The tumultuous summer of 2020, when illegal activists from the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” (CHAZ) seized control of 14 city blocks in Seattle, occurred four years ago. But that doesn’t imply that wild concepts aren’t still developing in the Northwest.
Three worrying tendencies are brewing in Seattle that might have disastrous economic effects, even though the drug use, violence, and attacks on police officers associated with the CHAZ encampment may no longer dominate national news.
First, Seattle’s progressive City Council approved a foolish ordinance requiring delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats to pay delivery drivers more than $26 per hour, despite the business community’s objections.
At night, the Seattle Space Needle
Seattle citizens are beginning to lose faith in their elected authorities, at the same time as they got weary of CHAZ in the summer of 2020. (Source: Getty Images/John Moore)
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The “PayUp” rule, as it is known, requires an annual compensation of almost $60,000, which is significantly more than the beginning pay of essential professionals such as emergency medical technicians (EMTs), who typically earn about $24 per hour in Washington state.
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The early effects of the ordinance have been disastrous, far from the economic boom that its proponents had expected.
Specifically, following its introduction, demand for delivery services fell precipitously. One driver said to King-5 Seattle, “I don’t have anything. I refuse to spend hours waiting on a single freakin’ order.”
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Furthermore, small companies in the neighborhood are also hurting, not just employees. Seattle-based shops have lost over $14 million in sales on DoorDash’s platform between February and May of this year.
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Furthermore, according to data from the Washington Alliance for Innovation and Independent Work, Seattle companies who depend on third-party delivery apps have already lost more than $28 million in sales, a figure that increases daily as long as the PayUp law is in place.
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But the City Council wasn’t done imposing further levies and fees. A new 10-cent per-order tax for internet deliveries will also be imposed starting in January for delivery services.
The attempt to thwart actions to address the repercussions of the PayUp law is a second unsettling pattern that is becoming apparent in Seattle. Instead, in order to stay in power and carry out its agenda, the activist City Council of the city keeps pushing all the buttons and bending all the laws.
Sensible Council members, lead by President Sara Nelson, saw the harm caused by PayUp less than six months after it went into force. They planned to lower the minimum salary for delivery drivers to $19.97, which is equal to Seattle’s hourly minimum wage.
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Unfortunately, two council members who supported that sensible change were targeted by the anti-business left, who successfully got one of them to recuse herself, by trying to prevent them from voting on the measure through the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission.
The alleged “violations” committed by the concerned council members? An apparent “conflict of interest” resulted from family ties to the restaurant and hotel industries. By such reasoning, no member of the city council with a background in business could vote in favor of any broad policy that would assist small companies in the community.
Despite publicly apologizing to the noisy minority of radical protestors, the Seattle City Council has finally acknowledged that it is unable to assist small businesses in the community.
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Last but not least, the minimum wage in King County, which includes Seattle, was increased to $20.29, the highest amount in the country. Even though Washington has the highest minimum wage requirement in the country—$16.28—activists in charge of Seattle’s city government felt that amount was insufficient. The compromise plan, which also establishes a minimum pay of $19.97 per hour, would modify the delivery superwage.
California, a state two states south, raised the minimum wage at fast-food outlets from $16 to $20 in April, and the consequences for the economy are already being felt. A major trade organization has conducted analysis that shows 10,000 jobs have been lost in only the first two months.
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Restaurants have lowered their operating hours and hours in order to cover these higher expenses. Even a few well-known eateries have been driven into bankruptcy. The situation has gotten so bad that even radical California Governor Gavin Newsom, who had previously endorsed the $25 per hour requirement for healthcare workers, has decided to postpone it.
Indeed, we are all in favor of the welfare of the laborers that these laws purport to protect. Costs are going up, people are suffering, and nobody likes the thought of hardworking individuals struggling to make ends meet for no personal reason.
But penalizing businesses with capricious and unjust taxes or giving special treatment to a certain industry at the expense of others simply makes matters worse for everybody.
Seattle citizens are beginning to lose faith in their elected authorities, at the same time as they got weary of CHAZ in the summer of 2020. For instance, the election of three moderates last year turned the tide of power against the progressives.
Hopefully, common sense wins out. These unfair taxes and levies will be seen in four years as historical artifacts, a throwback to a time when city streets were once home to lawless encampments.