NPI’s July 2021 survey of Seattle voters found deep support for JumpStart revenue plan

Hap­py Labor Day! In the runup to today’s cel­e­bra­tion of the gains won by work­ing peo­ple through­out our coun­try’s his­to­ry, Seat­tle’s Jump­Start rev­enue pack­age has been back in the news, most­ly because Ama­zon recent­ly dis­closed that it wants to hire a lot of peo­ple for posi­tions based in the Emer­ald City despite the City Coun­cil’s 2020 adop­tion of a new tax on big employ­ers that’s meant to fund needs like attain­able hous­ing, envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice, and com­mu­ni­ty development.

“Amazon’s hir­ing spree is con­cen­trat­ed in Seat­tle, where the com­pa­ny, Wash­ing­ton state’s largest pri­vate employ­er, has near­ly 12,500 open roles, more than in any oth­er city,” a Sep­tem­ber 1st arti­cle by Seat­tle Times reporter Kather­ine Long explained. (Those open roles are for jobs on Ama­zon’s cor­po­rate and tech side, though it’s also look­ing for more ware­house workers.)

An impor­tant sub­se­quent pas­sage in Long’s arti­cle notes that Ama­zon is doing all of this hir­ing in spite of the City Coun­cil’s deci­sion to enact Jump­Start.

“The company’s hir­ing plans offer a degree of rebuke to con­cerns from busi­ness groups that Seattle’s Jump­Start pay­roll tax, which took effect this year, could prompt large employ­ers like Ama­zon to leave the city. The Down­town Seat­tle Asso­ci­a­tion and Seat­tle Cham­ber of Com­merce, for instance, have warned that the tax, of between 0.7% and 2.4% of salaries over $150,000 for busi­ness­es with at least $7 mil­lion in pay­roll, could have a chill­ing effect on business.”

Dan­ny West­neat tacked on to Long’s report­ing in a col­umn than ran yes­ter­day.

“Yeah, the thing about that pay­roll tax — it’s just not a show­stop­per. It’s a per­cent­age or two, levied in tiers on salaries above $150,000,” West­neat observed. “Sure, Ama­zon could move every­one to Belle­vue to avoid it, but, believe it or not, tons of Seat­tle Ama­zo­ni­ans don’t want to com­mute to Belle­vue. And if Ama­zon were to move to most oth­er places around the coun­try, they’d pay more in income tax­es than this pay­roll tax anyway.”

That’s all true. But what’s also impor­tant to note is that unlike a few years ago, when the City Coun­cil approved a sim­i­lar tax on firms like Ama­zon, only to reverse itself a few weeks lat­er after polling showed the tax would like­ly not sur­vive a bal­lot fight, the Jump­Start plan enjoys deep sup­port from voters.

We know because we asked vot­ers for their views on Jump­Start back in July as part of our July 2021 Top Two sur­vey of the Seat­tle electorate.

We found that 67% of Seat­tle vot­ers sup­port Jump­Start, with 27% opposed and 6% not sure. That’s a mar­gin of well over two-to-one.

Notably, fifty per­cent of respon­dents — that’s half of every­one who took the sur­vey — said they “strong­ly” sup­port­ed the Jump­Start plan.

And these num­bers were obtained an entire year after the Coun­cil vot­ed to pass Jump­Start. Clear­ly, the pack­age has aged well with the pub­lic in addi­tion to hold­ing up just fine in court. (The Cham­ber chal­lenged its legal­i­ty in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, but so far, Jump­Start remains intact.)

Here is the exact ques­tion we asked and the respons­es that we received:

QUESTION: In July of 2020, the Seat­tle City Coun­cil levied a new tax on large employ­ers to fund eco­nom­ic relief and core ser­vices dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. The tax, which is expect­ed to raise more than $200 mil­lion per year for long term hous­ing, local busi­ness assis­tance and com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment, is only paid by employ­ers with over $7 mil­lion in annu­al pay­roll expens­es and who have at least one employ­ee mak­ing $150,000 a year or more. Do you sup­port or oppose this tax?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 67% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 50%
  • Some­what sup­port: 17%
• Oppose: 27%
  • Some­what oppose: 9%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 18%
• Not sure: 6%

Our poll of 617 like­ly August 2021 Seat­tle vot­ers was in the field through Mon­day, July 12th, through Thurs­day, July 15th. All respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The poll was con­duct­ed by Change Research for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

We’ve noticed across all of our polling that vot­ers in the Pacif­ic North­west are very enthu­si­as­tic about requir­ing the rich and big cor­po­ra­tions to pay more in tax­es. The inequity in our tax code and the chron­ic under­fund­ing of our essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices are both prob­lems that can be addressed with pro­gres­sive tax reform.

The coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has exposed even more painful­ly the need for tax reform at every lev­el. And it’s led to long over­due action. A few months after Seat­tle enact­ed Jump­Start, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture final­ly — final­ly! — vot­ed to approve a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy, in one of the biggest vic­to­ries ever for pro­gres­sive tax reform in this state. Like Jump­Start, that leg­is­la­tion is now being chal­lenged in court, but has yet to be chal­lenged at the ballot.

The Cham­ber’s oppo­si­tion, while mis­guid­ed, is to be expected.

Read­ing Long’s arti­cle from last week brought to mind a pas­sage from one of my old Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment text­books about lob­by­ing. The pas­sage was in a chap­ter about inter­est groups and their lob­by­ing activ­i­ties, and it not­ed that many busi­ness own­ers sim­ply don’t have much in com­mon aside from a desire for low­er tax­es and few­er reg­u­la­tions. All busi­ness­es would like low­er tax­es, so the Cham­ber fights for that, the text observed. (I’m paraphrasing.)

The prob­lem with this mind­set is that it views tax­es as an afflic­tion when in fact that is not the case. Tax­es are invest­ments. It is only by pool­ing our resources that we can afford all the things that busi­ness­es needs to be suc­cess­ful, whether that’s inter­state high­ways, air­ports, and sea­ports for get­ting goods to mar­ket, or courts to enforce con­tracts and resolve busi­ness dis­putes, or fire depart­ments to save build­ings from burn­ing down, or envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tions that stop pol­lu­tion and pre­vent deple­tion of renew­able resources like fish­eries and forests.

Busi­ness exec­u­tives know all this.

Yet many con­tin­ue to disin­gen­u­ous­ly argue for low­er tax­es on their com­pa­ny or their indus­try or even the pri­vate sec­tor as a whole despite the coun­try’s increas­ing­ly dire social and infra­struc­ture needs. Then some of those same folks turn around and say we’ve already bor­rowed too much and we can’t afford the invest­ments that Pres­i­dent Biden and con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats have proposed.

Actu­al­ly, what we can’t afford is to not make those investments.

If we fail to act now, we will still need what’s in the Jobs & Fam­i­lies Plan down the line, but it will cost us more. The Jobs & Fam­i­lies Plan does­n’t only make moral sense, it makes finan­cial sense, too, just like Wash­ing­ton’s new tax on the wealthy’s cap­i­tal gains or Seat­tle’s Jump­Start rev­enue plan.

Tax cuts do not cre­ate a foun­da­tion for broad pros­per­i­ty and nei­ther does aus­ter­i­ty. Only invest­ments in essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices do that, for, in the words of George Lakoff, the pri­vate depends on the public.

Busi­ness­es and busi­ness groups, Ama­zon includ­ed, need to frame shift. They need to stop look­ing at tax­es as a neg­a­tive and see them as a pos­i­tive, just as Seat­tle vot­ers are already doing, accord­ing to our research.

If Seat­tle is to house its home­less pop­u­la­tion, for instance (some­thing we know the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty wants to see hap­pen) then we need to con­struct more attain­able hous­ing. And we know from expe­ri­ence that mere­ly rely­ing on mar­ket forces to sup­ply that hous­ing isn’t going to work. That’s why it’s so impor­tant that we not only keep Jump­Start in place, but build on it.