[s73ver_]

"Homelessness is not Amazon's problem."

But it is the problem of the city. They absolutely need to keep this in mind while negotiating with Amazon, who has a reputation for driving housing prices sky high, thus exacerbating the homelessness problem.

"Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work?"

Automation is neutral, as it does cost people jobs, not all of whom can be retrained for something else. It also drives down wages. Hell, productivity has been skyrocketing for the past 30-40 years due to automation, yet workers have seen a pittance in rising wages.

[tinymollusk]

I think automation has clearly been a net good over the past 200 years. I agree that it does have a cost, and perhaps the compound interest (environmentally) will come due very soon. But it's hard for me to see that it's neutral, given how much better our standard of living is compared to pre-industrial revolution.

Perhaps you meant to say that automation also has negatives? In which case, I apologize if I sounded harsh here -- I find I have a strong emotional reaction to arguments about complex things that don't support nuance.

[stretchwithme]

We would not even understand environmental pollution without automation. You can't send a human to space with binoculars to do a satellite's job, for example.

[jogjayr]

We also wouldn't have very much environmental pollution without automation. Humanity wouldn't have left much of a permanent mark on the Earth if we had gone extinct before industrialization.

Barring the desertification of the Fertile Crescent (arguably natural climate change had a hand too) and the extinction of the American and Australian megafauna, both of which are relatively insignificant in geological time, we simply didn't have the means to harm the environment very much.

Compared to that, industrialization has had side-effects that will endure for millions of years: the upending of the carbon and nitrogen cycles, and the addition of plastics and radiation. Aliens could come to the Earth 20 million years after we go extinct, and still be able to find traces of us.

[40acres]

Amazon also provides high wage workers who are taxed on their income, and who generate economic activity which can also be taxed and used by municipalities to try to solve homelessness. On net I wonder what the benefit / determent of Amazon moving to a city would have on homelessness.

[ChristianBundy]

But this isn't how it works. Political leverage increases with income, and people who don't have to work to survive realized long ago that it's much more efficient to lobby for tax decreases than it is to "generate economic activity".

Our current top tax rate is ~40%, less than half of what it was under Eisenhower, and the owning class continues to push for tax breaks under the guise of trickle-down economics.

Please stop broadcasting propaganda on their behalf.

[kazinator]

Lobbying is work; obviously, what happens is that some professional lobbyists get paid.

[XR0CSWV3h3kZWg]

> Amazon also provides high wage workers who are taxed on their income

Washington has no income tax.

> who generate economic activity which can also be taxed and used by municipalities to try to solve homelessness.

Unfortunately a lot of the taxes that can be levied in Seattle are fairly regressive, so it's easy to end up in a situation where property taxes are raised to generate funds to solve homelessness. It's easy to imagine inefficiencies or fund diversion such that low priced housing raises in cost faster than the funds given to help homelessness. Even worse would be the situation where those funds only help in the form of food & shelters for homeless people.

[afarrell]

Is the city does not also allow housing to be built, then all the tax money in the world won't stop the fact that all of Amazon's highly-paid workforce will out-bit existing residents for limited housing.

States need to look at the amount of office space being built and mandate that towns allow additional housing so that there are at least 3 beds per desk.

[ImSkeptical]

Another confounding factor is that the workforce tends to be left leaning. Left leaning population, plus new money for taxes means more social services for the homeless. More social services means homeless from less accommodating communities will move in.

I'd also be curious in a study on Amazon's effect on the homeless.

[xienze]

> More social services means homeless from less accommodating communities will move in.

I don't know why this point seems to escape people in SF, LA, Seattle, etc. If you're homeless, you're gonna want to be where the most benefits and relaxed attitudes toward homelessness are. It's not hard to understand why this problem is at its worst in the most progressive cities.

[kevin_thibedeau]

These are all cities without overly harsh Summer and Winter seasons. That makes it easier to be outside year round. The destitute homeless in less favorable regions aren't generally mobile enough to migrate to these places.

[xienze]

NYC has a massive homeless population as well.

[ImSkeptical]

I'm sure that plays a part. However, there are small cities around Seattle, with similar climates, that have very few homeless. My interpretation is that these places have less services and the police are more likely to move the homeless. Plus, while living outside in LA doesn't sound so bad, Seattle can't be too high on the list of nice places to live outside.