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Perspective Shift

You read this story from where you sit.
Want to read it from somewhere else?

We'll re-present the same story as a thoughtful proponent of the good-riddance frame would. Not to convince you. To let you actually meet the argument.

Choose a vantage
Tax-flight frame
Seattle's new socialist leadership is openly daring its productive residents to leave, and the data show they will — wealthy filers, major employers, and their tax base are already migrating to lower-tax states, and the city will be left poorer for it.
Good-riddance frame
Threats that millionaires will flee are an overblown bluff used to block redistribution; if a handful of billionaires and corporations decamp rather than pay their share, the city loses little and finally gets a tax code that funds public goods.
Retold from the other vantage
Steelman · slot B
Stop letting billionaires write the budget
A progressive municipal organizer would argue —
For thirty years we've been told that any tax on extreme wealth will trigger an exodus that hollows out the city — and for thirty years that threat has been used to block the housing, transit, and childcare investments Seattle actually needs. Wilson's point is that the threat has finally lost its grip. Washington's billionaire tax passed. A 9.9% rate on income over a million dollars is not confiscation; it is a modest ask of people whose wealth was built on infrastructure, workers, and public goods this city provided. If Bezos prefers Florida and Fisher prefers Texas, the businesses they built, the customers they serve, and the talent pool they recruit from are still here. We should stop negotiating with a hostage threat and start funding the city the people who live here voted for.

If this read like a fair rendering of the argument — even when you disagree — it's doing its job. Steelmen aren't aimed at persuading you; they're aimed at what the other side actually believes when they're thinking clearly.