Seattle Socialists Strangle Golden Goose

[Okeefenokee]

One can't pump gas, and the other can't figure out his credit score.

Yes, let's hear more brilliance from this duo.

[DBTrek]

Extremely hard to slam me as “talking out of my ass”, or not understanding the nuances, or whatever, after I post and summarize 8 articles in a row - so it’s back to “DB is just a cult of personality”.

The progressives don’t exactly have a deep bench when it comes to debating the facts. It’s either favorable facts presented in complete isolation of context, or ad hom against people presenting facts they don’t want to acknowledge.

[JohnDonne]

I’ll respond. Gotta work every once in a while, but I’ll get to it sooner or later

[JohnDonne]

To assist with your research:

You know about the Seattle Head Tax which has hit the pause button on our major employers, so the Seattle Council can fund less than 5% of their affordable housing by sticking it to "big biz".

Back in 2015 they were blowing through $37 million year by turning public land into unsanitary tent cities, with zero plan beyond shuffling the tent cities around every now and then. You need $37million for that? That shit happens naturally, by doing nothing.

Seattle (former) Mayor Ed Murray, in 2017, admitting there was no real plan after throwing $50million at "homelessness" in 2017. His statement - “We cannot spend money and expect success without having a strategic plan informed by national experts with accountability measures to make sure what we are funding is working,” he said during his speech last week. “We have that plan now.”"

Here's an article on the $200million Seattle and King County spent in 2017, and the long list of excuses as to why "Oops, well that's not enough money. We need twice that. That's why you're not seeing results". (Paraphrasing, don't waste time telling me it's not a direct quote)

The radical-leftist The Stranger even recognized that spending was out of control, and these guys are easily to the left of Elizabeth Warren.

I already mentioned Two hundred million (dollars) was spent in King County last year, $17,000 for every man woman and child, and the problem got worse

Outside experts recently told Seattle that it would actually take about $400 million a year to "solve" homelessness. A year? That doesn't sound like a solution. You could hand every homeless person $33k+ in cash for that amount. That's an annual income freely handed to people.

And we've already covered the $1billion spent by the Puget Sound area that is unaccounted for. Unless, of course, you consider tapping a colored pie chart and saying "Well, some went here, and some went here, and some went here" while pointing to organizations that don't keep records is "accountability".

So there's a cliff-notes course on what's been going on the last 3 years. Missing from this lesson are the roving RV meth lab and prostituion caravans, the murders and sex crimes going on in homeless tent cities, the needles turning up everywhere, the judges declaring cars are houses and people cannot be towed (evicted) for parking where they please and living there, etc. etc.

Long pattern of throwing crumbs down for seagulls, and then screaming "holy shit there's a TON of seagulls here ... QUICK, GET MORE CRUMBS!"


Not part of any Seattle Council Member's calculus - "How is life for the 714,000 citizens that AREN'T drug addicted and homeless in Seattle? How are our plans and taxes affecting THEM?"

37 million wasn't spent on "tent cities" in Seattle, according to the article. Did you get that number because at the bottom of the article it said Seattle spent 37 million on homeless services? That's not the same. Why do you say untrue things?

You said 200 million is spent on the homeless in King county. That is true. When you use the phrase $17,000 for every man woman and child, you make it sound like that's for every King county citizen. That not the case. It's $17,000 for every homeless person.

You claim the money is wasted. Here's how it's being spent:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... elessness/

100 million, or half of king county's homeless expenditures was for permanent housing. 33 percent was spent on housing related services as well as supportive services, and 16 percent is spent on emergency shelters. You're certain that all that money was wasted, but it appears to be mainly going towards affordable housing, which doesn't just support the homeless, but all low income people, including workers, and small business owners.

The Stranger article you posted is a news story, not an editorial. I have no idea what their opinions about homelessness expenditures are, but the fact that they reported on what politicians say doesn't equal an endorsement, or a recognition that things have gotten out of control.

The rest of your points about unaccountability have been addressed by me, I think Seattle should have an audit, I think the non-profits that are taking in 750 million of the billion of the puget sound area homeless dollars should be investigated.

But none of that means Seattle strangled the golden goose.

[DBTrek]

The rest of your points about unaccountability have been addressed by me, I think Seattle should have an audit, I think the non-profits that are taking in 750 million of the billion of the puget sound area homeless dollars should be investigated.

But none of that means Seattle strangled the golden goose.

Given the moderate tone of your reply I actually believe you read some or all of those articles. Mainly because " I think the non-profits that are taking in 750 million of the billion of the puget sound area homeless dollars should be investigated" is about the MILDEST response one could have after going through that trove of information. And you're there, which means you begin to see how a city without a plan started taxing the citizens and throwing hundreds of millions around half-assed and with nobody knowing how effectively it's being used or where it is all going.

So after three years of King County "winging it" to the tune of hundred of millions, the Seattle City Council decides any business making $20million+ needs to cough up even MORE dough to their unaccountable asses, and the big employers say "NO". To which, the City Council says "Fuck you" and then passes a head tax for a reduced amount to the detriment of our major employers. Their greed (taking more money when you can't really provide results for of millions you've already blown is simple hubris and greed) is killing the "golden goose" of our local economy.

And you've mentioned "affordable housing" not necessarily helping the homeless, but you don't seem to realize that's exactly how they continually fleece the citizens while winning support from people with your political inclinations. They conflate "affordable housing" and "fighting homelessness" by pretending that they're taking hundreds of millions to help the junkies defecating all over the city. But they're not. They're largely subsidizing people's rent, and then claiming "Well, if we didn't pay these people's rent they'd be homeless!" - which is utterly retarded. You could use that argument for any income bracket. Raise taxes for my mortgage, because if I can't pay it, I'd be homeless. The ruse is obvious, yet Seattle lemmings never catch on - they just keep taking other people's money and recklessly throwing it at their pet projects, then acting like they can't understand why anyone would oppose their ineffective plans.

[Fife]

I read something today that made me consider the future of Seattle.

The Seen and the Unseen, courtesy of the estimable Virginia Postrel:

How I Caused California’s Housing Crisis

Efforts in the 1980s to curb the state’s explosive growth are having unintended consequences three decades later.

When my husband and I moved to Los Angeles in 1986, we were thrilled with how easy it was to find a place to live, even on the desirable Westside. Compared to Boston, where we’d previously been, apartments were plentiful and reasonably priced. Although we rented a place in a mid-century fourplex, the city was full of new construction, including sizable apartment and condo complexes.

Unbeknownst to us, however, the backlash had begun. Horrified by the rapidly changing urban landscape, longtime residents were organizing to block new construction.

[PartyOf5]

I read something today that made me consider the future of Seattle.

The Seen and the Unseen, courtesy of the estimable Virginia Postrel:

How I Caused California’s Housing Crisis

Efforts in the 1980s to curb the state’s explosive growth are having unintended consequences three decades later.

Government trying to control a market leads to unintended consequences. That seems to happen quite frequently.

[DBTrek]

It’s introducing inefficiency into an economic system. With price point driven systems the consumers and producers buy and sell according to supply/demand - nothing is wasted. No one pays one penny more for a good or service than that good/service is worth to them. This, all pennies are spent precisely according to the appetites and demands of the market.

Centrally planned (government) spending is the exact opposite. Governments don’t adhere to supply/demand, they simply aim to “fix” economic “issues” by concocting short-sighted plans. Many pennies are wasted and unaccounted for, because the government doesn’t have to answer to shareholders. They can waste $200 million on half-assed ideas and when that doesn’t work they’ll make excuses, over-glorify truly insignificant achievements, and scare-monger for more money.

As soon as a bureaucracy gets involved (or with Seattle, dozens of bureaucracies) all that efficient price point driven resource allocation goes to crap. Now millions vanish unaccounted for. Now bureaucrats who were never needed have careers “solving” homelessness, and they are well paid to do so. Now what the market might build for millions, the government builds for hundreds of millions. And all the while the “problems” go unsolved, and the price tag gets bigger and bigger to accommodate the ever expanding bureaucracy.

But try to wake folks up to the obvious game, and the Pavlov’s Dog political training kicks in - bigot, Republican, you want people dead on the street, hate monger, puppet of big business, etc, etc ... that’s the price for demonstrating the emperor has no clothes.

[Speaker to Animals]

For places like Seattle, I do not see how you will be able to make housing affordable until the tech industry vacates. Markets won't solve it, nor will socialism.

[DBTrek]

For places like Seattle, I do not see how you will be able to make housing affordable until the tech industry vacates. Markets won't solve it, nor will socialism.

Housing won’t be affordable for low and middle class earners in Seattle proper. Oh well.

Housing isn’t affordable for middle income and below on beachfront property all up and down the both coasts. Or on Manhattan Island. Or many places in Hawaii. Everywhere that real estate is highly valued and only limited supply exists, people get priced out. It’s no problem except to people who feel entitled to prime real estate they can’t pay for.

When the government gets involved they can force alternative outcomes at a great cost to the public. It’s a trade off. They can put few thousand low-income people in deteriorating housing on prime real estate. Doing so comes at great cost to the taxpayers and the local economy, not to mention what is lost in efficiency - but it can be done.

The thing is - since neither option actually brings about the ideal people want to see, I prefer the option that utilizes our limited resources to the fullest extent to the option that gives wasteful bureaucrats excessive resources to squander. Sure, neither approach solves the “problem”, but one approach maximizes the available resources while the other does the opposite.
/shrug