The Guardian Writes About Seattle:
Many business owners, (the Seattle entrepreneur) said, have an “econo-erotic fantasy”, imagining that even if they aren’t paying their employees enough to buy goods and services from other firms, those firms are. ”
Alastair Gee seems to have been talking with David Goldstein. David, long term liberal activist at his blog HorsesAss was recently fired as a writer for Seattle Sex Tabloid, The Stranger. Now David has become a writer for Nick Hanauer … a Seattle venture capitalist who turned money from his family’s pillow factory into a great, early investment in Amazon. Hanuaer was the major sponsor of Washington State’s recent successful gun control initiative and has since been writing and speaking, working with Goldy, about the need for the well off to pay their share in taxes. Otherwise, according to The Guardian, “people would come for magnates like him with pitchforks.” Hanuaer now has five full-time staff to pursue his political goals. “Our job is to redefine capitalism,” said David Goldstein.
The Guardian’s Alastair Gee describes his interview with Seattle’s Nick Hanauer,
“Last week, he sat in his 28th-floor Seattle office overlooking the steely Puget Sound, with his feet, in sneakers, on a table next to a copy of The Wealth of Nations, and outlined his manifesto. “The last thing you want to do is impoverish people and concentrate ever more capital in fewer and fewer hands.”
While Seattle’s economy is on a tear, clusters of homeless people amid the downtown towers underscore its deep wealth gap. Hanauer aims to use his clout to redress such imbalances. Efforts along these lines have gained particular traction in Seattle, which has passed a minimum wage of $15, more than twice the amount mandated by the federal government, and is taking a lead on the problems of inequality and affordability.”
The article goes on to talk of the contrasts .. from Amazon’s new triple skyscraper towers with greenhouse-like domes where the pubic public (and the panhandlers) can see the workers … to struggling artistes living on nearby Capital Hill where 1o ft by 10 ft bedrooms are going for over $1000. Meanwhile, Mr. Gee somehow describes our mainstream democratic mayor, Ed Murray, as a “Socialist.” Odd title for a very mainstream Democrat who was recently the majority leader of the State Senate.
Hanauer’s staff now includes Paul Constant, another former writer for The Stranger. Constant is quoted as extolling Seattle’s South Lake Union District .. SLU is a former industrial district turned into an urban version of a suburban industrial park by Paul Allen’s Vulture Vulcan Real Estate. Constant extols SLU’s major tenant, Amazon, “Even if you have a complicated relationship with Amazon, which I certainly do, I think you have to at least admire the fact that they are using the land for something,” he said. “It’s become a neighbourhood, and they willed it out of thin air, and that’s impressive.”
Since I work in SLU, I wonder if Paul Constant or Nick Hanauer has had time to visit? I would buy them dinner. The place is sterile … a maze of aluminum clad ugly buildings, at lunch time filled with Amazonians seeking a food truck while at night the young’uns are busy in their podments writing code.
One of Goldstein’s major accomplishments is his support for the Socialist member of Seattle’s City Council, Kshama Sawant. Sawant focused Seattle’s version of the Occupy movement and used that meme to get herself elected to the City Council. The movement was a success … getting Seattle to pass its now famous minimum wage. Now Hanauer, with Goldy on staff, wants the state of Washington to take on the demagogic idea of an unprecedented $16 an hour . Gee quotes Hanauer “Many business owners, … have an ‘econo-erotic fantasy,’ imagining that even if they aren’t paying their employees enough to buy goods and services from other firms, those firms are. The claim “that if wages go up, employment will go down – this is as stupid as claiming that if plants grow, animals will shrink.”
Hanauaer and Amazon hype aside, Alastair Gee goes on to bemoan the loss of an urban scene that once fostered a thriving art scene. Even here he seems to be badly informed. For example, he focuses on my neighborhood, Capitol Hill. He even describes my ‘hood as ” An attractive, diverse area close to downtown. A Ferrari showroom stands opposite a homey pie shop and in the vicinity of gay bars and low-income housing units. “ Perhaps this is true but that Ferrari shop has been there for decades, serving the very wealthy community a few blocks north … where once extreme wealth abutted on the African American and Jewish neighborhood now called the Central Area.
Gee does note that grunge bands of the 1990s could not afford rent in today’s Seattle. That is all too true. Seattle has seen its artists … not just grunge but painters, potters, performance artists, jazz musicians and writers move out because rents have exploded. While fresh faced Amazonians and Microsofties pay $2000 per month for an apartment and modest houses in my neighborhood are going for a million dollars, our once vibrant African American community has poofed .. vanished to the nether regions of White Center, Renton and Tacoma … outside the Seattle City limits. What is left are memorials to Quincy Jones and Jimi Hendrix.