Seattle has given Amazon a free ride long enough. The multibillion dollar corporations responsible for the city’s skyrocketing homelessness need to start paying their fair share.
Amazon says they’ll halt new office projects if Seattle enacts an employee head tax. Good.
by Geov Parrish, Op-Ed Columnist
The debate over a proposed Employee Head Tax (EHT) on our city’s largest employers, with revenue dedicated to affordable housing and homelessness services, is coming to a head. After eight months of debate, the Seattle City Council is scrambling to meet a self-imposed mid-May deadline for trying to pass the proposal, with a final vote currently scheduled for Monday, May 14.
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The Most Revolutionary Act 
I was helping a coupla kids, who had worked for amazon and quit. They were payed minimum wage. They are in their mid twenties. They have symptoms of back injuries and ptsd, from working there. Amazon is abusove, pays minimum wage or less, has no medical benefits, and is abusive to warehouse employees. Sounds like a class-action lawsuit to me, for amazon warehouse slaves. Go for it!
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Great idea, Tim. A class action suit is exactly what needs to happen.
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It is not all amazon. Homelessness is a national phenomena. Rents and mortgages are artificially high, way ot of proportion, to the amount of 1.Real jobs available in the large fake part-time and gig economy. 2.Most peoples earning potential makes it impossible to afford rent. Thats the fist big lie. That high paying tech jobs, have caused rental scarcity. There are many condos, large apt buildings empty, houses that are still empty, because people cannot afford to live there. Especially, low end amazon employees.
Next lie is the same stale lies that the homless in seattle are all drifters from put of town, drug addicts, and mentally ill. Although being homeless any amount of time could make a.person turn to drugs and fall apart emotionally, many are working people living out of vehicles, or worse.
Many homeless and that are now close to homelessness simply lost jobs, that paid enough to afford housing. Many are people who got cancer or some other debilitating illness or, went through a divorce and fell through the cracks. Some have had combinations, or all 3.
It is a lose-lose situation.
The corporations, could at least step up and sidestep, the lame government, and build some boarding houses like they did in the 30s.
What a sick place seatte is. Most affordable housing projects in seattle are scams. They are anything but affordable, in the long run. When they are finished, they usually go to immigrants from other counties, in seattle yet, most homeless in seattle are seattle natives and some are immigrants, who have been in seattle a while.
Tens of thousands of homeless in the streets, in cars, rvs, tents. What an awful place. So many lies. the rightwing nimby trolls would be happy to have homeless, exterminated. That is how sick america and seattle are now.
They are closing all the psychiatric hospitals in washington. The jails and prisons cannot accomodate anymore people.
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Kara, you describe very eloquently a truly awful situation for US workers. I think the reason this article focuses on Amazon is due to their heavy lobbying against the Employee Head Tax. It’s disgusting enough that the richest man in the world can’t pay his employees decent wages or allow them toilet breaks.
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Amazon stays rich and, got rich, paying no sales taxes. It also, over exploits the postal service, all safety nets, and all commons in america. Pretty strange that bezos is against a tax, to do something about homelessness there.
I lived in seattle. I feel, it is an awful place. I feel bad for the next batch of kids, coming up in this world anywhere in the usa.
Seattle people disgust me. If you mention the homeless to liberals there, they will run away from you.
I went to a liberal church there. Members of the churc, wanted to install security systems and hire armed guards. I feel like many people in seattle, are the worst of the worst, two-faced, Superficial, hippocritical, secretly hateful and mean, while projecting some sort of humanatarian faux persona.
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Trump and ben carson want to triple peoples rent. Rents are way out of kilter, with most peoples earnings , all over murica. My evil step-sister is a slumlord who has trimpled her rents in the last 2 years so I know. There are 10 mill homeless in merica already. The ugly lies. The current second great-depressioary reality and fed-enforced-rentier-economy, will force an additional 1 million children into the street. Reptillian devils!
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Johny, it makes me really heart sick to read comments like yours describing how bad things are getting for American workers. Thank you for your contribution to this discussion.
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