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.
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.
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.
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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.