Seattle Socialists Strangle Golden Goose

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

I feel like nobody is talking about the benefits of heroin.



You become a famous rock star and die at an old age.

[jediuser598]

The billion dollar failure is Seattle City Councils ten year program to expand homelessness in the city. I was simply mentioning it again (as I shall several more times) before launching into what you don’t know about needle exchange programs (because progressives would never tell you).

But where do you get that figure specifically?

Can you link to it?

I could. Or you could go back through the thread and use the links already provided. Or you could google “Seattle billion homeless” you lazy twat-copter.
Jesus.

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/new ... costs.html

Also, would you like to create a new thread for needle exchanges?

Or I can, no sense in crowding this one up. (Read this is me trying to be civil and bringing the thread back on course, not getting it derailed onto needle exchanges. Sorry for that.)

[Kath]

derailed onto needle exchanges. Sorry for that.)

It's not a needle exchange program. It's a needle distribution program.

Exchange means something specific and all those needles piling up on the streets would indicate the exchange part is not happening.

[jediuser598]

derailed onto needle exchanges. Sorry for that.)

It's not a needle exchange program. It's a needle distribution program.

Exchange means something specific and all those needles piling up on the streets would indicate the exchange part is not happening.

Sorry, new thread about to be created to talk about exchanges. Mind if we take discussion there instead?

[jediuser598]

Apologies to the OP, new thread about needle exchanges here:

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=3621

[PartyOf5]

King County Needle exchange also offers other services:

Narcan available

https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health ... hange.aspx

In addition to fresh needles you can obtain Narcan to help get yourself back from the brink of death so you can shoot up again.

And you know, keep on living.

Or you know, don't shoot up and keep on living. Giving them Narcan is just more enabling and encouraging drug use.

[PartyOf5]

Back to the original topic. Someone way back in this thread said that many of the Seattle homeless have regular jobs, they just can't afford housing at $15/hr. if they are not paying for housing of any kind, they should be able to save up some money. Why not save up and then move somewhere you can afford housing?

[DBTrek]

To strike a little closer to the root, I’d ask the following:

Amazon and others bring high paying jobs into Seattle, meaning workers with higher incomes buy the Seattle housing and Starbucks baristas can no longer afford to live near the center of the city.

So what?

There is plenty of metropolis sprawling in all directions away from Seattle, if the middle and lower class workers can’t afford housing near the technical center of Seattle what exactly is the crime? How did this become an issue for “society” to solve? I can’t afford to live on Pebble Beach, but the city isn’t taxing the fuck out of anyone to fix that “problem”.

Not being able to afford housing in prime real estate markets isn’t an “issue”, it simply reflects the reality that there is a limited supply of resources which are insufficient to meet demand. The Amazon workers and the coffee baristas both want the downtown Seattle apartments - those willing and able to pay the most get the apartment. That’s not a problem to be fixed, that’s how markets work.

[Speaker to Animals]

Because you need a decent distribution of income for a city to remain sustainable. These city governments, in their zeal for more tax income to fund their social welfare programs and entitlement programs, sign off on these deals to build new corporate campuses with glee. But as the corporate campuses increase, they bring in highly-paid workers which upset the economic equilibrium that had existed between various workers.

If you had a purely robotic society, this wouldn't be a problem. All the trades and service jobs would be performed by robots. But you don't have that. If half your city is software engineers, then rent and property values rise commensurate with what software engineers earn because of the increased capital that now flows into demand. But that means the people who are not software engineers are pretty well fucked. They work for much lower wages and salaries, but their rent is astronomical compared to where it once was in relative terms.

If this continues, the city dies. It's not sustainable. In the context of what these corporations are doing, it's a form of rent seeking. The effect of their rent seeking is a kind of tragedy of the commons in which they all find the city that offers them the best tax deals coupled with access to a high-tech workforce. The more of them that congregate in an area, the more access they have to high-tech employees. It becomes less tenable for them to leave. The city doesn't want them to leave either because they would take a substantial source of income the city needs to continue rolling out the democratic party gibs programs.

What you see in Seattle right now is just another kind of death that can happen to a city. It's maybe decades down the line, but it's coming. It's a little different from what happened to Detroit and what will happen to Chicago, but it's the result of democratic party politics.

[DBTrek]

It seems to me that as lower-earning workers are priced out of the city proper, they simply have to endure a commute. Most are willing to endure the commute, so there's no problem.

Now, suppose we reach a point where no one is willing to commute into Seattle for a minimum wage job? What happens at this (not yet reached) point? I suspect the following:

1. The market forces employers in Seattle to raise worker wages until they are willing to endure the commute required to get to downtown Seattle. This is the best option, letting the market forces play out to the benefit of worker wages.

2. The minimum wage jobs become automated - possible for some but not all jobs. Middle of the road results. Losing jobs is bad, but in the short termthere's the buying of automation equipment and a few jobs recouped from maintenance on automated systems.

3. The local government starts playing god with housing and decides to divy it up according to who they think should have it. This is the worst, and most economical wasteful approach. Human councils picking winners and losers has never performed nearly as efficiently as price driven markets. Not suprisingly, this approach is a favorite among liberals and progressives.

Those strike me as the three most likely avenues of response to high-paying jobs displacing lower-wage earners.