Seattle would benefit by re-visiting the 1960 budget model and getting out of the business of model cities social engineering. I wonder what percentage of the $40,000,000 1960 budget and what percentage of the $919,000,000 2012 budget goes for labor costs of salary, benefits, and retirement. Are they both close to 80-85%?

The city/state could keep more money in state if there was a state bank to borrow money from instead of issuing bonds. That way the interest on the money would go to the state bank and thus state residents and not bond holders who could live anywhere. Secondly the rate could be set lower than that available in the bond market because the state could gauge the likelyhood of full repayment and set the interest rate accordingly.

The city could also look into whether the banks paid to have the titles transferred when they sold mortgage backed securities. My understanding is that many banks transferred ownership to MERS and did not re-assign the titles and did not pay the title transfer fees.

The city attorney could also investigate whether those foreclosures by the banks, were in fact legal, ie the bank held title to the property. By preventing illegal foreclosures, the property would remain more valuable and thus the tax would be higher.

It does not seem very enlightening to compare non-inflation-adjusted figures between 1960 and 2012.

According to an inflation calculator, $90 million in 1960 is equivalent to $306 million in 2011. However this calculation uses CPI inflation, which is significantly less than the inflation rate for services such as state and local governments provide (as oft pointed out by Goldy at The Stranger). Compounded over 50 years, this becomes a big difference. Seattle population also increased, although not by a large factor.

There is a data series "Implicit Price Deflator for State and Local Government Purchases". I am not very confident of my attempt to interpret this data correctly. (Is there an economist in the house?) But it looks to me like the change in the Seattle budget was in line with (or less than) inflationary expectations.

Oops, I meant "$40 million in 1960" not $90 million.

The Occupy activists across the country have shifted the political debate away from death panel nonsense, birth certificate stupidity, and tax-cut zealotry to economic justice, political corruption, and protecting our social safety net. We are indebted to them for that.

True, as Bill points out, Occupy has not come up with a tightly focused set of demands, or a 10-point policy paper. And yes, we hear some conflicting messages. At this stage of the game, they've gotten more people talking and thinking about these matters. And they've captured the public's attention in a way that policy wonks, think tankers, other professionals have not done from the comfort of their office suites. So good for them.

Let's hope that the movement continues to evolve in ways that bring accountability and change to our political and financial institutions. Whether Occupy can do this remains to be seen. But as I see it, it's already a success.

"birth certificate stupidity" and we have Obama and his team to thank for even more stupidity by releasing a copy of a birth certificate which is an obvious fake. The typography has kerning in it, something a typewriter is incapable of. Look, the newspaper birth announcements aren't fakes, after that, it's all over. But we didn't need to repeat the faked document issue that took down CBS's Dan Rather. You'd think these guys would learn how to fake something.

P.S.
I do not understand something about this article. These two statements are made about the Seattle budget in 1960:

"Identifying cuts would have been easy."

"The focus of the cuts would be simple to select."

Perhaps I am dense but I am not sure what about the 1960 Seattle budget would have been so easy to cut? And why did they not realize in 1960 that such obvious budget cuts existed? Had they only known, they could have cut taxes!

The thing that strikes me is that many if not most of these "occupiers" have no clue how either government or business work. You can't just stand around shouting slogans and expect something magic to happen. You have to get involved in the process yourself to make a difference. Power-brokering politicians and rent-seeking businessmen are not going to clean up their act because someone sticks a sign in their faces. They're not going to clean up their act at all. They need to be gotten rid of. The way you do that is to vote them out at the polls (oops, sorry - no polls anymore in Washington) and the stockholders' meetings. Any yet those are the two venues that the agitators refuse to occupy. This makes their whole exercise pointless.

Great, sounds like you've got opinions and knowledge to share, Bill, maybe you'd like by put your money where you mouth is? If the Occupiers truly need a lesson, please volunteer to give a teach-in, they'd be happy to have you. You can contact OccupySeattleEd@gmail.com. It would be great!: you'd be surprised what you can learn from these simpletons, like why weighing in as voting, taxpaying citizens with respect to the budget is not antithetical to protesting consumerism at it's yearly zenith.

So first things first, the budget. Great place to start is to take @dbreneman and other "integrate with the system" critics to task: the opportunity to vote is rare and you've already had your options sharply narrowed by that point, but protest is one opportunity to affect government year round, and in such a way that actually determines what your options will be come election time. Protest says to representatives, "I'm paying attention, I care. I'm dedicated enough to be motivated to action now, I'll definitely be motivated come election time. I'm willing to fight a potentially futile battle. I'm persistent, I'm loud, you need to win me over", and in that light it is far more effective than actually voting. Not that I'm writing off voting altogether; I'm simply suggesting that voting alone does not a citizen make. So not only is protest effective in general, but protest with regard to a specific legislative issue during a special session devoted to that issue, occuring directly outside the state Capital, is one of the most fertile targets for protest available. We should be lauding these occupiers for caring, being organized, selecting a specific relevant target, and finally acting, when folks like us managed to do little more than post to web forums. And if there is one form of worthless but feel-good engagement in the world, posting to comment boards might take the cake.

On to Black Friday. It's amazing that this is still debatable after these most recent decades of ever escalating holiday frenzy and a recession substantially worsened by an American propensity to debt. Most credit card debt is actually accrued, surprise, on Black Friday, which we then strive to pay back the other 11 months of the year. There is literally no better symbol of the sheer magnitude of our gluttonous consumerism than Black Friday, an orgy so substantial that it actually makes retail a viable industry overnight.

To demonstrate in major shopping areas on Black Friday is not so much to hinder business (though that may be a result), or to say that Christmas is evil, or that engaging in commerce is wrong. The point of Black Friday demonstrations is to say, "This is excessive, we live in a culture too defined by material things. What about your purchase do you really need, and have you thought about where your purchase comes from? Look at all these people who are /not/ shopping today, there are other options and other ways to spend your free time." The fact that OWS includes Black Friday among its targets says, and this is the most important message to take away, that there is a profound similarity between Wall Street and it's lust for profit, and the consumer, who lusts for things. If you want to fix the larger injustices in society, which are very hard to address and control, you need to start at home with yourself, which is very much a different ball game.

To those who complain that business is stifled, I say: One, it is just a single day. Two, if Capitalism is so lean and efficient, then this will be just a drop in the bucket. If businesses fail, then by the Darwinian, free-market ethos they deserved to fail, correct? For the argument that Seattle is missing out on the revenue while other cities gain: what is so bad about that? Do those other cities not need the funds equally badly? Also, do you have any evidence that local business were hurt, Bill? This was written well after Black Friday, a little due diligence could provide actual facts rather than speculation. And finally, while you say that these two events are discordant, a really, really big protest which shut down the shopping district and exposed the dangers of overdependancy upon a sales tax revenue stream would actually make perfect sense against the backdrop of the Olympia rally, which advocated for an increase in non-sales tax revenue rather than safety net cuts.

A couple other things about the Westlake protest itself: Let's keep in mind the actual size of the disruption, we're talking about half a city block within a much larger retail core, and a block where the major business fronts all face multiple streets or an internal mall or have several regional outlets, often with more than one store in Seattle. Regarding the Police, Occupy Seattle has on several occasions called for a justification and breakdown of what it believes to be excessive police expenditure's for a small, peaceful protest; furthermore, Westlake is already staffed with half dozen cops anyway, regardless of whether there is a protest. Keep in mind that drivers have a wide variety of options about where to park and would not be required to drive anywhere near Westlake or a potential traffic obstruction. And lastly, are you seriously arguing that potential Black Friday shoppers would be dissuaded by a little chaos? This is the day where people camp out in front of stores, eager to risk death or serious injury due to stampede. From everything I can see, these shoppers actually thrive off the chaos, it is part of the appeal, and so a disruptive protest outside could actually incentivize some people. Bam, how do you like them apples?

So in summation, Bill, I find that your article has some holes. Rereading really quickly, I notice that nowhere do you mention actually talking to any of the Occupiers; it sounds as though you simply assumed they were ignorant and "needed a lesson". Maybe if you had bothered, one of them could explain to you why these two actions are not contradictory. I'll reiterate my call for a teach-in, since apparently you are eager to share the wisdom of your years of public service experience, but you need to consider the ways in which you can stand to learn, the ways in which your arguments have flaws also, and be prepared, you might get schooled again.

Jessemulert has the right idea--it's about perspective. Stafford nowhere talks about the relative venality of WAMU executives in the sub-prime debacle that destroyed thousands of lives. He doesn't talk about the Savings and Loan debacle that we all paid for, or Enron or World Com, or Bezos and Seattle Times' attack on the high-end income tax that makes the poor suffer, or the American Beverage Association attack on the bottle tax or Costco's attack on state revenue. Nah, he attacks people who aren't shopping enough or who want some space to be citizens instead of just sheepish consumers. (Does he realize how little public space in Seattle is devoted to citizenship and how much to consumption?) Stafford does not ask how we got an economy 70% dependent on consumption of mostly junk. For good reason, the junk is mostly imported through his beloved trade deals. Stafford wants more wealth regardless of who gets it and guess what, who gets that wealth is the "1%"--Stafford's friends at Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle. It's not about trickle down, but but about why isn't it flowing down to the people who actually do the work and pay the bills with their lives. Why should a janitor get a drip of wealth while a banker holding a sub-prime mortgage get millions? I know, I know, everyone is overjoyed at the Boeing/Machinists contract. But it's mostly joy at spending for environmentally destructive consumer goods (jets, more jets, bigger cars, bigger houses, and more junk). Mr. Stafford, this isn't sustainable and you and I will be dead when the total bill has to be paid by our children and grandchildren. Have you no shame for what we have left the next generations?

Thanks for joining the conversation jessemulert and bkochis. You make a lot of thoughtful points.

Nameless "rage against the machine" is precisely the point of the Occupy movement. If Occupy were coherent in its message, well-educated on the finer points of global finance and well-organized on the finer points of media relations, Occupy would be dismissed as a progressive teach-in, well-meaning but misguided. Instead, they just show up.