Seattle’s city council passed a new tax Monday. It will charge big companies $275 for every employee. The “head” tax is supposed to fund housing for the homeless. Supporters of the tax chanted “housing is a human right!” at a protest lead by City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant, a member of the “Socialist Alternative” party. --------- Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://johnstossel.activehosted.com/f/1 Subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/johnstossel Like me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnStossel/ Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnstossel --------- Seattle homelessness has doubled in the last 8 years. Politicians blame a shortage of “affordable” housing, but John Stossel says that the politicians own bad policies helped create that shortage. Seattle’s building code is 745 pages long. (link: http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/codesrules/codes/building/default.htm) “Welded splices shall be of ASTM A706 steel,” the code notes, in an endless list of rules. The residential building code is another 685 pages. Developers can’t build big apartment buildings because in most of Seattle’s residential land area, high-rises are illegal; zoning rules say only single family houses may be built. If Seattle just repealed many of those regulations, affordable housing would grow, Stossel says. Instead, Seattle’s politicians will tax big tax companies and use the money to buy housing for homeless people. That upset Amazon, Seattle’s largest employer. It paused construction of a new office building in Seattle. Construction workers went into the streets to back Amazon, and counter-protest the socialist councilwoman’s pro-tax rally. Supporters of big government aren’t used to protesters drowning them out. Sawant accused Amazon of “extortion” and slammed Amazon owner Jeff Bezos on TV: “He said he has so much money that he doesn’t know what to do with it ... I want your viewers to understand who’s the enemy here.” The “enemy”? Stossel says: Give me a break! Bezos created the jobs that she now wants to tax. This week, Amazon partly won its fight; Seattle’s city council approved a $275 per employee tax instead of the $540 that Sawant and the other leftists proposed. Sawant accused Seattle’s Mayor of “dramatically weakening [the] Tax Amazon bill. Grim reminder: working people can't rely on corporate politicians.” Corporate politicians? Stossel points out that the $275/head tax will hurt job creation too. No wonder Amazon is looking to build its next headquarters outside of Seattle. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36a_ndkmXbE

Money flows to The Cayman Islands - NOT because they are a tax haven, but because they have simple rules. My investigation: ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI7W65k-LPM

In America, tech giants know a lot about us. John Stossel says that's fine with him. ---------------- Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://johnstossel.activehosted.com/f/1 Subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/johnstossel Like me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnStossel/ Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnstossel ---------------- He knows what information he's handing over and he does it voluntarily. But he says we should worry about becoming like China, where the government is starting to use online data to create 1984 in the real world. China's government has announced that they'll assign a mandatory government "social credit score" to everyone in the country by 2020. It will be based largely on what you do online. Say something that gets censored, you lose points. Same if you watch porn, or are late in returning a rented bike or buy lots of alcohol. China's government boasts that the social credit system will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." "It is a big deal," says Li Schoolland, a Chinese-American libertarian activist who works with Chinese supporters of freedom. The social credit system, she says, will expand to the whole country, what China already does to some government critics. Some of them are jailed. Some are never heard from again. The government will expand the use of lesser punishments under the new program. Schoolland explained to Stossel what will happen to people with low scores: "First [you lose] your job, or you never get promoted ... and your children cannot get into good schools." America's government doesn't do anything like that, yet, but Stossel wonders about the future. Already, police in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and other cities practice "predictive policing." The tech company Palantir analyzes social media and phone location records, tracks people's ties to gang members, and predicts the likelihood that someone will commit a crime. Still, Stossel says he's glad to be in America, where he can criticize the government on Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. He's never been punished for that. So far. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwv77E7ULlE

It's school choice week! Don't miss a single video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://johnstossel.activehosted.com/f/1 Subscribe to my YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/johnstossel Like me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JohnStossel/ Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnstossel What's that? It's a week about giving parents and kids a choice of schools, so they aren't stuck in failing, government-run schools. ----- Subscribe to John's YouTube channel:http://youtube.com/johnstossel Like John on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnstossel Follow John on Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnstossel ----- John Stossel says amazing things happen at some of these alternatives. He visited one school where the kids like learning. Reading is "rockin' awesome," one kid tells John. That school was created by Eva Moskowitz. Her "Success Academy" now runs 46 charter schools that teach more than 15,000 students. As a charter, she has more freedom to innovate. Her school gets amazing results: 95% of kids pass the state math test, and 84% pass English. At all NYC government schools only 38% and 41% pass. Despite her success with kids, she receives nasty criticism. New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio shouts "it's time for Eva Moskowitz to stop having the run of the place!" Critics say that she only takes the best kids. But that's false. The kids are selected by a random lottery. Critics say she pushes difficult kids out of her school to increase her results. That's also false; her schools have a lower drop-out rate than public schools. John Stossel gives Success Academy, and school choice, an A! Produced by Maxim Lott. Edited by Joshua Swain. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bammwIBSzLM