A big Northwest city, Seattle, which is in fact a declared “sanctuary city”, so it should have no pretense about the real world of being able to pay for its otherworldly promises, treats homeless and drugged-out people so well and so nicely that thousands are attracted to its pleasant city limits. When its costs at harboring the homeless become too great, it turns to the wealthy businesses within its boundaries and decides to tax these businesses on a per-employee basis, at a confiscatory level, to get the funds to further serve the homeless population even better than they currently are. Not understood by the leftist leaders of this fancy, liberal city, is that promising even nicer shelter for future homeless persons will most certainly tempt additional thousands of homeless persons to come to this city and enjoy its hospitality. Meanwhile, the law-abiding, hard working and tax paying citizens of Seattle and paying more city tax, getting fewer services, and find their city streets plagued with homeless tent cities that stink and generate crime.
Unfortunately, one of the wealthy corporations that does business in Seattle happens to be Amazon, which is being asked to pay ever-higher taxes to support the homeless residents of the city. Amazon is so wealthy that it would be welcomed by any city in the nation to establish a corporate presence there, and is run by the single most wealthy man in the world, and this richest-of-the-rich man, who would ordinarily support leftist government tax increases in order to support those who cannot or will not work, resents being used as a prop for Seattle‘s big-government expansion. Or maybe it‘s that this rich man doesn‘t mind high taxes, which may intimidate and financially hurt his business competition, but he will not put up with taxes that actually hurt his own bottom line.
So at what point are taxes too high, even for the most wealthy of corporations? Amazon is so steadfast in its opposition to the Seattle head-tax that it is stopping construction on one of its two major building projects and is making noises like they could leave Seattle altogether if taxes become too high.
This how-much-is-too-much argument is similar to the decades-old tussle about how high minimum wages should be when they are imposed on companies by government. Seattle has already received much negative feedback on this minimum pay issue via the loss of many nice restaurants located in that city, which closed after their wages went beyond what they could withstand and remain in business, because of Seattle’s minimum wage laws. If $10 and hour is good and $15 a hour is even better, they why not impose a minimum wage to $100 an hour and really spread the wealth?
But any business owner knows that there is a price point beyond which it cannot sustain profitability and beyond which it cannot establish prices that will attract people to buy their product or service. If employees are making $100 an hour, then customers making $20 an hour will not be able to afford to shop there.
The same is true of taxes: when a head-tax bends the line of profitability downward, businesses will close and leave the city or state and go elsewhere, to a locale that appreciates the reasonable taxes and the reasonable salaries that it can pay and still make a profit.
Will this argument between big government leftists cause Seattle to re-think their pretend compassionate “sanctuary“ nonsense pitch to the homeless and encourage the city officials to make life in their city a bit less pleasant for those who will not work? One seriously doubts it.
Liberals are so self-centered in their assuredness of the good works they do, especially in the era of Trump and his rebuke of the idea that government must make all things available to all people, and especially with the President’s tax reduction for America’s citizens and his rejection of offering illegal aliens a warm place to sleep, that they will deny Trump any ground on any argument he wants to make. So they’ll stick with their promise of all things to all people even though they cannot possibly afford to further this logically failed promise. President Trump believes in helping more people find jobs so they can be successful and take pride in raising families, accumulating wealth and being independent from government.
And will Amazon re-think its big-government, high tax favoritism? Only when its own Ox is being gored, and then they will scream their heads off, as they are doing in Seattle, and pretend that there is no lesson to be learned about big-government over-stepping its bounds in this current affair. People like Jeff Bezos may be successful and rich, but he’s not a very thoughtful person, so the larger issue will completely escape him.
You see, liberals don’t really give a damn about their fellow man, beyond giving compassionate lip service and a pittance by way of money, most of which only enriches governmental entities anyway. If they did care, they would give up their private jets and multiple mansions and give their excess fortunes to the poor, like the old Christian saints did. Instead they insult Christianity, ignore the saints, and make socialistic noises that they neither understand nor mean, and just continue to make billions more dollars for themselves.
Really thoughtful people are in favor of individuals making billions of dollars, but not when they are lying hypocrites.
