Reports of my texts have been greatly exaggerated

A reply to the Seattle Times

Dear fellow Seattleites,

Earlier this week, the Seattle Times published a text message I sent to Mayor Jenny Durkan after I learned the City Council was preparing to repeal the head tax. Describing me as a “civic power broker” who had “publicly supported the head tax,” the story attempts to frame my text supporting repeal as the height of hypocrisy.

Are you kidding me, Seattle Times? I know we’ve disagreed over the years — you’ve opposed my work to pass a $15 minimum wage, Secure Scheduling laws, and other worker protections.I’ve opposed your efforts to repeal the estate tax, which would only benefit rich people like me. And you’re trying to frame me as a defender of the status quo?

To be clear: When I ultimately texted support for Mayor Durkan’s decision to kill the head tax, it wasn’t because the tax was too big — but rather, because it was far too small to be worth such enormous expense of political capital. Seattle’s housing crisis is a tremendous challenge, and it demands a solution that is much bigger and more transformative.

And presuming they obtained my entire text exchange with Mayor Durkan, the Times knows damn well that this is not just me making excuses after the fact.

On May 7th, I sent a private email to my good friend Hadi Partovi bluntly declining a request from Washington Technology Industry Association CEO Michael Schutzler to join other business and civic leaders in signing onto an open letter opposing the head tax. On May 10th I shared a copy of this email with Mayor Durkan… in the same text thread the Times obtained.

With Hadi’s permission, I’m publicly sharing my response to the open letter here. I dashed it off quickly, so it’s admittedly a bit long and rambling, at times unflattering, and filled with misspellings and grammatical errors. But unlike the Seattle Times, I wouldn’t want to take myself out of context, so I am including the whole damn thing:

Hi Hadi,

First, so looking forward to hanging out this weekend!

I have not been involved in, nor taken a position on the head tax and will not. It is not my fight. That said, I think your letter is inadequate and frankly, below the usual, ridiculously high Partovi standards. If I had more time, I would be more charming and less harsh with this missive, but know that I love you!

First: Given the context of massively increasing economic inequality in both our city and nation, claiming that taxing Seattle’s largest businesses .25 cents per hour on employees ($500.00 on $200,000.00- effectively 0.025% of the typical tech worker’s compensation) “punishes businesses for creating growth” is the worst kind of Neoliberal nonsense.

This is the canonical trickle-down argument that the powerful always make to the weak- that if we collectively do anything in any way to tax or constrain the rich and/or the powerful, it will “kill jobs and growth, punish the very people we intended to help, and creates a disincentive for the good people doing all the good stuff in our society”. Using your logic, every progressive tax, every business regulation, every labor standard “punishes the job creators” and is bad for growth. This is bullshit and you know it, or should.

Using your frame, one could make the argument that “raising the minimum wage kills jobs and punishes the job creators”. Or one could make the argument that “progressive income taxes of any kind punish the job creators for succeeding and creating growth”. Or one could even make the argument that “criminalizing sexual assault in the workplace punishes men for hiring women and kills jobs for women”.

Despite the fact that there is no empirical evidence for these claims, rich people and powerful institutions can and do make these arguments often. In fact, they always make these arguments. That’s because the honest argument, “We are rich and powerful and you are poor and weak, and we desperately want to keep it that way.”, is oddly ineffective with the broader public, despite the fact that it is manifestly the truth. These claims purport to be about economics but they are not. They are intimidation tactics, masquerading as economics. Amazon’s latest antics are a marvelous example.

Second: The housing affordability and homelessness crisis is not new, and treating it as such because all of a sudden YOU may have to pay something makes you look terrible. Many of your fellow citizens have been slaving away trying to deal with this for years. Other than complaining, the tech business community has been essentially absent from these efforts. Other than sending the duly appointed “civic representative” to meetings, no one I know of in leadership from our tech community has been engaged in the effort to bring the comprehensive, scalable solution to this problem that we must have to make it better. You may recall that I led an effort to do such a thing in Seattle last year. This was not done in secret. Weirdly, no senior leader from Amazon or Microsoft or any other large tech company offered to help build the policy framework or run the campaign. So, to say that NOW, the city council should engage in dialogue, is a bit disingenuous, no? Where was the “dialogue” 5 years ago? Where have you all been as the city has wrestled with these issues?

Meantime, as you must know, the City is highly constrained with respect to the taxing options available. An income tax would be an even better way to raise the revenue to deal with these issues but as you may know, our city and state have no income tax, making our state’s tax system literally the most regressive in the nation. Of course, we could have an income tax, and would- except virtually all of the people who will sign on to your letter will use precisely the same reasoning to oppose an income tax too. “It punishes the job creators and kills jobs!”. Given that reality, the idea that the business community will magically bring the city together around a sensible approach seems optimistic.

To my mind, reinstating a tiny former tax on payroll, tilted towards the largest, most able employers, doesn’t seem like the job killing big government attack on freedom that it is being made out to be. Given the narrow range of options available to the city, it is one of the few moderately progressive taxes available and thus may be one of the “least worst” options, which is often the best you can do in civic life. And this tax does have the benefit of being connected to one of the factors that is driving our housing and homelessness challenges. Growth. Which is OK. I am as pro growth as anyone. But to insist that it is an unalloyed good is dumb. Growth is awesome, except for the obvious problems it creates.

Third: This seems like a lost cause politically. The city council overwhelmingly has the votes. The public poling on this issue is very high. Why? Because the typical worker in Seattle earns about $60K, and they no longer buy the trickle-down bullshit that the business community continues to spew. Remember when all the restaurants were going to close down when we passed the $15 minimum wage? My friend Tom Douglas projected that ¼ of the restaurants in town would close. Instead, business boomed. Oops. Remember how Trump’s big tax cut for the rich and big corporations was going to raise wages and create jobs for workers? Not so much.

For these reasons, and others, I cannot sign your letter- or any other on the head tax. But I want to re-state why I haven’t taken a position. It isn’t because I think it is a huge attack on capitalism and the wonderful, marvelous business hero’s like me and you and Jeff Bezos. It is because it is way, way too small and isn’t linked to a truly transformational and ambitious approach to housing and homelessness.

When the public finally comes to terms with what it will take to address the current King County deficient of 150,00 and projected 244,000 units of affordable housing and what it will truly cost to address the associated homelessness, this head tax is going to look like chump change. Because none of you are involved in the current process, you may have not heard that the recent McKinsey analysis says we need a minimum of $200 million more per year just to house the existing homeless

But just for fun, I will issue you a challenge. If the “business community”, whoever the fuck that is, is serious about finding comprehensive solutions to these problems at the scale of the problem- and solutions that are progressive, and not regressive, you all should most definitely make a concrete proposal. If you can persuade me that the proposal you offer is superior to the “small ball”, incremental, and sub optimal approach the City is currently taking, my team at Civic Ventures will happily lead the campaign to improve and replace the city council’s solution, with your bigger, better, fairer solution. I’ll put up the first million dollars for that campaign. You can match me. It will be great fun. Everyone can help. And given how very, very, very, very smart all of the people in the tech community are, an amazing solution will come together in no time.

In any case, we cannot wait to see you and [your family] this weekend! Should be so, so fun. We can continue this discussion then, or not, as the case may be. J

But if I was you, I would hold off on this letter.

If you agree that the Seattle Times mischaracterized my statements, I’m sure my friend Frank Blethen would love to hear from you. He can be reached at PublisherFeedback@seattletimes.com.

But I wouldn’t want this noise to distract from King County’s housing crisis. It continues to grow unabated, and the civic conversation must continue. Ironically, I was about to submit an editorial to the Times with my proposal for what we must do to create solutions that realistically address the scale of the problem. I look forward to working with them to publish it as soon as possible.