Tired of hearing how tough it is for business | Letter to the editor
Published 4:21 pm Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Tired of hearing how tough it is for business
Week in and week out, I read in the Snoqualmie Valley Record about how tough it is for business such as in the article “Valley employers juggle higher minimum wages and taxes” and others.
While it is true for some businesses, overall it is hogwash. The claims by such entities as the Association of Washington Businesses and other advocacy and lobbying groups is propaganda designed to influence legislators to not hold businesses to account, and to sway public opinion that tax breaks for businesses are just. I managed a business with 30 employees and paid the taxes for it. Compared to the approximately $30,000 a year I pay in taxes as a private citizen, the business taxes were chicken feed. The goal of the AWB and similar groups is to completely transfer the costs of running our state and maintaining infrastructure over to citizens.
In the same article, the inability to make a 30% profit is bemoaned. Dear readers, when is the last time your savings made a 30% profit? Bill Gates, once the richest man in the world, got that way by charging much more than he needed to for Microsoft’s products, and underpaying his employees. The same goes for Bezos, Musk, and the others. Readers, we paid those prices.
An increasing minimum wage is nearly always a target in these articles, even though a family with two wage earners struggles to survive in our community. It has been shown again and again that an increasing minimum wage results in better outcomes for both workers and businesses, but businesses persist in trying to squeeze their employees.
So, I am tired of hearing how tough it is for business. If you take a moment to consider what most of them sell, it may be stuff you want, but it is definitely not stuff you need anyway. I don’t get why we consistently see articles about how tough it is for business but rarely for workers. It must be that lobbyists plant those press releases with the papers.
So, when I hear from business lobby groups about how tough it is for business in Washington, and how they might oughta move to California, I smell propaganda, and I compare that to the situation for the average Washingtonian. I consistently come to the same conclusion: Buh Bye!
Dave Eiffert, Snoqualmie
