Imagine taking a day off from work in a future without capitalism.
It might not feel as badly needed as it does now. You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it. You work as much as you are able and no more than needed, and you would control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills.
Speaking of bills: you don’t really have them anymore.
You have no debt. You don’t need health insurance. You don’t pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right. Your retirement is publicly funded. Food, education, energy, medicine, and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.
OK, enough about bills. What do you do on your day off? Maybe in the morning, you walk your kids to school, run errands, or go to a doctor’s appointment. In the afternoon, you might play a sport, practice a new skill, read, plan a trip. In the evening, you could meet up with friends or family and eat together, maybe go to the movies or down to the park.
Among the items on the DSA platform she is happy to defend: “Abolish the Senate,” “Replace the presidency and Supreme Court,” “Abolish ICE,” “Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone currently in the U.S. illegally,” “Defund the Pentagon,” “Abolish prisons,” “Government or public ownership of most large corporations.”
Watch this video to hear her say it with enthusiasm:
Fox: "Abolish the Senate?"
DSA Chair: "True"
Fox: "Abolish ICE?"
DSA Chair: "Absolutely"
Fox: "Abolish borders and give amnesty to anyone in the US illegally?"
This is mind bogglingly delusional and/or a deliberate set of lies.
While I can see this set of visions could be appealing to some people, I don’t think enough people will believe these same lies that have been told for 100+ years is going to gain traction in the age of the Internet. People know what happened in Venezuela. People know what happened in Cuba and East Europe. Just spend a day in the U.S., Germany, Denmark, Singapore, Hong Kong, or even France or England. Compare that to a day in Vietnam, Poland or Czechia. I have visited all those countries. And even though Poland and Czechia have been released from the bonds of heavy socialism for 30 years, you can easily still see the price they paid before rejecting socialism and accepting something approximating a free market. Vietnam is far worse off than any of those countries. Did they find their workers’ paradise by going full socialist fifty years ago? No. Not even close.
The socialist never stop lying, but maybe this surge in popularity will see their lies rejected before 100s of millions more people have to pay the price.
From the Greg Price thread on X:
THIS SHOULD BE IN AN AD FOR EVERY R running for Congress in Nov.
This is the new Democrat Party platform and Rs need to shout it from the fucking rooftops.
These people are insane. Show the world how insane they really are.
I hate to say this but please hear me out. For decades, I have made a daily Herculean effort to warn people about the dangers facing the West. My goal was to ensure that any auto-corrective process meant to address the problems would be a peaceful one. I fear that this window has closed. Prepare for astounding violence. It may not come tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. But it is coming. Save this post.
I have been feeling rather optimistic about the U.S. recently. No mass riots. The No Kings protests have been peaceful. Gun owner rights are on the rise. The violent crime rate has been dropping (if you believe the stats). Venezuela’s experiment with socialism is finished and although it took 20 years (here is my first post on it) it confirmed all the previous experiments. Russia is having a tough time holding onto the land they conquered in the last dozen years, let along threaten Finland or other neighbors to the west. Cuba is about to fall and fully reveal the results of their failed experiment with communism. The illegal immigrants to the U.S. are being deported. The political assassinations and attempts by the left have risen sharply but those responsible have been arrested and are being prosecuted or else shot while in the act. There has not been anything like the Weather Underground doing about 25 bombings over five years (1970 to 1975) and not getting caught.
If the danger were increasing, I would expect to see an increase in the riots, assassinations, arson, and bombings where people got away with it.
But there are reasons to be concerned. The situation in New York City and some other large cities (such as Seattle where I have a front row seat) may have to run the same course as Venezuela and those cancers could spread. Canada and the U.K. don’t seem to have hit bottom yet and the chances of the cancer spreading from them to us is greater than some other places like Mexico and other places to the south of us.
The national debt continues to be my biggest concern. But I don’t see that being a driver of “astounding violence.” Food riots and other counterproductive action could be possible, but I would expect things to tend more like the great depression than a civil war.
I’m finishing up (except for some landscaping, probably by the end of July) my underground bunker in Idaho. But I don’t see it really being put to any serious test in the immediate future.
Thoughts? Is Saad right? Or is his prediction only valid in his country (Canada)?
Communism through (my) ages: 1) When I was 15, a teacher told me “It isn’t as bad as they say, and makes a lot of sense.” 2) At about 19, college friends, “Socialism isn’t communism.” 3) At 20, on meeting my grandfather-in-law, “They are evil. We escaped in 1949.” 4) At 30, “China is a wonderful developing Democracy” 5) At 35, I was sent to communist China on business. It was a crowded, smelly, dirty, factory of despair and hopelessness. This I saw with my own eyes. 6) At 36, “China doesn’t count. Successful socialism is in northern Europe.” 7) I moved to northern Europe when I was 40. It was much nicer than China, but also felt like I was living in the past. I had to wait 6 months for a hernia operation. 8) When I was about 45, the migrant crisis began. The socialist/globalist/pacifist allowed them entry into every country, regardless how many crimes they committed along the way. Just 20 minutes from my house, in Calais, I was shocked to see migrants jumping onto trucks, breaking open the doors, scattering the contents across the highway, then climbing in. They went through the Chunnel and got out in England. 9) At 52, the soft socialism around me had transformed into globalism. I was told I had to call people by their preferred pronouns, though it was a lie, and even if I didn’t know what the preferences were. I quit. 10) I returned to the US, and am now 60. “Socialism” is no longer a dirty word here. People openly espouse the virtues of it. Politicians run as socialists and win.
Socialism has taken many forms, from the Bolshevism of Russia, to the CCP in China, the Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy, and the many forms of it found in Latin America. It is one of the two most destructive ideologies on earth. It is designed to deprive, despirit, and murder everything that comes in contact with it.
Socialism is a great lie at every level. It helps no one, not even those who benefit the most. This is because the cost is the imposition of one’s will on everyone else, and that destroys the soul of the usurper and the life of the oppressed.
Socialism always fails on its own, but only after destroying almost everything in its train. It can also be conquered. Those are the options.
Elon created $4tr in wealth for himself, his investors and employees. Politicians have created $39tr in debt for you, your children, and all the whiners complaining about Elon. Which is preferable?
Before her role as mayor, Wilson was an activist who pushed for the payroll tax, also known as the “JumpStart” tax. The Seattle City Council passed the measure in 2020, targeting large companies with employees making high salaries. In recent years, Seattle has relied heavily on the new revenue to balance its budget.
According to a new report from the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), the payroll tax is expected to collect $410 million in 2026. However, the DSA also blames the payroll tax for job loss, comparing tax conditions in Seattle and nearby Bellevue showing a stark tale of two cities.
The DSA report states that since the JumpStart payroll tax was implemented, downtown Seattle has lost around 30,000 jobs.
Between 2023 and 2025, Seattle shed 1.3% of its jobs, while Bellevue gained 12.6%.
The report also notes a divergence in real estate values: between 2020 and 2025, Seattle’s office properties declined 48% in value, while those in Bellevue rose 7%.
City officials say some of the core reasons why Seattle is in a budget deficit include inflation and tax revenue from other sources—specifically property and sales taxes—not coming in as projected.
I’m glad Barb and I live in Bellevue rather than Seattle. You can see the difference just driving through. The boarded-up shops are not the only clue. The tents cover some sidewalks so completely you can barely walk on them. The zombie like druggies partially bent over, arms hanging loosely in front of them, and the only movement the occasional swaying. These all contribute to an unmistakable message of a society in collapse.
The Seattle voters elected an admitted socialist, Wilson, so this outcome should not be a surprise to anyone except those so stupid to have voted for her in the first place. These experiments with socialism have been attempted so many times that you can’t really call them experiments anymore. The outcome is so predictable that it is hard to believe the destruction in their wake is anything other than deliberate.
Capriole Investments’ institutional buying model, which tracks Bitcoin demand from ETFs, corporate treasuries, and miner issuance, shows net institutional selling at around 450% of daily mined supply, equivalent to about 2,000 BTC per day.
In other words, large holders are selling 4-5x more Bitcoin than is mined each day.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs appear to be the biggest drag. Their flow line has fallen sharply below zero, suggesting ETF outflows are now overwhelming other sources of demand.
In the past month, for instance, these funds have witnessed nearly $27 billion in withdrawals, according to data resource Glassnode.
New York City is staring down a budget crisis of “historic magnitude,” one Mayor Zohran Mamdani says rivals the fallout from the Great Recession and can’t be solved with cuts alone (1).
“We are extending the executive budget deadline from this coming Friday until May 12th because a crisis of this scale cannot be solved without state action,” Mamdani said at a press conference on April 28, citing a deficit so large that it requires action beyond city hall.
Mayor Mamdani campaigned on a communist platform. The people of New York City voted for him. Now they are in the process of realizing what people have been saying in various ways for 100 years or more. Communism and socialism work fine… until you run out of other people’s money.
And, true to form, if you read the article, you will find the mayor wants help from New York state and it is not the mayor’s fault that they are billions of dollars short of having a balanced budget.
The Democrat governor of Colorado signed into law one of the most restrictive gun bans ever adopted in the United States. The law bans the manufacturing and selling of semiautomatic firearms. This is on top of the liberal state’s existing ban on high-capacity magazines. That’s just crazy.
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So, to all gun manufacturers in Colorado, my question to you is simple. Do you want to move back to America?
To all gun manufacturers in Colorado, my question for you is simple: do you want to move back to America? pic.twitter.com/JTiQdbmCGJ
— Governor Greg Gianforte (@GovGianforte) April 23, 2025
Good question. It is not just the gun industries either. Look at the “wealth taxes” and “millionaire taxes” and high regulations being implemented in the Democrat socialist run states. Business and people are leaving because the further you can distance yourself from such toxins the better your life, community, and future.
At 10:01 a.m. on June 12, 2026, Graham Platner, the freshly minted Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, posted the following on X:
“Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire.
Let’s make sure he’s also the last.”
No policy proposal. No discussion of tax brackets, carried-interest loopholes, or regulatory reform. Just a flat, public declaration that the existence of a single individual who has accumulated more wealth than any human in history is an intolerable moral emergency that must be prevented from ever happening again.
The sentence is not a critique of monopoly power, regulatory capture, or government favoritism. It is a death sentence pronounced on the category of human being who creates at scale.
It is the purest distillation of socialist psychology yet uttered by a major-party Senate candidate in the United States: Excellence has occurred. Make sure it never occurs again.
This is not an aberration. It is the logical endpoint of everything Platner has signaled since he entered the race.
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The correct response to “Let’s make sure he’s also the last” is not a technocratic defense of marginal tax rates.
It is a full-throated defense of the right of human beings to achieve without limit and without apology. It is the recognition that the alternative to Musk-scale creation is not a more equitable distribution of existing goods.
It is a slower, poorer, grayer world in which the best anyone can hope for is to be slightly less mediocre than their neighbors.
Maine does not need another politician who resents the existence of greatness.
It needs a political culture that treats the creation of a trillion dollars of value as evidence of national vitality rather than moral emergency.
The man who can make reusable rockets routine, who can force the automotive industry to electrify faster than it wanted to, who can put global communications infrastructure in orbit while governments dither…this man is not the problem. He is the proof that the problem is elsewhere.
Graham Platner’s tweet is a window into the soul of a politics that has given up on creation and now contents itself with the management of decline.
The only question left is whether the voters of Maine…and eventually the country…will ratify that surrender or reject it with the same ferocity that built the civilization now under attack.
The first trillionaire exists.
The question is not whether we can prevent another. The question is whether we still have the will to produce one.
The Australian government has spent the last decade introducing steep tax hikes to curb smoking, and, as a result, the country has the most expensive cigarettes in the world. The average price of mainstream cigarettes is 54.99 Australian dollars per pack (about $40). But the eyewatering prices have driven people to the black market.
The Australian government has spent the last decade introducing steep tax hikes to curb smoking, and, as a result, the country has the most expensive cigarettes in the world. The average price of mainstream cigarettes is 54.99 Australian dollars per pack (about $40). But the eyewatering prices have driven people to the black market.
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between 2016 and 2025, the price of legal cigarettes nearly tripled while tobacco duty revenue more than halved. As a result, the Australian Treasury has downgraded tobacco excise revenue by $8 billion over the next five years in the latest federal budget.
Lower tax revenue is hardly something to mourn, but Australia’s collapsing legal tobacco market has come with a far darker consequence: a severe wave of gang violence, including firebombings and shootings. Since 2023, organized crime groups linked to Australia’s illicit tobacco and vape market have been tied to “more than 200 firebombings,” “at least 3 homicides,” and “multiple other non-fatal violent attacks,” according to the Australian Intelligence Commission.
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Australia is yet another cautionary tale of what happens when the government polices the personal choices of adults and opens up a new front in the war on drugs. Even if the Australian government were to now reverse course and reduce tobacco taxes, illegal purchase has become normalized. It will be far more difficult to move customers out of the thriving black market that the taxes have created than it would have been in the first place.
“This is no surprise!”, you might say. And, of course, many people recognize the pattern from the alcohol prohibition era in the U.S. and the current recreational drug market. Some will even predict a similar pattern will happen with firearm bans in the U.S. Yet, here is the part that just baffles me. Yeah, I know, it is irrational to assume people will be rational. Some of those same people will absolutely insist that “Big Phara”, “Big Oil”, or even “The Jews” can control some market.
When I hear someone claim that there is some cheap cure of cancer, some other disease or a dramatic life extension, or a gadget that can dramatically increase your gas mileage, or some other too good to be true claim, but the pharmaceutical/oil/whatever companies are suppressing it, I roll my eyes. If that were true then why when government attempt to dramatically increase the tax like with cigarettes in Australia or even completely ban alcohol other recreational drugs, and prostitution, the market still finds a way to deliver the product?
If a complete government ban on something does not prevent just about any room temperature high school dropout from obtaining the product, then how can the cure for cancer, old age, and the creation of 100 MPG 1970 Ford Galaxies be suppressed? And furthermore, as in the case of the dimwitted high school age kids, why doesn’t “everyone” know where to get a miracle cure for cancer and a 250 MPG gasoline powered Toyota Corolla?
Why can’t they understand that there is overwhelming evidence that the market always find a way?
It is easy to state the obvious, “People are just stupid.” But I don’t think that explains it. Many of the people believing this crap are not stupid in the general sense. I think it is a more subtle psychological issue in involving one or more of the following things and probably others:
Some people get great pleasure believing they know something other people do not know–to the point of “knowing” outrageous things because of the feelings they get from their delusions.
Many people don’t understand how markets work and even the world in general. In their bafflement they imagine things to explain things which are mysterious to them. Witches, ghosts, and demons are just a different manifestation of the same mental deficiency.
Some people grew up in a family or even an entire culture of these beliefs.
For me, I keep reminding myself, “It is not rational to expect people to be rational.” But I really just want to retire to my underground bunker in Idaho and let the rest of the world rot in their delusions.
In the impersonal offices of North American education in the 1970s, a Canadian educator named Laurence J. Peter observed with clinical irony how hierarchies devoured talent. He saw systematic promotions: the excellent teacher became a mediocre principal, the competent principal a clumsy bureaucrat, the bureaucrat a disastrous civil servant. From that observation emerged the Peter Principle, published in 1969: “in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence.” Promotion is based on prior success, not on aptitude for the new role. The result is that organizations end up filled with people who no longer master what they do, but who can no longer be demoted without breaking the system.
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The left’s social engineers, eternal dreamers of planned paradises, respond to the disaster they themselves generate by demanding more hierarchy, more State, more positions for their faithful. When the machine clogs with incompetents, the solution is never to shrink the monster’s size; it is to inject it with more militants and more budget. The cycle is inexorable. Loyalty over competence, failure over correction, excuses over reality. And in the end, as always, the bill is paid by those at the bottom, while the red Peters keep rising, with beatific smiles, toward their next level of catastrophe.
The original post was in Spanish, the English translation was by X.
While I’m sure the above is an important component of socialism disasters and government in general, there are other issues as well. As I have brought them up many times before (and here are but two examples) I will not dilute the current observation.
Capitalism lifts people out of poverty. And that’s the only thing it does.
But that’s the only thing that really matters.
Imagine 100 kids who have to cross France to visit their sick grandmother. In 1800, they’re all on foot. Equal. Except half will never make it. Disease, exhaustion, accident. The others will take 3 weeks.
That’s the “equality” we miss.
Then capitalism arrives. The smartest ones build carts. Then trains. Then cars. Then planes. Then Elon Musk launches SpaceX and works on rockets that will do Paris-Tokyo in 40 minutes.
At every step, the gap widens between the one who can pay the most and the one who takes the cheapest option. Always.
And at every step, today’s cheapest is better than yesterday’s most expensive.
A minimum-wage worker in 2026 takes a Ryanair flight from Paris to Marseille for 30 bucks. Louis XIV, the most powerful man in France, took 5 days by carriage for the same trip, risking death from an infection upon arrival.
Today’s poor travels better than yesterday’s king.
Today’s poor eats better than yesterday’s king (scurvy was common at Versailles).
Today’s poor has access to more information in 10 seconds on his phone than all of Europe’s royal libraries combined in 1700.
And here comes the socialist. He looks at Elon Musk in his rocket and says: “That’s outrageous. We need to tax it.”
He doesn’t look at the minimum-wage worker on his Ryanair. He doesn’t look at the kid from Bangladesh escaping extreme poverty because he works in a textile factory exporting to Europe. He looks at the top. And he calls that “fighting inequality.”
That’s the intellectual scam.
Because what he calls “reducing inequalities” is really preventing the boat from rising while pretending to lower the yacht.
The numbers are there, indisputable. In 1800, 90% of humanity lived in extreme poverty. Today, less than 8%. That drop is the greatest moral victory in human history. It wasn’t produced by a revolution. Not by a government program. Not by a manifesto.
It was produced by people who had the right to create, sell, keep what they earned, and reinvest.
And that’s precisely the engine that socialist bureaucracy has captured in France.
The mechanism is simple. Capitalism produces wealth. Then the state arrives, takes 57% of GDP, redistributes a portion, and tells you: “See, without me you’d have nothing.” As if the baker should thank the guy who steals half his batch every morning.
Worse: it gradually forbids people from creating that wealth. It smothers startups under regulations, payroll taxes, permits, lifetime contracts, 50-employee thresholds. Then it wonders why growth is zero. And concludes that it needs to tax even more.
That’s exactly what Hayek described in 1944. A country that confuses “equality of outcome” with “justice” always ends up poorer and less free. France is the textbook case.
Meanwhile, in Poland, Estonia, Ireland, Singapore, they did the opposite. Low taxes, strong property rights, light state. Result: they catch up to us or surpass us in living standards in 30 years.
Capitalism isn’t a system that creates the rich. It’s a system that destroys poverty.
And the only reason we still doubt it in France is that we’ve handed economic discourse over to people whose job is to live off other people’s money.
The original post was in French and was automatically translated to English thanks to the fruits of capitalism. But the really important point is far, far more important.
Anyone who expresses concern about the gap between the rich and the poor needs to be given a harsh lessen in reality. They somehow believe that, as I have said before, equality of poverty and misery is more desirable than a range of prosperity and happiness. Even the most poverty-stricken people in our country have access to medicines that cure infections that killed a large percentage of even the wealthiest people of 500 years ago. The infant mortality and the percentage of women who died in childbirth was frightening just 150 years ago. And as pointed out in the QOTD the ability to travel by the poor of today exceeds the ability of kings a few hundred years ago.
Worldwide, free markets have essentially eliminated hunger. What would have been regarded as an unimaginable food supply 80 years ago is now taken for granted. When I was growing up it was common to have a parent in the U.S. tell their child, “Finish the food on your plate, children are starving in India.” * That doesn’t happen anymore. India now exports food. Look at the pictures of people in poverty around the globe from 100 years ago. They have shrunken faces, ribs resembling a skeleton, and children have bloated stomachs. Today, the poor in the U.S. are frequently obese from recreational food consumption.
If someone whines about the gap between the rich and the poor, they need to be told something. Tell them that gap, as seen in today’s capitalist society, is not just an indicator, but a blaring locomotive whistle of a signal. That signal is that the “poor” have wealth beyond the dreams of nearly all kings who have ever walked the earth.
* Sure, that doesn’t make any sense. What difference does it make to children thousands of miles away whether I finished the string beans on my plate or not? But they did say that. Perhaps it was to indicate we should be thankful for our situation rather than complain about the taste/texture/etc. of our bountiful food.
I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super overblown. And if — the ones that leave, like, bye.
Katie Wilson Seattle Mayor May 1, 2026
That comment and laugh, combined with the applause and cheers from the crowd is going to increase the number of wealthy people leaving the state by a significant margin. Barb and I are far short of a million dollar/year income, and it pisses me off.
It is also interesting that she goes on to say that Seattle has the ability to create an even more “progressive tax” than Washington state and King County. And that it’s not good for the Seattle business environment to have a higher cost of doing business that neighboring Bellevue (where we live) and she encourages Bellevue to increase taxes to match Seattle. She appears oblivious Bellevue is a much nicer town than Seattle. Here is a comparison by Copilot:
Crime Rates
Bellevue consistently reports much lower crime than Seattle across all major categories.
Violent Crime: Seattle 32.3 vs. Bellevue 9.6 (index; lower is safer).
Property Crime: Seattle 76.9 vs. Bellevue 45.6.
Crime Index (Numbeo): Bellevue 28.31 vs. Seattle 55.36.
Safety Walking at Night: Bellevue “High” (65.91) vs. Seattle “Low” (38.44).
Takeaway: Bellevue’s crime levels are less than half of Seattle’s in most categories, making it one of the safest cities in the region.
School Quality
Bellevue is widely regarded as having one of the best public school systems in Washington, while Seattle’s school quality varies heavily by neighborhood.
Bellevue School District is ranked #1 in Washington.
Seattle’s school quality is variable, with strong pockets but inconsistent performance across the city.
Takeaway: If school quality is a priority, Bellevue is the clear winner.
Other Quality‑of‑Life Measures
Cost of Living & Housing
Bellevue is 10–20% more expensive for rent and has a median home price around $1.3M–$1.6M, compared to Seattle’s $850K–$900K.
Bellevue homes tend to be newer, with larger lots and more modern construction. Seattle offers more historic homes and diverse neighborhoods.
Stability & Growth
Bellevue’s housing market is more stable and predictable, with stronger appreciation since COVID.
Seattle’s market shows higher volatility but strong recovery cycles.
And queried about companies which have left Seattle for Bellevue:
multiple major companies have been shifting workers and office space from Seattle to Bellevue, driven by concerns about safety, taxes, and business climate, while Bellevue’s cleaner environment, stronger schools, and rapid office development have made it increasingly attractive.
Why Businesses Are Moving: Key Drivers
1. Safety, Cleanliness, and Worker Experience
A recurring theme in reporting is that downtown Seattle’s rising crime and disorder have pushed companies to look east.
The Wall Street Journal highlighted that companies are choosing Bellevue because of its cleaner streets, lower crime, and better schools.
Executives explicitly cite safety as a deciding factor: “Clean and safe is everything and Seattle is not that.”
This aligns with the broader trend of companies wanting environments where employees feel secure returning to the office.
2. Tax and Regulatory Environment
Seattle’s business climate has become more contentious:
Amazon began shifting thousands of jobs to Bellevue after Seattle attempted a $275-per-employee head tax in 2018.
Analysts describe Seattle’s environment as “hostile to business”, citing high taxation, B&O tax burdens, and new service taxes.
Bellevue, by contrast, is perceived as more predictable and business‑friendly.
3. Office Space and Development Boom
Bellevue has been aggressively building modern office space:
Since 2021, Bellevue added ~3.9M sq. ft. of office space vs. Seattle’s ~2.6M sq. ft.
Vacancy in Seattle’s top-tier office space is near 34.6%, signaling a struggling downtown.
Bellevue’s office rents have surpassed Seattle’s ($64/sq ft vs. $51), showing companies are willing to pay more for the Bellevue environment.
This is a strong market signal: demand is shifting east.
Which Companies Are Moving or Expanding in Bellevue?
Amazon
Grew from “almost nothing” to 14,000 employees in Bellevue, with plans for 25,000.
Shift accelerated after political clashes with Seattle’s City Council.
Snowflake
Moved 700+ employees into a new 326,000 sq. ft. Bellevue office instead of relocating to downtown Seattle.
TikTok, OpenAI, Robinhood
All have taken significant Bellevue office space in recent years.
Other Tech Firms
Multiple reports describe a broader “tech exodus” from Seattle to Bellevue, driven by quality‑of‑life and business‑climate concerns.
Summary Table: Business Environment Comparison
Factor
Bellevue
Seattle
Crime & Safety
Lower crime; cleaner streets
Higher crime; downtown safety concerns
Business Climate
Predictable, business‑friendly
Higher taxes; regulatory friction
Office Development
Rapid growth; modern buildings
Slower growth; high vacancy
Corporate Migration
Amazon, TikTok, OpenAI expanding
Losing square footage and headcount
Schools & Talent Appeal
Highly rated schools attract families
More variable school quality
Bottom Line
Bellevue has become the preferred hub for Big Tech expansion, while Seattle faces headwinds from safety issues, taxation, and downtown decline. Companies aren’t abandoning Seattle entirely, but the center of gravity has clearly shifted east.
Her solution to retain business is for Bellevue to become more like Seattle rather than Seattle to become more like the successful Bellevue. Since Wilson is an admitted socialist, this should not be a surprise. To socialists, near equality of poverty and misery is more desirable than a range of prosperity and happiness.
Just as I predicted yesterday…. MSM will falsely claim the Secretary of the Navy was fired because of Battleships.
And the NYTimes is actually worse than I thought. Let me explain….
The mainstream media will make this about the ships because the defense “experts” never want more hulls. They want money flowing into consulting fees, AI “solutions,” and think tank white papers. Steel produces nothing for the Beltway class. A flight deck you can launch F-35s off of does not generate PowerPoints.
But the NYTimes is running an even more sinister play.
Throughout the Biden administration, and later during DOGE’s audit work, I translated every major spending bill into a unit every American can actually visualize: one nuclear aircraft carrier.
Nuclear supercarrier cost: $15 billion.
Biden’s BEAD rural broadband program, which connected zero homes to the internet: $42.5 billion, or roughly three carriers.
Pete Buttigieg’s infrastructure package: $1.1 trillion, or seventy three carriers.
Total DOGE savings to date: $215 billion, or fourteen carriers.
Known Somali-linked fraud in Minnesota, per federal prosecutors: $18 billion, or one carrier plus an Arleigh Burke destroyer.
Why do I keep doing this?
Because for the past two decades the NYTimes has run the same story on loop: the military is the reason for America’s skyrocketing national debt.
That is a psyop. It conditions Americans to believe that steel and sailors, not social programs and grift, are what is bankrupting the country.
Human beings are not wired to understand $15 billion. The mind goes blank at that scale. But every American, left or right, understands the sheer weight and menace of a nuclear aircraft carrier. It is the most visible, most photogenic instrument of state power on earth.
At first, I thought it was serious post. As I started writing up my comments, I looked a little deeper. Her bio says:
Dr. with a PhD in gender studies, global climate crisis advocate. Trans Rights are human rights. R word.
Why am I not surprised… Wait a minute. Here are some more posts:
School is coming back, this semester I am teaching the kids about their gender identity and how they don’t need to be bullied into accepting binary lies.
If you have any ideas for activities, please let me know. It’s for years 2-5.
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White people make me sick. You’re all so damn racist.
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Why is MAGA so mad at a gay couple having a baby?
The baby needs to be taught not to be so bigoted and just accept the world has changed.
Okay. That settles it. It is a parody account. You got me. Poe’s Law strikes again.
This is the most repeated claim in American tax politics and one of the least supported by actual data. The top 1% of earners take in 22% of total income and pay 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earn about half the nation’s income and pay 72% of its taxes. The bottom half of earners, collectively, pay roughly 3% of the tax revenue. The United States, in fact, has the most progressive income-tax system in the developed world.
When we studied what happened to delivery drivers’ earnings after Seattle’s payment rule took effect, we found that despite base pay per delivery roughly doubling, their total monthly earnings barely changed. That’s because competition among drivers for delivery tasks intensified while customers made fewer orders and tipped less on each order in the aftermath. Those effects combined washed out almost all of the intended gains.
Andrew Garin Associate Professor of Economics, Carnegie Mellon University
Brian K. Kovak Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
Yuan An Ph.D. Student in Economics, Carnegie Mellon University
The “laws” of economics are not as certain as the laws of physics where things are measured, and results accurately predicted out to many decimal points. But on certain topics you can count on being right out to +/- 10%. One of the things which is almost certain is the government “help” isn’t. Government can shuffle money around and make winners and losers. But in doing that they take their own share leaving less money for the people actually doing the work.
You can fight the laws of economics, but the law always wins.
We have a great place for agriculture. We have the right climate and soils, but our cost of doing business is so much higher. The problem is Olympia. They just don’t understand agriculture — how we have to compete against other states and other countries.
I can not tell you how many people in the last couple of months have told me they have to leave Washington State. Today someone told me he and his wife were looking for a new place to live. The currently living in Lewiston Idaho. His wife found a nice home in Clarkston, Washington just across the river from Idaho where he has his own business. He pointed out to his wife what the business tax rate in Washington and that was enough to kill the Clarkston house without going into all the gun issues.
Washington State Democrats are full blown socialists, and some even wear that badge with pride. Socialism always kills businesses, they take your guns, and sometimes then murder their citizens, too. Don’t give socialists your support or your tax dollars. Move out of socialist states.
