Is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos angry with Seattle’s city government for creating an “Amazon tax” designed to fuel their Marxist agenda? If he is, he hasn’t outwardly displayed an emotional response. Instead, he’s just redirecting jobs to nearby Bellevue where the city government is not trying to tax larger companies what they consider to be their “fair share.”
As most conservative commentators have pointed out, there’s nothing fair about what Seattle is trying to do with the JumpStart Tax, a payroll tax on the city’s biggest businesses and highest earners, including Amazon. It is arguably the most combative tax policy towards medium-sized and large companies in the nation. Spearheaded by socialist city council member Kshama Sawant, the JumpStart Tax has drawn rebuke from even the moderate left for it’s anti-business positioning.
As journalist Brandi Kruse, host of The Divide, asked of Sawant over two years ago, “Are you going to own that?”
So far, the answer has been, “No.” Instead, Sawant has continued to paint Amazon and other big companies that create jobs in her city as the bad guys. By Sawant’s reckoning, anyone who has been as successful as Amazon or Jeff Bezos is obligated to do more than they already do to help everyone else. As Sawant’s hero, Karl Marx, said, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
This is a huge win for Bellevue, but it does not come without cost or risk. The community and government are considered to be much more business-friendly than Seattle and will need to continue to be that way if they want to take advantage of other companies following Amazon’s lead. However, it will cause turbulence in the local jobs and housing markets and will almost certainly raise cost of living. If they can handle it, we’ll know that the problem in Seattle was never Amazon but the city leadership itself, as Kruse noted:
“We’ll know for sure that it wasn’t about Amazon, but about aimless leaders who got so caught up on a slogan, that they let their city suffer. And all Seattle will be left with is a tax on high-paying jobs with no high-paying jobs left to tax.”
COVID-19 may take down an independent news outlet
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