA, wanted to solidify his presence in the region for lobbying purposes.
Thanks for the great video I think an interesting point that gets overlooked in this debate is the culpability of the city council itself in the homelessness problem. They love to blame Amazon, but they've not changed zoning laws in suburbs like Fremont, Ballard, or Magnolia which has led to unaffordable housing and scarcity.
Even looking at how they spend the tax revenue to combat homelessness is worthy of scrutiny. I lived in SLU and the city council bought the block of land opposite my apartment for ~$12MM. They built 30 mini-apartments for single mothers, at that cost per person, they could have bought them each a 3 bedroom home in the suburbs.
Forcing large companies to pay additional taxes to solve an issue the city council created, and continues to make worse, is asinine.
Amazon had several proposals to build homeless facilities cost effectively that were rejected by the council. So it is hard to see the tax as anything but flipping the middle finger at Amazon.
It always grosses me out how absolutely malicious major corporations act expecting handouts at the cost of the city’s infrastructure, well being and overall development to bettering the city just because they’re greedy and feel entitled to more money as if they don’t have enough. But sure when people say things like build affordable housing for us, improve our crumbling infrastructure, create a cleaner environment it’s somehow entitled and “people just want handouts cause they’re lazy”. Ridiculous.
I think it's got a lot to do with land prices, and where the executives (and a good portion of Seattle employees) live. (I work at amazon, but these are just some things I've noticed)
The SLU buildings become full (and into high density seating where conference rooms are filled with desks rather than used for meetings) immediately after opening, and as shown at the beginning, the cheap old buildings to redevelop have already been redeveloped. There's not enough space for more amazon, nor is the city infrastructure keeping up with the existing expansion
The other thing is that lots of the VPs, directors, and the like all live in Medina and Bellevue, and lots of new hires buying homes in Snohomish, and they don't like that commute, so a Bellevue office makes perfect sense.
Hi Dave, Interesting video. I'd like to watch an analysis of "What's SLO doing well/not well". With the economic impact parallel stream underlying this video, it would be equally interesting to hear (concisely) from an econ mind on impact on services, housing, and the psych of the imaginary carrot being dangled by politicians and to voters.
Part of the problem is NIMBYism. The structural hurdles to new residential and commercial development drive up the cost of living (which drives up homelessness), and the cost of doing business generally. This sparks a backlash among residents, who then want the corporations to pay their fair share. But since it’s already so expensive to do business in the city the corporations just end up moving out, which is exactly what’s happening in San Francisco.
It's easier to say "Corporation bad!"
I completely agree with big corporation payroll tax as long as small businesses are exempt until they are larger
Thanks for presenting an objective view of this divisive issue.
Imagine a city gave a business 1 trillion dollars in incentives.
No city has that much. They got $500+ million from Virginia and almost $3 billion from NY. Will only go up next time.
@@markwagner4030 Yeah but imagine if they were able to take on that much debt.
I only go to the city to work. That's the only way they will get me to come
@@KrishnaDasLessons cities font "give" money in tax breaks they only give deductions which would reduce the tax money a company would pay to the city alone.
Basically whether a company accepts or not the city does not literally pay any money
@@johnsamuel1999 Cities then turn around and provide infrastructure and services to the business and their employees though.... So if you still provide benefits and no longer collect money, you've essentially just given them money.... Try asking for a tax deduction for a mom and pop shop equivalent to earnings and your local area won't give you shit. But they'll bend over for a large corporation
Even if amazon moves all its employees wouldn't the sudden shift decrease housing prices making homes more affordable?
That's if Amazon employees were the reason for the home prices, which is unlikely
Yeah, basically that's the idea. Make them move, if they refuse make them pay
@Killer Miser They are a major contributor. Lots more jobs means higher demand which means higher prices. That being said, encouraging them to leave would be stupid. There are worse things than high housing prices (ask Detroit).
If housing value decreased significantly then it’ll reck the city’s economy. A lot of people would like to see housing prices go down but that has disastrous consequences while Amazon certainly contributed to the rising cost of housing it’s really supply and demand that’s driving it Amazon put Seattle on the map and all these developments made the city a attractive place for people to move to. You could put more supply into the market you probably have to revise zoning to build more multi family homes.
@Killer Miser yeah, that's why it's a hot topic. Is having a big company better than no company. I'm not saying one is better
You were in downtown Bellevue? Did you swing by Valve?
Idk if they still invite people off the streets for playtesting still, esp. since the pandemic, but man it'd be cool to try out some NDA'd new VR hardware they're working on.
VR is a zombie technology. No one cares about it outside of the tech bros.
It would have been great to have some context and statistics around housing affordability and homelessness in Seattle and the Seattle area. It feels a bit glossed over. A contrast against Toronto's approach of having a special tax levy to build affordable, supportive, and low-income housing would be valuable as well.
Amazon wants to leave Seattle? Why? They basically took over South Lake Union and a piece of Downtown Seattle!
If the core issue they were trying to resolve was homelessness, then the solution should be for a metropolitan area to collude together and place the same tax rate.
Either the company stays and pays the tax, allowing the metro area to fund affordable housing, or the company moves, taking jobs and housing demand away
Yes and with them goes all the tax revenue funding all the services and infrastructure that you have scaled up to suit your population which will now be in substantial decline as all the other businesses that fed off that company also take a massive hit which effects the companies that THEIR employees patronized and so on. Taking a path where you either succeed or become the next Detroit is an absurd gamble.
Especially when you could instead just get rid of the absurd red tape and stand up to the NIMBYism that is obstructing construction and development in the first dang place.
@@Nuvendil Exactly. That kind of restriction on development and constriction is precisely the reason SanFran is so expensive. The average cost to break ground in LA is more than $200,000 in legal fees, environmental surveys, etc. Not counting material and labor. No wonder median home price is like $680,000.
@@hstapes Only $680K? That seems cheap for California.
While you were there did you ride the public transit?
Go where your treated best.
Whether that is deciding the company to work for or the person to date or the place where you live. Or even where corporations should locate.
*spongebob pointing to himself in the background*
Giving tax breaks or incentives is not the same as giving them money. The incentives are tantamount to lost tax revenue they would have received if the incentive was not in place. But these and all other taxes from the business will not be received anyway if they don’t choose to come to that city. Tax incentives may not be fair but they certainly don’t cost a city any actual money.
Though if they get the company there, it increases property values and employs locals.
Thank you. I was wondering how that worked
Local companies use local assets. They take advantage of the local infrastructure. Companies are attracted to Seattle in part because of the local school system (K-12 and higher education) -- which is paid for taxpayers. Not paying those taxes is a way to benefit from the investment others made, without making a similar investment. States do this in hopes that overall business activity will make up for that. Often they don't.
In the case of Boeing, they were already here. So giving them taxes meant that the state had less money to deal with the problems that it had. This includes a crumbling physical infrastructure, much of which was specifically built to service them (e. g. The Boeing Freeway).
@@rossbleakney3575 aren't school systems primarily paid for with property taxes. Seems they would benefit a great deal from having a workforce willing to jack up property values.
They do, if you stop looking locally. A tax break is lost revenue, giving it may simply change the city where it is happening, but that is all.
I'm just pissed that the large companies get these insane bonuses but small businesses don't.
It’s not just the tax. A bigger issue is that there isn’t any room in downtown and South Lake Union for Amazon to expand into. Amazon is hiring new people to replace the folks going to Bellevue at about the same rate that they’re moving at.