Howard Schultz blasts Seattle in op-ed, but why didn't he say something sooner?

What's happening in the business climate in Washington state? Look, I mean, I think we can look at Seattle and get like a taste of what the rest of the state is going to be dealing with soon once the income tax, if it's not repealed, if it ends up taking effect, because Seattle has been targeting success, jobs, entrepreneurs with sort of punishing taxation for some time. And they're seeing the results of it already. They have been for several years. There are more jobs leaving by the day. I think the question I have is when is the business community going to grow a spine? When is the business community, the people who are still here, who are tethered here, who have been here, so many of them, it's crazy to watch them sort of try to continue to placate the left as if like, oh, we'll be a little nice to them and maybe they won't come after us again. Now, one of those entities I've been critical of is the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. And their past leader was making donations to people like Governor Bob Ferguson's campaign. And then he turns around and what does he do? He passes the largest tax increase in state history into law. So on Sundays with subscribers, I had on the show, the new head of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to talk about this very issue. This segment is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Future 42. Turn your frustration into action at future42.org. Make sure you sign up for their newsletter to be alerted to opportunities to do just that. So the new head of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce is Joe Wynn. Familiar face on the show. I would say a friend of the show. Joe was a very progressive Washington state senator, very pro-tax. And then he was appointed as the head of the Department of Commerce by Governor Bob Ferguson. But he left that job pretty quick. I think once he saw how the sausage is made and how much taxpayer money they waste, I think he was like, wow, this is really bad. So his mindset has started to shift a little bit over time. And then he was appointed the head of the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, which I thought was crazy because it's like he's been in his policies and his votes. I mean, his name was on the law to tax capital gains. He was one of the main drivers of the tax on capital gains. And then they put him in charge of the business community in Seattle. It just was weird to me. But it's clear based on our conversation, at least in part, that Joe Wynn has had some changes of heart when it comes to how Democrats, his fellow Democrats, are treating the business community. One of the very glaring issues that I see right now is the disconnect between the business community and the political community. I actually see that as part of the core problem that we're facing. And you see it, right? You see it in a lot of the commentary that I've seen from my colleagues of, oh, people aren't going to leave. They're not going to leave, right? Or the commentary that you brought up that the mayor had. Objectively, that's false. I know personally people who've left, right? And I know personally who they're using as their tax attorneys and whatever to go. And the part that gives me the most pause is, first off, that's just not us. That's not our values in Washington State. That's not our values in Seattle to tell people to leave. But the other part, too, is if you look at the way the tax policies are done, there's a more pragmatic and fundamental reason why I think it's a problem. So there's one thing to say tax the rich, and you think of this nebulous rich. The city of Seattle kind of has done that, where if you look at Jumpstart, if you look at B&O, if you look at social housing, of all the people and the businesses in this city, 100% of the budget growth since 2020, since Jumpstart, is on basically payroll. So there's over 50,000 businesses in Seattle. About 500 have some obligation under the payroll tax. Only about 10 really pay it, and really it's just one, and we know who that is. So even if the vast majority of people and their businesses stay, even if 90% of the people in the businesses stay, even 0.01%, that would devastate the budget. So even a more practical perspective, it's not great that it happened. She's new. I give her some grace. I hope she learns from it. But the way that we've structured our tax code, unfortunately, has highly concentrated our revenue streams into largely one company and a handful of companies. And I think that is a problem, right? So we need to diversify it. But part of it, too, is that it just, I don't know. My reaction is that I'm, as you know, the son of refugees. We're very lucky to be here in Washington State. We're very lucky to be here in Seattle, and we were welcomed and open arms. And I think in our greatest times of need, we were able to get a community that supported us. And a lot of that is because we had access to opportunities. We had a billiards hall, a small business. My sister worked at Boeing. I worked at Microsoft. My brother is a physician now, right? So it's like, why vilify the people trying to help provide the opportunities that my family also benefited from? And that's where I want us to stop and kind of pause a little bit. I can't control my friends in the legislature. I couldn't control them back then. I'm not going to control them now, right? So my point is, how do I ensure that we have long-term viability and long-term, at the minimum, trust to have more thoughtful conversations, which are not really happening right now? Now, I appreciate him saying some of that. But if you watch the interview on Sundays with Subscribers, I was also pretty hard on Joe. And you could probably see my face like, OK, Joe. I mean, I've known him for a long time. There was a lot of political speak in there, a real failure to commit to condemning things like Katie Wilson waving bye to wealth. He also said the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce will not take a position on the income tax, which is crazy because the income tax on quote-unquote millionaires, the people who are going to be impacted by that the most are not the mega rich. They'll find a way to leave or to hide their wealth or whatever it is or redomicile. It's going to be the businesses, the small businesses with pass-through income. Where, and it's crazy because it is complicated, but there's people who just fundamentally misunderstand this, that if you're running a business like a roofing company, for instance, you have so much overhead. You've got all these employees. And so you might be bringing in and you might have in your bank account more than a million dollars, but you need it there for a couple months of operating costs in case an emergency pops up. The owner of the business isn't emptying their bank account to zero every year, but you'd be taxed as a millionaire. So it is inexcusable to me that the business community in Seattle will not take a position on the income tax that will put some of their members out of business. And I've said this a million times, and at some point I got to make good on it. Why am I defending the business community more than they're willing to defend themselves? And it seems to be really the only people who flee, who then find the bravery to say something about it. It's like, oh, I'm gone now, like Howard Schultz. So Starbucks continues to shed jobs in Seattle. You already know they're moving like, well, they're opening up a second HQ in Tennessee. They're moving some of the jobs there. The Washington State Employment Security Department, they just announced 61 layoffs from that HQ location. So some people aren't moving. They're just straight up losing their jobs. There have been Starbucks closing all over the place. And Howard Schultz, as you know, the former CEO and founder, he moved to Florida with Jeff Bezos. And now he finds the bravery. Good for you, Howard. Good for you. He pens an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Seattle turns hostile to the great businesses it made. OK, the time, look, I'm fine. I mean, I agree with everything that he says in here. I'm glad he didn't just go to sunny Florida and just shut his mouth. But he voted for a lot of this. He supported a lot of this. And it's really, it is support to stay silent. And I feel the same way about Jeff Bezos, for the record. They could have, they just would try to placate. You can't placate crazy people. You can't placate people who fundamentally hate you, who vilify you. So why are you trying? So anyway, in this article, he talks about Washington State being his home for four decades, talking about building Starbucks into a company known around the world, how the culture of the Pacific Northwest shaped his business. He says, I am no longer a resident of Washington. My decision to leave had much to do with family choices and my stage in life. Still, I feel a responsibility to speak up about the business and job climate in a city and state that gave me so many opportunities. Again, thank you. However, would have been great if you did that while you were still here. He goes on to say the ecosystem that helped build Starbucks is fractured today. Seattle and much of Washington face serious problems, chronic homelessness, disorder in core business districts, persistent budget deficits, declining public school outcomes and a slowing technology hiring cycle. These challenges aren't unique to the state, but Washington's response to them is. Seattle's Mayor Katie Wilson has chosen to cast business as a foil rather than a partner. Her socialist rhetoric vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue. She has encouraged residents who disagree with her policies to leave. He says in the state capitol, the legislature and governor have confronted difficult fiscal tradeoffs by emphasizing taxation rather than reform or performance management. The theory appears to be that prosperity can be mandated through redistribution rather than generated through growth. But Howard, this is not new. It's not new. And look, I've heard really great things about Howard as a person. And I think that he was starting to wake up. I mean, remember when he was like floating a presidential bid as an independent and kind of people because the Sonics, they're mad. They like wouldn't bite. He was being vilified or whatever it is. So I think his probably personal beliefs are in the right place. But when you have that much power and influence and yes, money, where were you when we needed you? Where were you when things before things got this bad? And the business community has long hesitated to pour money into campaigns because when they do, they're vilified as corporate PAC spending. But the press doesn't vilify the unions. The unions can dump as much money as they want into the political campaigns. And that's perfectly fine because that's from the working people. But businesses, they, God forbid, they donate money to campaigns to look out for their interests and their ability to continue to operate and provide jobs to people and help the city. I mean, and then Starbucks, good Lord, good grief, good grief. They're still helping Mayor Wilson. Didn't they just give money to her tiny house initiative? After one of her first acts upon being elected mayor was to have a protest outside a Starbucks where she told people, I'm not going to shop, I'm not going to spend money at Starbucks and you shouldn't either. And then she waved bye to everyone in Seattle. Starbucks is still trying to placate her. They're still trying to placate the progressives and the socialists and the communists. There's literally no point. That's not, there's no point. And so that's what I was trying to say to Joe Wynn. Joe, why are you still doing this? Why are you guys in the business community still playing this game? They're never going to treat you like a friend. They're never going to treat businesses with any level of respect. So don't treat them with respect because they do not deserve it. And then you continue to have this narrative about, you know, oh, the problems in Seattle, they're this like amorphous blob's fault. It's like this indistinguishable someone's fault, usually orange man bad. But if they can't find a legitimate way to blame orange man bad, they're just like, oh, somebody out there did this. Not like the party that's been in power for 45 years. Congressman Pramila Jayapal, whose district represents like Seattle, right? She put this out. Yes, your rent went up. Seattle rents are up over 45 percent in the last 15 years and wages haven't kept pace. Homelessness is a policy failure, not an inevitability. We know what works. We just have to fight for it, ma'am. Ma'am, how long have you been the member of Congress representing Seattle? How long has your party had almost complete control? Seattle hasn't elected a Republican mayor in like 50 plus years. Washington state hasn't had a Republican governor in 45. They've had almost universal control of the legislature for the last 24 years. So who do you blame for this? Not to mention that in the last 15 years, Seattle's minimum wage has grown exponentially. But these are when she says homelessness is a policy failure, not an inevitability. We know what works. If you know what works, why aren't you doing it? If you know what works, why aren't you doing it? Why isn't your party doing it? If it's a policy failure, homelessness is a policy failure. All right. I agree. Who's in charge of the policy? Who's creating the policy? You and your friends and your political party. And nothing will change until normie Democrats decide, you know what? Our party's not doing a great job. We need to demand better of the candidates that we run. I don't care who you vote. I don't care if you vote for a Republican or a Democrat. That's not what this show is about. It's about voting for people who want government to work and actually care about outcomes. And there are Democrats like that. Mark Mullet would have been a great option for governor. There are absolutely Democrats like that in the city of Seattle. Former Seattle Council President Sarah Nelson. Business background. What'd you do to her? You voted her out of office. It's insane. I don't know. It's basking in sorrow or have something to rail at Donald Trump over, even though it's not his fault. I don't know what it is. It's the most bizarre thing. Stop voting for these people. Stop voting for these people. We can do better. We can do better. That segment is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Future 42. Turn your frustration into action at future42.org. Make sure you sign up for their newsletter to be alerted to opportunities to do just that.