[DONSURBER.BLOGSPOT] Bloomberg reported, "Amazon CEO, citing ’rougher’ patch with Seattle, looks to ’burbs."This is not white flight. Seattle has become coyote ugly crazy and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wants to leave before he has to gnaw off his leg to get out of the trap.
Shades of Boeing and the Seattle Supersonics.
Bloomberg's story said, "The world’s largest online retailer is by far the biggest private employer in Seattle with more than 50,000 workers. That distinction has proved a headache in recent years, with some residents and government officials blaming the company for exacerbating homelessness and traffic."
Seattle has turned Amazon into its whipping boy, blaming the company for problems the city creates.
Jassy spoke at an event hosted by technology news site GeekWire.
He said, "I’d say the last five years, the city council has become less enamored with business or with Amazon. It’s just been rougher."
The city wanted to burden Amazon heavily with taxes. The company and others fought it back, Then the company backed a slate of city council candidates who lost.
It is time to vamoose.
The story said, "The company, which is wrapping up construction of an expanded Seattle headquarters campus, has since shifted its expansion planning toward neighboring cities like Bellevue and Redmond. Bellevue, just east of Seattle, 'is where most of our growth will end up being,' Jassy said. He added that he wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon opened other offices in additional cities in the region."
Jeff Bezos, who no longer runs the business, started Amazon in his garage in Bellevue in 1994, across the lake from Seattle. A return to its roots may be in good order.
Seattle's hostility to business led to Boeing's departure for reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown
...home of Al Capone, the Chicago Black Sox, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel...in 2001. The company was founded in Seattle in 1916. It decided last year to shutter its last factory in Seattle.
50 years ago, real-estate agents Bob McDonald and Jim Youngren put the words, "Will the last person leaving SEATTLE -- Turn out the lights" on a billboard at S 167th Street and Pacific Highway S near Sea-Tac International Airport.
At the time, Boeing was going through a rough patch as it cut employment from 100,800 employees in 1967 to a low of 38,690 in April 1971, when the sign went up. The purpose of the sign was to inject a little humor and therefore hope in a bleak situation. Within 6 months, Boeing had recalled 15,000 laid off workers.
But that was how business cycles work. The goose that lays the golden eggs occasionally takes a few months off.
No, to really kill business, you need a government that is hostile and frankly jealous of success. In 22 short years, the garage business became the top retailer in the country. Seattle is doing everything it can to force Amazon out.
The CEO finally got the hint because when it comes to Democrat policy, there is no such thing as unintended consequences. Seattle wants Amazon out. So be it.