- This topic has 62 replies, 15 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 3 months ago by JoB.
-
AuthorPosts
-
December 5, 2016 at 4:19 pm #867345
captainDaveParticipantmetrognome: Let’s take the tax concessions and special government favors away from Amazon and see what happens to your liberal mecca.
December 5, 2016 at 7:30 pm #867353
JoBParticipantso..
interfering in the free market is a good thing when Trump does it?
especially when he enhances his investment in Carrier’s parent company as a result?i would call that a double standard but i think it may have bent back so far that we are now going to have to call it the pretzel standard
December 5, 2016 at 8:33 pm #867366
captainDaveParticipantJoB: I nominate you as Grand Poobah of the peanut gallery.
It appears the United Technologies bond was part of a diversified money market type fund of which you are also probably an investor in one way or another through pensions or otherwise.
On the other hand, it’s funny that you had no issue with Hillary and Bill Clinton taking millions of dollars for short speaches (wink wink) from organizations that received huge political favors. It appears that most of their post presidential wealth was based on crony pay to play deals. The double standard is in your extreme scrutiny of Trump.
December 5, 2016 at 10:07 pm #867374
JanSParticipantthat would be “speeches”…pretty common word. You seem to make a lot of them…on here…
you do realize that the wonderful Lady DeVos, who is up for heading the Education Dept, contributed millions and millions, about 7 or 8 of them…to Trump’s campaign….and as a reward she gets to head something that she has no experience in…talk about Pay to Play…
December 6, 2016 at 5:19 am #867391
JoBParticipantCaptain Dave..
you weaken any argument you make when you resort to name calling…
not that there was much there there to start withDecember 6, 2016 at 7:19 am #867399
TanDLParticipantBusinesses need to line up by the thousands at Trump Tower and demand equal treatment from this incoming administration. They need to threaten to move operations to Mexico unless Donald and Mike figure out a way to provide luscious tax breaks for every one of them just like Carrier. He warned businesses that moving offshore would cost them dearly and then went right out and rewarded a company for threatening to do just that. He’s totally over his head and clearly not a free market Republican. Even Sarah Palin has revolted against him over this showing that hell can freeze over.
December 6, 2016 at 8:04 am #867400
2 Much WhineParticipantAND, even with government tax breaks Carrier announced that the cost of their products is going up 5% on Jan. 1 in order to be able to compete. At least that is what was stated in the Seattle Times on 12/6/16. It’s probably a liberal media lie (unlike pizzagate) <sarcasm>.
December 6, 2016 at 9:39 am #867416
miwsParticipantDecember 6, 2016 at 11:50 am #867426
metrognomeParticipantwell, cD, your comment has me stumped; prithee share what ‘tax concessions and special government favors’ Amazon gets from any federal, state or local government and write a 100 word essay on how those ‘favors’ compare to T rump’s giveaway to Carrier. For extra credit, substitute ‘Exxon’ for ‘Amazon’ in your post and write a 1,000 word essay on corporate welfare. For a bonus, try actually answering the question I asked (how did a threatened 35% tariff morph into $7mil in state tax credits?) Note that I was not objecting to the giveaway; I was asking how a penalty turned into a gift. Oh wait, this happened in TrumPenceland where there are no facts and something is true only as long as it takes for the Emperor to say something else … never mind.
nice job on slyly slipping in the snarky Muslim reference; you have learned well. my ‘liberal mecca’ (wink, wink; nudge, nudge) is just fine without Amazon, thanks for asking. I’ve never shopped there and never will; absolutely hate their website even though they have an amazing selection of, ahem, adult products.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by metrognome.
December 6, 2016 at 12:22 pm #867437
redblackParticipantamazon should be taxed more heavily than they are, you betcha. we’re providing them and vulcan with metric tons of infrastructure to keep it from collapsing under the sudden weight. seattle’s government needs to be brave enough to regulate and accordingly tax everything that moves within the city limits. and now that the big corporations are entrenched in our wonky region and invested in this jaw-dropping economy, put some teeth into it.
slightly off topic, but bezos, allen, schultz, selig, firms like sellen and turner, all of them should be at the forefront of alleviating the homelessness crisis in the 206 through private and coordinated philanthropy. i’m not trying to mandate morality; but it’s what my humble a$$ would do if i wuz a gazillionaire.
to bring it full circle, corporations need to respect the relationships they build with the communities in which they’re invested. unfortunately, it’s all about the benjamins for the investors.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by redblack.
December 6, 2016 at 9:04 pm #867485
captainDaveParticipantredblack: the problem with changing the m.o. is that many businesses models are built on specific tax environments. When you change the taxing standard, then you change the profitability model. Not withstanding disruption costs, the fiduciary responsibility for big corporate leadership will be to seek lower costs elsewhere. With the case of Amazon, Seattle taxing authorities need to stay below this decision threshold or risk triggering a catastrophic loss. It’s a complex situation. The City collects a lot of tax from secondary employee generated activities of Amazon–sales tax, property tax, utilities tax, use taxes, etc. …All of which would go away if Amazon were to leave. I didn’t agree with all the stuff the city did for Amazon at our expense, but now we are here (a lot more citizens and a lot less economic diversity) we are stuck with the lenient Amazon tax situation.
This is the problem with dominant corporations (monopolies). They become too big to fail without causing a lot of pain. There is also little incentive for them to give back in their host communities because they are multi-national and operate autonomously under a strict profit motive demanded by their international shareholders. On one hand we want them to give big, on the other, we demand high dividends or we sue.
This is why I liked Seattle better in the 1990’s when we had a lot of innovative small businesses funded by local investors that shared their proceeds with the local community. Unfortunately, most were crushed by bureaucracy while the few that survived became cold monolithic mega corps. Homelessness and minimum wages were hardly an issue back because employers bid up wages and housing was relatively cheap—especially in the outlying areas that you can’t get to in reasonable time anymore because of the traffic congestion.
The only way you can get corporations to have respect for the local community is to have a business environment that encourages economic diversity and local entrepreneurialism. I can give you countless examples of companies that were big givers in the Northwest. It is a shame that our elected officials did not recognize the robust economic and philanthropic engine that was once here. (It still is to some degree, but much diminished on a per capita basis).
December 7, 2016 at 6:06 am #867522
redblackParticipantand that’s why we need government with teeth. someone who says, “okay, amazon. if you want to leave to avoid our taxation, we’re going to make the cost of doing so higher than your net benefit from leaving.” maybe seize some property. really get their attention.
government is the only tool we have that’s big enough to deal with the likes of boeing, amazon, and starbucks. you’re right in that our mayor and city council are a little too cozy with the big money and its wants and needs, and they seem to put them above the little guy.
and i still don’t understand why you think our economy is diminished. our real GDP (at $300 billion) is 11th in the nation. our population is 23rd.
- This reply was modified 7 years, 3 months ago by redblack.
December 7, 2016 at 11:25 am #867543
waynsterParticipantDid trump really save jobs…? interesting things about this deal…..
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/07/news/companies/carrier-price-increases/index.html
and
http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/12/07/trump-false-claims-carrier-jobs-sot-ath.cnnDecember 7, 2016 at 11:32 am #867545
captainDaveParticipantredblack: You can’t constitutionally just seize property from Amazon without compensation (Although the City of Seattle does that sort of thing to small businesses all the time). Socialist city councilmember Sawant was proposing to seize the entire company and turn it into a state-run institution. The problem with this sort of soviet style activity is that it has a massive chilling effect on business and private sector jobs. Nobody will want to come here and risk having heir investment taken away by the government.
It is far better to not let any single company dominant the market in the first place by making sure there is plenty of other businesses. The easiest way to prevent market domination is to provide a welcoming business-friendly environment where there is lots of competition. San Francisco, for instance, has lots of big and small companies that developed over the years. They are not so friendly anymore but have amassed a lot more diverse economic momentum than Seattle.
The reason why I say that Seattle is structurally in bad shape right now is that its like Detroit was in the late nineteen-fifties. During that time, Detroit was considered by many to be the premiere city in the world in economic terms–it was top of the list for high paying jobs, full employment, investment opportunities and lifestyle. However, the entire city was dependent on just a few giant companies that fed everything. Like a house of cards, Detroit eventually collapsed. Amazon is really nothing more than a big low-margin retailer like Sears was in the early part of the last century. When (not if) Amazon falters, Seattle will feel major pain. Because of the anti-small-business environment in Seattle, there is not much of an economic base that is growing new independent businesses to take up the slack when Amazon either moves or scales back their high rate of growth.
If you take Amazon and all the dependent enterprises out of the current economic picture of Seattle, the city would look much like the rest of the state. The GDP we are enjoying is coming from a reduction in other distribution systems as brick and mortar is replaced by online retail. That won’t last forever.
The key to fixing our situation before it goes south is to make Seattle small-business friendly again by reducing regulatory barriers and improving regional mobility.
December 7, 2016 at 12:05 pm #867554
JoBParticipantCaptain Dave..
last years’ news… unfortunately about as recent as it gets..
http://www.seattlebusinessmag.com/article/2016-economic-outlook-we%25E2%2580%2599re-slowing-down
but if we get more specific about small businesses this gets even more interesting
you might look at the graphs that compare small business job growth in Seattle to other comparable cities
and then there’s this..
http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/8852-doing-business-in-washington.html
that tech business you ignore is jumping..
of course, you don’t really need to read all of this to see that small business is alive and well in Seattle.. just drive down California Avenue and take a good look at all of those ground floor businesses.. and the housing that feeds them customers…
that doesn’t fit with your storyline…
but what else is new?December 7, 2016 at 1:16 pm #867565
captainDaveParticipantJoB: I will take a look at your info and comment latter. However, consider that a lot of businesses that you are referring to are dependent on Amazon for their revenues–either directly, or indirectly. Most of the new construction is for Amazon offices or employee housing. Much of the new retail growth is to accommodate those employees. Same thing happened in Detroit. Lots of dependent businesses folded when the dominant businesses left town. What we sorely need for economic security are enterprises that have no dependance on Amazon. Seattle City officials are only interested in filling the ground floors of all those kitchenless housing hives so that Chinese investors can fill and flip their building investments to Wall Street.
December 9, 2016 at 10:55 am #867767
waynsterParticipantMakes one wonder how much united technologies gave to the gop …
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/08/news/companies/carrier-jobs-automation/index.htmlDecember 10, 2016 at 6:02 am #867818
redblackParticipantturns out united technologies closed their huntington, IN, plant that makes electronic controls for carrier furnaces.
600 good jobs to mexico.
where’s the government intervention for the people of huntington? (who are strongly republican. yes, i’ve been there.)
still no comments here from conservatives? and i mean comments that actually stick to the topic of trump contradicting his party’s policy of cheap labor at any cost and no messing with the free market.
December 10, 2016 at 11:44 am #867834
captainDaveParticipantredblack: Not much to say here. Most of us Trump supporters are putting on our boots on and going back to work making stuff again. Yes, you will be paying more for many of your consumer goods that were previously made by foreign “slave” labor, so the days of cheap throw-away crap from Target and Walmart may soon be gone (at lease until we build enough robots).
Trump did not run on a policy of “cheap labor” or unmitigated trade with countries of lesser human rights concerns–so his stance on protectionist tariffs and market intervention is no surprise. It’s the same sort of thinking Republicans were doing a century ago to preserve economic diversity and proliferate wide spread prosperity with antitrust measures. Government-refereed free and fair markets is fine with us lowly conservatives.
There seems to be some confusion by the left that the GOP won this election on their usual platform. They didn’t. Trump won it on rejecting both the GOP and DNC globalist policies. The GOP had no choice but to just go along for the ride (kicking an screaming all the way).
Now that we have a business-minded leader in charge of the economy, experienced generals in charge of national security, and constitutional supreme court justices on the way, there is not much to talk about. I just hope enough people figure out that this is really a good thing for America, the people of the world and the planet.
December 10, 2016 at 1:06 pm #867837
waynsterParticipantInteresting in bed with CEO of carrier now its the CEO of exxonmobile…..
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/10/politics/rex-tillerson-secretary-of-state/index.htmlDecember 10, 2016 at 1:38 pm #867851
captainDaveParticipantwaynster: Good news. We now don’t have to be worried about a proxy war escalating to a nuclear conflict that would create the worst environmental mess you could imagine. “Mr. Exxon” even likes the carbon tax idea and was a proponent of gays in the boy scouts. Maybe things are not so bad for you lefties?
December 10, 2016 at 2:34 pm #867863
redblackParticipantDecember 10, 2016 at 2:53 pm #867865
waynsterParticipantCEO Santa list….lol
http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2016/11/14December 10, 2016 at 5:03 pm #867872
captainDaveParticipantYep. Lots of clean coal will be put in our national stockings. Better than the bloody oil coming form the middle east.
redblack: Looks like the U.N. will be relegated to the back of the bus.
December 11, 2016 at 7:04 am #867919
JoBParticipantCaptainDave..
clean coal can’t compete economically with natural gas.. banks won’t loan companies the money to retool because it’s a losing bet… so that clean coal in your stocking is a myth..as are the Trump workers going back to work.. that requires jobs and the jobs are heading elsewhere… or being automated.. even in logging… so deregulation isn’t going to help that much.
I realize that you aren’t old enough to have lived when Northwest Rivers were so polluted you couldn’t swim in them or when pollution days were a normal part of our landscape… but i have.. and people who came from the east were astounded at how clean we were… they had no illusions about their rivers.. you could see what was floating in them even if you couldn’t see across the street…
This is the reality of all of that “Make America Great” stuff you spout.. as though profit was the only consideration… and not profit for those little guys you say you champion but profit for the fat cats… who will never have enough.
I am guessing you are too old for a national draft. be thankful… because when the fat cats play international finance by meddling in politics international wars result…
Trumps granddaddy would have had us under german control.. he thought it would be good for his business…
have you wondered what Trump thinks would be good for his business? You should.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.