Huh. I’ve got this nagging feeling that there’s something missing from the Seattle Times editorial board’s list of things we need to do to attract and retain corporate headquarters:
Support and fund education for students ages 3 to 23. Raise the quality of and reduce inequity of access to pre-K, K-12 and higher education. Protect and enhance the area’s vaunted quality of life and make strategic investments in transportation. Continue to promote a civic culture that values innovation, diversity and tolerance.
Oh. Yeah, that’s right. They forgot to mention the money it takes to pay for all these great things.
It doesn’t take much courage to argue for expanded funding of pre-K, K-12, higher education, transportation, and other public investments that improve our collective quality of life. I do it all the time. But what’s consistently missing from the editorial page of our state’s paper of record is support for raising the taxes necessary to pay for these things. It’s as if there is only one side to the financial ledger—the spending side—and it would be absolutely crazy to even mention the topic of revenue.
I mean, if attracting corporate headquarters provides the strange logic you need to put you over the top in support of universal preschool, fine by me. Whatever floats your pre-K boat. But then what’s so wrong about taxing the incomes of highly paid executives in order to help pay for all the public investments that draw them to the region? Washington does have the most regressive tax structure in the nation, after all.
Without the mention of revenue, the editorial comes off as scolding the rest of us for stingily refusing to invest in the things corporate executives refuse to pay for. Weird.
But…but…they just want our city to be run like a business! Their business:
Cut staff, reduce content…sit back and wait for great things to happen…watch readership and revenues plummet…cut more staff, chop more content, sit back and wait for great things to happen…rinse, repeat…
Hey, it’s working so well for them…
Unfortunately, if we attract more anti-union, minimum-wage-paying corporate slugs, income in Seattle will drop, as will the only regressive tax base Seattle has for attempting to pay for these things. Did the ST mention that court mandate about school quality that we already lack the funds to support? I bet not.
The last thing we need is more corporate headquarters. What ST really yearns for is a community run by the McNerneys of the world. Let Chicago have ’em; they’re a bigger city than we are, and thus can more readily absorb their pernicious influence.
We’d have $3 billion more for schools if we hadn’t given
$3 billion of state tax revenue to Boeing, a company that pays no federal income taxes.
Pre-K is not the responsibility of government, nor should it be.
@5 Why? If pre-K is provides lifelong advantages in K-12 and beyond, why shouldn’t pre-K be as much a social obligation as K-12? What is so magic about kindergarten that makes that the starting point of this obligation?
Or would you argue that K-12 should not be the responsibility of government as well?
@5 War should not be a responsibility of government. Wars should be contracted out, and paid for by those who support them. The government has done a bad job of running wars. Look at the results: Korea, stalemate; Vietnam, defeat; Iraq, stalemate; Afghanistan, stalemate. War should be privatized. Let those who think they can make a profit from war run it, without taxpayer subsidies. War should be a capitalist enterprise.
We’ve already privatized torture, atrocities, and war crimes; so why not privatize the whole shebang?
There’s lots-o-folks that are over 23 that need worker retraining and access to higher ed.
#5 Needs to get get accquanted with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Goldy misses one point … the Times, of course, IS tax subsidized because it lives off of the untaxed inheritance of the Blethen family.
There is another issue … as Seattle goes from being the home of Amazon to becoming Amazon, what does Bezoes (or Balmer or Bronfman or Schulz ….)do to make THEIR corporate homes a better place to live? These billionaires fed their firms on our soil and have become wealthy in a state where poor people pay most of the taxes.
Shouldn’t the Times call for more contributions from our uber wealthy?;
@9 Not in Blethenland, where kids go straight from Lakeside or Bush to a nice college to a good-paying job by age 23 (and an editorial board slot) at daddy’s firm.
That is the universal experience of young adults, isn’t it?