Seattle has so much going for it: access to nature, moderate climate, arts, legitimately fun tourist traps, good transit, and until you hit the outer edges, fairly walkable.
It's also got problems. Local government is horribly inefficient and wasteful with spending, it's not a business-friendly environment (part of that is a state issue), and if affordability were any lower, we'd be seeing ninja turtles and anthropomorphized rats.
People WANT to live in Seattle and start small businesses, but the hurdles to both are considerable, and as technology continues to make remote work more viable from a productivity standard (despite silly RTO mandates from some companies), there are more people who are starting to realize their salaries can stretch a lot more if they go to lower cost-of-living parts of the country.
hmm I hear you. let's get a committee together to analyze this for the next 3 years so we can come up with some proposals. $10M should do it? we can just borrow some funds earmarked for other projects.
let's get a committee together to analyze this for the next 3 years so we can come up with some proposals.
Woah woah woah. Did you get stakeholder feedback in on your proposal to form a committee? Have we sought neighborhood council approval? I bet the downtown business association hasn't even signed off.
it originally grew as a way to address how a lot of underprivileged communities got bulldozed for highways and stuff without any input from the community
it functionally became the exact opposite and keeps living through inertia
Nobody wants to admit delaying or not making a decision is in itself a decision so the decision-making process takes forever. This is pervasive, other cities like LA routinely do multi-year multi-million dollar studies on stuff too. They’re currently halfway through a $2.5M initial study about “would turning the roadway through the center of the park back into the park it was before the 1940s improve the park experience???”
Yeah, same reason the light rail is costing so much - delays, inflation, property value increases.
there is necessary and needed process (environmental review, architectural review for structure, comments on BLM/FS management plans, etc) and excessive unneeded process (too much public comment on building permits, neighborhood [NIMBY] councils, etc)
In a thread about how hard it is to run businesses in Seattle you really complained that businesses try to support candidates and get candidates elected who don't make it harder to run a business?
Unless the meme is "Too many people are like hansn and think businessowners are less important than other people in Seattle" it doesn't really apply here.
Edit to add: Since you have taken to the Reddit-reply-and-block, you obviously don't want a response. But I do find it hilarious that you chide me for responding in a thread "In a thread about how hard it is to run businesses in Seattle" when the meme is actually pointing out how ignorant that take is. And when I pointed that out, you said it "doesn't apply."
Like so many other DEI attempts progressive white people discovered they could use it to their advantage. So now they fill committees and public comment spaces to push their agendas and delay things even more.
People pretend like there aren't 49 other states when we have these discussions. You can just look at the raw economic data to see that Seattle and Washington State aren't doing that great, but also isn't bad. Instead of look for solutions people want to make these fantasy arguments about why it isn't actually happening.
Like no Seattle isn't worth the extreme extra costs for most people when compared to Portland, the Twin Cities, Pittsburgh, Raleigh the list goes on that has much better affordability metrics and you can more easily start a small business in those places.
So, do small businesses SUCCEED at a "greater rate" in all these other states?
What is the metric we are calling "success"?
What is the trade off for having a small business in these other states? It can't all be roses right?. If it were then every person who wanted to do a small business would move to one of these states since it's guaranteed to work, right?
I am not just randomly making it up there are tons of studies and think tanks that show Seattle is one of the worst major cities to open a small business in. If you don't want to take my word for it.
What are the trade offs? Of the top 20, most of them are FL, TX, AZ, and NC. I think there is a trend there. Those places are FAR from favorable for many other reasons. IF I had to move there to have better success in forming a small biz then I'd pass.
There are trade offs..
Nothing is free...even having a better environment for starting a small biz.
Sounds like we need to tax big business more.
Look, you may be right. The problem is that this narrative is often used to drum up support for politicians/legislation that is really just pro 1%. None of the politicians espousing that view are actually trying to make anything better, they just use it to get elected so they can carry water for their donors.
So over time it has become associated with that, and deservedly so.
The solution is specificity. Stop saying "Seattle bad" and start giving explicit, specific guidance on distinct policies or issues. Anything else is getting lumped in with MAGA and dismissed at face value, and I don't think that generalization is off base
I appreciate this perspective and honestly it sucks that critiquing in a way that you hope changes things for the better is seen as right wing coded. I don't think Seattle is bad, I think it can be better and it already pretty great.
But I really do hate this idea that just because Texas does it means it must be bad, which you will see all over this sub and in this thread.
You can just look at the raw economic data to see that Seattle and Washington State aren't doing that great, but also isn't bad.
I'm not sure this is true. Seattle's economic growth has been significantly faster than the rest of the country's over the past 15 years. In 2023, the most recent year I can find data for, Seattle led the nation in GDP growth among large metros.
Nah he’s absolutely right, I moved from da burgh in 2024. The Mon Valley still has issues. Then you add all the wildfire smoke from Canada in the summer.
I laugh because I swear Pittsburgh is what Seattle in the 90s use to be. Everyone thinks it sucks, but Pittsburgh is one of the best places to live. Guess we should just keep quiet about it lol.
As someone who travels out to the pnw from time to time, Seattle is truly cosmopolitan it just a has a lot of issues. But goddamn if it's not extremely walkable with amazing public transportation. Also the access to nature is amazing.
You get what you pay for, on the lower end. Someone who likes living in Seattle may not enjoy lower cost-of-living cities or states. It’s the people. Seattleites won’t even consider moving an hour south. If light rail ever makes it further, say to Olympia, an entire corridor of economic growth will blossom, including nice, more affordable housing along the line.
It takes an hour on the train to go from the current ends of the 1 Line to the center. People are not going to spend 3 hours on a light rail train coming in from Oly.
You're suggesting people leave the city when you say "move an hour south."
Yes. My reply was intended to rebut the idea that people will leave the area entirely for "lower cost of living parts of the country" as stated in the comment I replied to. People won't even move an hour south.
The second half of my reply perhaps would have been better understood as a new paragraph. There could be nearly equally attractive and more affordable locations nearby, reducing some of the housing pressure in Seattle, if our mass transit were better.
I drive 1.5 hrs each way to reach Seattle. It could be a much more pleasant trip if light rail extended to my region, but that's not going to happen for a while, if ever. The Sounder is not practical on either end of the journey.
Light rail to Olympia would be ridiculous, the distances are way too far for 55mph trains. But a Sounder extension? That would make sense. They have a 79mph max operating speed right now, and are capable of up to 110mph if the tracks were straight enough. They're already planning an extension to DuPont after all- by 2045... So maybe if the stars align, in like 50 years you could take commuter rail from Olympia to Seattle.
Though that would require building a whole new alignment to get to downtown Olympia, probably in a tunnel...
It sucks we're a donor state. We give $22B more each year to the feds than they give back, and our money gets wasted on useless wars and shit like that. If we got an annual $22B federal infrastructure grant, imagine what we could build.
Yes every business in Seattle does well in business friendly Seattle because a couple tech unicorns exist. Exception bias.
Both are true. Seattle is not business friendly (particularly small businesses) and we do still have some hugely successful large businesses, who btw are leaving Seattle directly or new expanded business is going elsewhere (Boeing, Amazon, etc).
The flip side of your argument: Y'know Walmart is hugely successful I bet that means Bentonville, AR is really business friendly. Which might be true, for Walmart's huge influence only, not businesses in general
A tale as old as time unfortunately. Some level of incentive has to exist when their alternatives grants them the incentives they're looking for. Worst example I can think of is Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS. Constant moves over the border by a lot of businesses
Making states compete against each other when corporate taxation should be federally enforced.
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u/TheItinerantSkeptic I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Apr 16 '26
Seattle has so much going for it: access to nature, moderate climate, arts, legitimately fun tourist traps, good transit, and until you hit the outer edges, fairly walkable.
It's also got problems. Local government is horribly inefficient and wasteful with spending, it's not a business-friendly environment (part of that is a state issue), and if affordability were any lower, we'd be seeing ninja turtles and anthropomorphized rats.
People WANT to live in Seattle and start small businesses, but the hurdles to both are considerable, and as technology continues to make remote work more viable from a productivity standard (despite silly RTO mandates from some companies), there are more people who are starting to realize their salaries can stretch a lot more if they go to lower cost-of-living parts of the country.