Microsoft, Amazon Execs Call Out Washington's Low-Performing 9-Year-Olds In Tax Pushback (geekwire.com)
- Reference: 0176908895
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/04/03/0253238/microsoft-amazon-execs-call-out-washingtons-low-performing-9-year-olds-in-tax-pushback
- Source link: https://www.geekwire.com/2025/microsoft-president-business-leaders-remarkably-united-in-opposition-to-state-tax-proposals/
> A coalition of Washington state business leaders -- which includes Microsoft President Brad Smith and Amazon Chief Legal Officer David Zapolsky -- [2]released a letter Wednesday [3]urging state lawmakers to reconsider recently proposed tax and budget measures . "I actually think it's an almost unprecedented outpouring of support from across the business community," said Microsoft's Smith in an interview. In their letter, which reads in part like it could have been penned by a GenAI Marie Antoinette, the WA business leaders question whether any more spending is warranted given how poorly Washington's 4th and 8th graders compare to children in the rest of the nation on test scores. The letter also laments the increase in WA's homeless population as it celebrates WA Governor Bob Ferguson's announcement that he would not sign a proposed wealth tax.
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> From the letter: "We have long partnered with you in many areas, including education funding. Despite more than doubling K-12 spending and increasing teacher salaries to some of the highest rates in the nation, 4th and 8th grade assessment scores in reading and math are among the worst in the country. Similarly, we have collaborated with you to address housing and homelessness. Despite historic investments in affordable housing and homelessness prevention since 2013, Washington's homeless population has grown by 71 percent, making it the third largest in the nation after California and New York, according to HUD. These outcomes beg the question of whether more investment is needed or whether we need different policies instead."
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> Back in 2010, Smith teamed with then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to fund an effort to [4]defeat an initiative for a WA state income that was pushed for by Bill Gates Sr. In 2023, Bezos [5]moved out of WA state before being subjected to a 7% tax on gains of more than $250,000 from the sale of stocks and bonds, a move that reportedly [6]saved him $1.2 billion in WA taxes on his 2024 Amazon stock sales.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~theodp
[2] https://www.scribd.com/document/845524235/Washington-state-Business-Community-Budget-Letter#fullscreen&from_embed
[3] https://www.geekwire.com/2025/microsoft-president-business-leaders-remarkably-united-in-opposition-to-state-tax-proposals/
[4] https://news.slashdot.org/story/14/01/25/168230/k-12-cs-education-funding-taxes-h-1b-fees-donations
[5] https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/11/03/2028245/jeff-bezos-moves-to-florida
[6] https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/amazon-founder-dodges-1-2b-in-wa-capital-gains-taxes-in-2024-after-latest-stock-sale/
Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:2, Troll)
> The letter also laments the increase in WA's homeless population as it celebrates WA Governor Bob Ferguson's announcement that he would not sign a proposed wealth tax.
"We hate this problem that we refuse to do our part to help solve in any way other than the manufacturing of soylent green."
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this line ". Despite historic investments in affordable housing and homelessness prevention since 2013" states they were in fact doing something to help direct donation money to a Specific issue is better than just paying higher taxes which are spread across many other projects or end up in the pocket of lawmakers as they vote themselves a higher salary.
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No, wasting money on a specific project or projects is not better or worse than wasting money on however many projects are available for such pursuits.
Waste is waste. Failure is failure. If it's not 'working', no time like the present to change the approach. In this and much other government, just spending money is not the solution after all.
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My experience has frequently, but not always, been that with all of the services available, most homeless people are homeless because they want to be homeless. There are many shelters, but most don't allow drug users. And on that, many are drug users who don't want to quit and would rather be homeless than quit. You can throw somebody in a treatment program all you want, but if the don't want to quit, they won't.
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> My experience has frequently, but not always, been that with all of the services available, most homeless people are homeless because they want to be homeless.
My experience, which involves working directly with the homeless, tells me that the vast majority of them want to be housed.
> There are many shelters, but most don't allow drug users.
You consider shelters banning drug users to be evidence that those drug users don't want to be housed? You're going to have to draw me a flowchart to explain that one.
> And on that, many are drug users who don't want to quit and would rather be homeless than quit.
This is fucking stupid ignorant horse shit. I don't believe you've ever actually talked to a homeless person long enough to actually know what they think.
> You can throw somebody in a treatment program all you want, but if the don't want to quit, they won't.
You can not just "throw somebody in a treatment program" and expect
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> You consider shelters banning drug users to be evidence that those drug users don't want to be housed? You're going to have to draw me a flowchart to explain that one.
shelter -> -> park.
Does that help drinkypoo. Progressive in 21st centruy context is just another way to say 'mental retard'
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> Progressive in 21st centruy context is just another way to say 'mental retard'
Using the word "retard" as an insult in the 21st century is just another way to admit that you're a piece of shit, but we knew that about you already from the rest of your posting history.
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Agreed. He should have said, "mentally retarded".
Which, by the way, was the polite medical term when I was growing up. It replaced, "moron", "imbecile", and "idiot". Which were once the polite medical terms themselves. I think it was replaced by "developmentally disabled", which has likely been replaced again by some other term I don't care to bother knowing.
At some point people need to recognize that words don't bear or perpetuate the stigmas of the bad things they represent. It is the signified t
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most of the available free treatment programs are religious, which means they are victim-blaming since that's religion's whole fucking schtick.
Question: if not the drug user, whose fault is it? Did someone hold this person down and inject them drugs which got this person started? Were they given drugs in what they ate without knowing it?
I'm all for sticking it to the cults of religion, but explain how using drugs is not the person's fault? Unless the drugs were forced into them against their wil
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> My experience, which involves working directly with the homeless, tells me that the vast majority of them want to be housed.
Of course. They want to be housed while they do drugs . Working with them, you should know that benefactors of the shelters don't want to pay to house drug users and support their drug habits. Regardless, when you (and I mean you, personally) start realizing that you're just getting taken advantage of, you'll get it. You'll see the difference between the drug users and people who genuinely want to get back on their feet. I've helped 2 of the former and regretted it. I've helped quite a number of the latter
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And how are the outcomes of your preferred policies? Have they made things better or worse?
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Nobody like a poor thief.
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Washington's extended COVID lockdowns have also been a contributing factor, but doesn't account for everything nor past failures. Having high expectations of kids and not just letting them slide by is also a factor.
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Our children are, too often, being taught unimportant and meaningless knowledge, and inappropriate subjects. They are taught these well, their teachers are competent. It is not how they are being taught, it is what they are being taught.
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And teachers aren't underpaid! Like cops and firefighters, their salary tracks the average income for the district. If the average annual salary is $43k, that's what they make. If it's $72k, that's what they make. Of course, entry-level teachers make less, but after a few years they're doing pretty well.
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"It was the disrespect and lack of support." - That's why I left after 18 years.
Low Performing National Policies (Score:5, Insightful)
Our public education system is a monumental failure, but not because of the performance of young children. It's because we are expecting young children to perform. They should be outside playing with other children rather than sitting in classrooms day in and day out. Educational performance can wait until they're older.
I use myself as an example. I grew up a Navy child, and moved every few years until I was 18. Every school district I moved into had higher standards than the one I left, so I never progressed (according to the school district). I graduated from high school with a 1.0 GPA (one of my teachers rounded up from .59 to .60 so I passed that crucial class with a D instead of an F). My low grades were due to both the higher standards and that I really hated public school. It was beneath me, and taught me nothing of value (in my opinion). Homeschooling would have produced far better results.
Due to a variety of factors, I got accepted into the local university a few years later as an adult under the "alternative student" program. I got placed into the introductory math class that was just one step above remedial. During my tenure in that university, my grades were routinely As and Bs in most of my classes, with one or two Cs along for the ride). That was mostly due to me actually wanting to be in school at that point in my life. My childhood was wasted in school, but I was mature enough later in life to want to learn so I could get out of my minimum-wage shit hole jobs.
I graduated with a 3.8 in my major, and a 3.6 overall. I got a good paying job doing what I (mostly) enjoy, and can see the light of retirement showing down the career tunnel. No employer gave a shit about my childhood education, and rightfully so. It has absolutely zero bearing on lifetime success.
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> I got a good paying job doing what I (mostly) enjoy, and can see the light of retirement showing down the career tunnel.
That light is an oncoming train, consisting of the bottom falling out of the market. Kiss your retirement goodbye! I guess I should just be glad I've only been paying into a mandatory pension fund for a year and a half...
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> It's because we are expecting young children to perform. They should be outside playing with other children rather than sitting in classrooms day in and day out. Educational performance can wait until they're older.
We are trying to compete with Asia, the land of suicidal prodigies. But outside of very specific specialties, people skills matter at least as much as technical skill, as products have to be usable by non-experts, as one has to communicate with non-experts to understand their needs and perspectiv
They rewired their brain (Score:2)
"Low performing" is how these people think of Americans. Everything is justification for using robots instead of people.
Washington Needs Solutions, We Don't Have Them (Score:3)
Typical. Washington, you have a problem. We don't have solutions despite being thought of as super smart. Don't think about increasing taxes or we will leave.
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> Don't think about increasing taxes or we will leave.
And go where? The best and brightest don't want to live in Texas or Sticksville. They beat up nerds and other "oddballs".
Money is everything? (Score:1)
Aside from the impenetrably poor language skills of the poster/editor here, the narrative here seems to be "we paid more money, nothing much happened, so we're going to pay less". That's backed up with 'our teachers earn loads of money, yet our kids aren't learning any more".
The problem with those attitudes is that money isn't everything. I'll bet if we go talk to those teachers, they'll say the money is nice and all, but what they really want is XYZ (likely, more resources, more freedom around the curricul
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This is a major contributor. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act
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I wish pedagogy was a parochial and stuck in the past! It used to work better than it does now, so going back seems wise. The problem, as I see it, is at least in part due to teachers running with any new-fangled notion they hear, regardless of evidence or sanity. They're the ones who decided it was more important that students feel like they're doing well than for them to actually do well. They decided to drop phonics and classic math.
Basically, they've abandoned tried-and-true approaches in favor o
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I think they're holding the State's leaders accountable for the State's education and housing systems being garbage. Given that this is addressed to the Governor and leaders of the legislature.
And it is a fair and well-reasoned criticism. They show how the State is going to see revenue increases anyway, how the tax is a bad idea, and how they're full of s-t when they say they need more money for housing and education. Which, they are.
Also, "more resources" means "more money". And why would anyone
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It's an insulting misdirection. The criticism of the quality of the letter's writing is completely unwarranted.
GeekWire's bias is pretty clear.
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Ask yourself what jesus would do in this situation.
Why is US public education so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
This, to me, is a mystery. The US spends more per kid on public education than Canada does, yet our students [1]perform better [wikipedia.org].
I have a few theories, but no way to prove them. First, in Canada, your taxes go to fund the education system all across the city... not to a specific small school district. So the quality of schools in Canada tends to be much more uniform across the country. Schools in poor neighbourhoods generally are as good as in wealthy ones. My three adult kids went to three different high schools in very wealthy, average, and poorer neighbourhoods respectively, yet the quality of education they received was about the same.
Second, there seems to be an irrational resentment of public school teachers in the USA. American teachers express much lower job satisfaction and much more pessimism than Canadian teachers.
Third, I think there is (and always has been) a strong strand of anti-intellectualism in the USA which devalues education. This is starting to show results.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International_Student_Assessment#PISA_2022_ranking_summary
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There's also an issue of how effectively the money is spent. When I worked IT for a school system (in California), a lot of money was getting eaten up by administrators, technology pilot programs that went nowhere, and bureaucratic overhead. As a result, increasing "spending per student" didn't necessarily translate to increased student outcomes...
It got to the point where most of the teachers I talked to there would vote "no" on every ballot proposition for more funding for schools.... because they kn
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Let me start with your third observation and quote Isaac Asimov: Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
That said: what you've observing is the result of half a century of Republican policies designed to dumb down the American population. Republicans realized, in the 1970's, that educated, literate Americans were increasingly rejecting
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I've never lived in Canada (Victoria was a lovely city to visit though), but I am inclined to believe that your overall cultural diversity is not what it is in the USA. I mention this as we have children from all over the world. Many don't speak English. We end up spending a lot more resources trying to get children up to speed.
That is simply not true. Victoria is not representative of Canada; Toronto is more culturally diverse than almost any American city. And even my city is pretty diverse; the scho
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"Spending for California is 21th most and Texas is at 35th. Seems California is the state that really needs attention. "
Now sort your second link by "K-12 Spending as % of Taxpayer Income". Texas is 3.89% while California is 3.38%. What's really called for is a cost-of-living adjustment, but the jist is that California is more expensive than Texas. New York is way out of line of costs., and Montana remains a highlight.
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That's pretty much how schools are funded here too. Most of the money comes from the district (which typically covers the entire municaplity, not just one small part of it. Even the biggest cities only have one district), plus a bunch from the State and some from Federal grants.
The Ivory-Tower argument is that in the US we try to educate everyone, whereas other nations are getting better results because they shift lower-preforming students to apprenticeships and trade schools, which aren't counted in t
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I agree that education fads are dangerous, but this is the zeitgeist in America. Nobody has any attention span anymore, and social media has turned everything (including politics) into entertainment and sound bites.
Also agree with the difficulty inversion. My sister lives in the USA and her school-aged daughter was given ridiculously-difficult work that no school-aged kid could possibly handle. So the kids from well-off homes basically had their homework done for them by their parents, and the kids fro
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The U.S. average per-child is high ... but our average is close to double the median per-child expense. The wealth-disparity is real and the U.S. education numbers reflect this. We spend much less on the typical (median) child in the U.S. than Canada does.
We have also spent decades denigrating teachers to justify spending less on poor children and making becoming a teacher the path to financial ruin and a lousy retirement. Complaining that a relatively recent tax increase did not fix the problems caus
If money doesn't matter... (Score:2)
...then why do the rich send their children to schools that spend much more per student than the poor?
If you look at the school data carefully, you will see this: the United States has some of the best K-12 schools in the world (some public, some private). Schools that generate tons of highly qualified students who attend and excel at the greatest universities in the world, and go on to be leaders, scholars, CEOs, etc. AND, the U.S. has some of the WORST K-12 schools in the world (some public, some privat
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This is from another post but does illustrate why it is not all about money.
First link here is graduation rates by state [1]https://www.datapandas.org/ran [datapandas.org]... [datapandas.org]
This link is spending per child [2]https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review....] [worldpopul...review.com]
As you will see, Washington State spends the 11th most per student but 15th in graduation rates. This is actually not that bad of a ratio. Look at California and Texas. California 50th, Texas 49th. Spending for California is 21th most and Texas is at
[1] https://www.datapandas.org/ran
[2] https://worldpopulationreview..../
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Looking at state-level data is a fallacy, because funding is not set at the state level. States do provide a significant portion of funding to schools, but local school district taxation also makes a big difference. If you look WITHIN California, there are HUGE funding disparities between school districts. See, for example, this report from California: [1]https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/e... [ca.gov]
For example, looking at the report, Berkeley Unified (CA) spends an average of $25,728 per student, while Livemore Valley
[1] https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/fd/ec/currentexpense.asp
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I don't know of anyone on either side of the aisle, rich or poor, that wants anything but great schools for everyone. I do know of people on both sides who are sick of how bad the schools are.
Really, the notion that someone wants the schools to be bad is stupid. Nobody wants that. Nobody needs that for cheap labor. The simple fact that half the population is below average basically guarantees it without having to hamstring schools. What we do have are people with stupid ideas about education and inco
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> I don't know of anyone on either side of the aisle, rich or poor, that wants anything but great schools for everyone
HAHAHAHAHA thank you for the laugh of the day. They may claim they believe this, but their actions tell the truth. They want the best for their kid, and the worst for everyone else (especially if they have to pay for it), so their kid has the best chance to have a leg up on everyone else.
Why worry? (Score:1)
The test questions themselves are problematic, so the Oregon curriculum eliminated the inequitable Jim Crow practice of expecting correct answers (https://equitablemath.org/).
Accordingly, Oregon suspended “state requirements that kids demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, and math to graduate from high school” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/dumbing-oregon-down-kate-brown-proficiency-requirement-high-school-graduation-11628796270).
It’s all very logical. Ignore test results, expect les
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Seattle, of course, is similar. See “Seattle Math” (https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/seattle-schools-lead-controversial-push-to-rehumanize-math/2019/10) - which now is not only ubiquitous in Washington curriculums, but has made its way down the west coast to Oregon and California.
The standardized test results aren’t looking good, but, don’t forget, standardized tests are the problem (ignore that elite colleges across the nation, including west coast colleges, have reversed th
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And somehow, even though they're saving all that time and money by not grading tests, they need way more money every year.
hypocrites (Score:2)
A lot of the low performance is driven by the insane proliferation of tech and screen time, which MS and Amazon both have plenty of blame for.
WA has a host of problems... (Score:1)
You can say what you want about WA business leaders and their desire to pay less taxes, but WA has a host of self-inflicted problems that it will not recognize as issues it has to correct. They have a (D) supermajority which has been in power for almost 40 years which has been driving the state right into the Pacific. In 2023, WA had a $8B surplus- now it's expected to have a $15B deficit in the next two years. Now 1st in crime, 4th most unaffordable, soon to be 2nd in highest gas prices, and one of the hig
Washington's low performing 9 year olds (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought after reading the title that they were referring to our federal government.
Washington's low performing 79 year olds (Score:5, Funny)
FTFY
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Low performing indeed. They don't know the difference between begging the question and raising the question.
Hint: in this case it's the latter: An outcome doesn't beg the question.
Re:Washington's low performing 9 year olds (Score:4, Insightful)
> I thought after reading the title that they were referring to our federal government.
This. And this entire genre of clickbait headline marketing needs to die a violent and horrific death. FUCK am I tired of that pointless shit. Going to make sane readers here not even want to click on TFS eventually.
Live and Learn, Slashdot. Or don’t live at all.
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I figured they were unhappy with the performance of their child laborers. If they're using them as programmers it explains a lot about both organizations' software offerings.
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The guys re-writing the social security computer system in a month weren't kids all that long ago. I hear that even back then, some of them were pretty good hackers.
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> I hear that even back then, some of them were pretty good hackers.
I wish they were better people instead.
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I'll take competence when it comes to something so important. A jerk who knows what they're doing is usually preferable as an employee over a nice idiot.
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That would be: low performing 7 9 year olds
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Why do they think Washington's 9-year-olds are underperforming? They are learning, and they are performing just as expected, according to their learning. Indeed, children in American have been taught well the past 30-40 years, and they are performing as should be expected by their educations.
For too many, TOO MANY, they were taught not what is useful and productive, but what is destructive and counterproductive. Disagree, I offer society as evidence. Too many were taught wrongly. Taught well, but wrongly.