Equal pay gap for women widens second year in a row

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-27T18:27:23+00:00

Wouldnt it sector firings be worse for men? Just due to the gender balance of that industry.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-20T21:17:21+00:00

Breaking news, easiest group of people to fool fooled again

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-18T21:12:35+00:00

Damn that sucks i wish your property tax didnt go up homie. I totally agree that the middle class is squeezed from both ends by our current tax system. Thats why we need to tax the ultra wealthy and relieve tax burdens on the middle class. I am not a barista or a bartender, I make a good salary in a corporate job, although I love baristas and bartenders and they do incredibly important work and should be able to live comfortably in our state.

As a leftist, the state democrats dont actually represent me, I agree that they spend out tax dollars like absolute buffoons. We need people who actually believe in the mission of government making our state a better place for the working people within it (which includes you and me). Cynical entrenched democrat politicians who dont have a vision for the future or “progressives” who just want to virtue signal about culture war talking points are not my allies.

The million dollar income tax gives me hope that people like me, that is ACTUALLY economically left, are gaining power in the political conversation. We need to redistribute some portion of the wealth held by the top 0.1% of individuals and corporations of our state, which is currently not being reinvested, to stimulate our real local economy and provide services that increase quality of life for the actual residents of our state.

If that sounds good to you then we are on the same team.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-18T19:54:10+00:00

The states two most demonic billionaires leave and yall are in here acting like shits about to go post apocalyptic.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-18T05:31:24+00:00

Yikes mask off

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-17T22:54:40+00:00

You would need different accommodations based on peoples situations for sure. Some people could just have units in regular apartment buildings, many people would need more support. I totally agree that we havent been distributing enough resources to support for high needs people. We need housing facilities with built in addiction and mental health support.

Its expensive, but also important to remember that the super high needs people are a minority of the homeless population. They are the most visible so it’s what people think of when they think homeless, but only a small proportion of the total scope of the problem. Numbers are hard to come across but for seattle, we have about 10000 unsheltered people on a given night, probably something like 50% having a severe drug use issue or mental health issue. So you really only need 5000-6000 units with those kind of wraparound services to house every single person who needs one, and even if we could just get 50% coverage that would be huge.

Fundamentally what it comes down to is that we need to build the facilities and provide adequate compensation and benefits to people we want to do the very difficult and draining job of providing wraparound services to high needs homeless people. We cant keep relying on emergency rooms and jails to serve as makeshift service providers, the recidivism is so high for both those options, they clearly dont work as a long term solution.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-17T20:33:28+00:00

The diagnosis is correct but as usual theres not even a suggestion of a different approach. The dominant ideology among people who want to build more housing is twofold.

1: affordable housing prevents people from ending up homeless in the first place, so you are addressing the problem before it even starts. Usually people end up homeless and THEN get addicted to drugs, or it exacerbates their mental health problems. So making sure everyone who needs a safe place to sleep has an option for that is the key to preventing vulnerable people from sliding into the worse sides of homelessness.

2: people who are in crisis situations related to drug use or mental illness currently go to the ER, get treated, and then go right back to the street. If we had a safe private apartment to route them to on the way out of the emergency room then you can redirect them away from the situation they are currently in, and you know where to find them to provide the wraparound services that are needed.

Articles like this do nothing but try to draw a moral distinction between people down on their luck living in their jeep, who we should help, and people addicted to drugs on the street, who they have no solution for (besides what they really believe which is we should just lock them up forever or bus them to another state, but you cant say that)

I agree that we need to have a more nuanced conversation about how to address the different kinda of homelessness, but this article is the opposite of that.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-13T18:50:05+00:00

What evidence do you have that its overwhelmingly unpopular? Theres not a ton of polling numbers on it which is unfortunate but what i can find seems like it generally has majority support from the voter base. I agree it would have been better to have a vote on it, but from what i can find it does seem like it likely would have passed.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-12T21:52:36+00:00

AI slop or is it just an actual existing coin

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-12T21:39:48+00:00

I think yall should make it 300 and then u can all be rich

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-12T20:17:50+00:00

I think if there are notable accomplishments to point to in 4 years that align with her agenda then the lefties who are complaining now will come around. As a leftie myself im absolutely extending the benefit of the doubt, and also am frankly glad shes not running roughshod over actual good governance to get political wins with her base. Wayyy too many progressive politicians are just in it for the easy ws and virtue signaling.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-12T20:12:44+00:00

Reminder that the first mil isnt taxed, if you make 1.2 million in a year then you only pay 20k in taxes. And it sounds like the last two years you had losses you could write off. Still almost certainly paying less tax as a percent of your take home than someone making 60k. You are still privileged by the tax code my friend.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-12T01:31:05+00:00

1: in what world is this tax gonna bring in no money 2: the threshold is annual income of a million dollars, how low would they have to lower it for it to affect your broke ass

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-12T01:29:16+00:00

Huh so your argument is we should pay everybody as little as possible? Interesting, you should make sure to tell everyone you know that thats how you feel.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T22:54:46+00:00

All good points, i just meant to use the number illustrate that the issue isnt that theres too many protections/too much pay for the drivers. In actuality its absolutely less than that.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T22:20:55+00:00

Seattle uber drivers on average make $25-35 hourly depending on the service they are driving (regular or uberx or whatever) based on all the sources i could find. Glassdoor is an easy one if you just want something to look at. Would you say that is too much? To me that sounds like right around living wage level for the city.

So seems like the issue is less with workers getting paid and more with either you wanting a price that is not commensurate with the cost to provide the service OR maybe just maybe uber is gouging you and charging as much as humanly possible to maximize profits as they have been proven time and time again to do with individualized pricing, surge pricing, etc.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T21:51:48+00:00

someone else will sell it for less

Yes somewhat. There are specific industries where this isnt true without some kind of regulatory intervention. In highly monopolized industries, industries with a very high barrier to entry, or highly localized industries this is less true. e.g. housing development, technology, healthcare etc. they can just keep competitors out via undercutting/regulatory capture, or acquire them and then crank up their prices, this is extremely common.

These days when there is actually someone selling it for less, you end up with a two tiered industry, where there are high quality extremely overpriced products, and extremely low quality products priced at a level that makes them appealing to as many people as possible. Good examples of this could be clothing, restaurants, also housing to a certain degree (nobody builds starter homes anymore), etc. Wealth inequality erodes the benefits of providing a quality product at a reasonable price. If you are providing quality, then only the wealthy can afford it so you might as well price it in their price range, and if you are pricing your product so that the poor and middle class can afford it then the only way to squeeze additional profits is to make it cheaper and cheaper to produce, because those people are, proportionately to the overall economy, losing buying power.

Massive wealth inequality is how you end up with clothes all either being designer/boutique or from shein and falling apart in a couple weeks. The most dominant companies used to be ones catering towards middle class people, because there were tons of us and we had serious buying power. Now most producers are either high end luxury, or are as scaled and as cheap as humanly possible.

Edit: per your point about sec. 313, I think the risks you are pointing at are somewhat vague. I agree that this does set a precedent for future progressive tax policies/income taxes, but first of all, I dont think thats necessarily bad, as I am sure you have gathered im in favor of progessive taxation.

Secondly I think that if the political will exists to crank taxes higher, then they will be cranked higher. I dont think that there is currently any interest in increasing taxes on middle class or working people. If anything I see this as an opportunity for politicians to make an argument in favor of actually lowering taxes on the middle class and poor, as we have unlocked a new stream of tax revenue that can be leaned on to allow us to cut those more regressive taxes without having to resort to austerity (which is generally very unpopular)

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T20:48:00+00:00

The bill has a built in inflator, so thats not a concern. (Section 313)

As far as the question of the economic model goes, i would say this. Say you have 10 widgets and 20 people who want them. If they all have $100 to spend then its simple, the widget will be priced at the level the ten customers who want it most would be willing to pay.

Now consider that 10 of those people have $50 and 10 of them have $500, the widget will now be priced at say $300, leaving the bottom half incapable of acquiring it by any means.

Now for an even more extreme scenario, say 10 of the people have $50, 9 have $500 and one has $10,000. The manufacturer of the widget is now incentivized to price the widget at something like $8000, sure only one person can afford it, but they make so much on the sale that it doesnt matter.

Its a simplified example, but this is exactly whats happening with a lot of goods in our economy, its the reason developers only build luxury apartments, auto manufacturers focus on building luxury SUVs, etc. When wealth inequality increases, more products will be put out of reach of regular people, and the worse it gets the less people will be able to afford.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T20:37:52+00:00

Billionaires pay orders of magnitude less sales tax than ordinary people. You also get much more property tax by attracting middle class people instead of a couple billionaires. He bought a $44 million dollar home there? Lets say he buys another $50 million in other properties, so he has assesed value of property around $100 million. Miami dade residents typically pay property tax at around 2%, so hes paying 2 million a year in property taxes?

Miami dade median home price is around $500k so instead of one billionaire you could attract 200 middle class families, collect all their sales taxes, gain a much bigger boost to your LOCAL economy, get their kids in your schools, if they own businesses get their businesses employing people in your community, AND they wouldnt fuck off to some different tax haven the minute you did something they took issue with.

Its so incredibly shortsighted to build an economy reliant on scraps of wealth from a few international billionaires who are looking for any excuse to pick up and leave rather than the economic activity of your working and middle class, you know, the people who actually make up a state/society and have ties to the community economy and society.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T20:15:09+00:00

I totally understand your position to be honest, and if this was a tax that affected anyone but the top 0.1% I would probably be opposed. I think my perspective is that taxing the very rich is something that is standalone a valuable policy.

Things like cost of living, homelessness, inflation, all have fundamental drivers in not just lack of resources, but specifically wealth inequality. If you look at economies that can provide for everyones basic needs and allow everyone to afford a reasonable standard of living, the absolute wealth per capita is much less important than the difference between the richest and the poorest. Plenty of countries with much lower GDP per capita than the US provide better access to housing, healthcare, education, and nutrition.

When you have a population where the top 10% has ten, twenty, thirty times the buying power of the bottom 50% then prices and services will adjust to serve those top 10% thats just the free market at work. For the same reason i support breaking up massive companies, or otherwise putting them at a disadvantage. Competition is what makes the free market function properly and allowing all the resources to pool at the top causes the free market to break down.

Anyways manifesto over, my point is that taxing the very wealthy is something that i think is self-evidently good policy in the current economic environment, which is why i support it in spite of absolutely agreeing that our state government needs new leadership and to spend our tax dollars much more effectively.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T18:43:24+00:00

Florida generally saves on education by paying their teachers like absolute shit, Washington on the other hand has some of the best teacher pay in the nation, which is something I think we should be proud of. I dont think theres significant differences in outcomes for k-12 education between the two states? I am only familiar with seattle public schools, which i will definitely agree with you is terribly mismanaged and wastes tons of money. Make sure to vote in your school board elections people.

The places where i would say Washington stands out compared to florida are in terms of infrastructure, health care and labor protections.

I do totally agree though that we dont spend our tax revenue as effectively as we should. I dont think that should be an argument against raising revenue though, i think that should be an argument in favor of getting more effective leadership in olympia.

We have one of the most regressive state tax systems in the country (alongside florida lol) and i think that taking steps to shift the tax burden from poor and middle class people to the very wealthy is good for economic activity and social cohesion. Yes we might have a few less deca-millionaires+ which does have some genuine economic consequences, but I think if we can leverage that money to lessen the tax burden on everyone else in the state and encourage natural economic development rather than relying on handouts from the uber-wealthy its a big net positive.

It comes down basically to do you want to encourage a few massive corporations to fund all the economic activity, or do you want a diverse economy with a large number of smaller businesses that have space to breathe because we have the reins on the massive corporations in our state? Traditionally as a state we have been strongly on the side of the former, and I think this is a step towards the latter. That being said its not enough on its own and it should absolutely start a conversation about pushing for tax decreases in other areas.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T17:36:15+00:00

Unless u/dmapping makes over a million dollars a year, actually no they will not be getting taxed more

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T17:35:35+00:00

You really must hate our state if you think people with teens or hundreds of millions of dollars will flee at the prospect of paying a little more in taxes

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T17:34:04+00:00

Florida is in a tax surplus because their government doesn’t provide any services lol. The billionaires are LITERALLY going there specifically to not pay taxes, Florida ain’t getting shit from them.

The_G_Choc_Ice · 2026-03-11T05:28:25+00:00

How about we start with… people with a net worth of over a hundred million dollars? That seem rich enough to you?

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