Amazon and Microsoft, both headquartered in the Seattle area, have created over 60,000 multi-millionaires through their stock options. Other tech firms like Zillow, Redfin, and Expedia are also headquartered in Seattle, and they too have created thousands of millionaires. In addition, Google, Apple, Facebook, and Salesforce all have a very strong presence in Seattle, fostering even more millionaires. TLDR: Seattle is teaming with tech millionaires.
This is in sharp contrast to the rest of the state of Washington, which runs on ag, retail, lumber, shipping, gambling, weed sales, tourism, and microbreweries – with people who are just getting by (the so-called “Forgotten Man”).
That was my observation when my son, nephews, brother, and cousin recently motorcycled up and down the state – and I wanted to share some interesting and random observations.
We motorcycled up the coast and down central Washington, and it was stunningly beautiful, fun, and interesting.
Seaside Motels
I noticed there are only five names for seaside motels that get used over and over: Oceanview, Surfside, Harborview, Seabreeze, and Shoreline.
Economy
The economies in the small towns rely largely on tourism, essential retail, weed sales (dispensaries were everywhere), casinos, bingo, microbreweries (every town seems to have its favorite local brew), and government. This is because many of the major industries, like fishing, have shut down for various reasons. This is very similar to what we saw when we motorcycled through Northern California – and it does not seem sustainable.
Blighted Towns – A Good Thing?
Many of the smaller towns and cities have major blight – which has always been unique to America (Tocqueville wrote about this in the 1830s even). In contrast, when we motorcycle through Canada, we see very little blight. But, Canadians also earn less than 2/3 of Americans on average, so maybe they’re misallocating capital. Tocqueville and economists point out that America’s willingness to quickly abandon things of little value is partially what makes our economy so dynamic.
Rainforests in Washington
Most people don’t know that Washington has actual rainforests that get as much as 170 inches of rain per year. We only rode through one of them, and we fortunately saw little rain. In contrast, much of the SF Bay Area gets less than 25 inches of rain, and northern Texas gets around 40 inches.
Tsunami Shelters for Only Half the People
There were tsunami warnings all along the coast, as the area is due for a big one based on geological records. One small town of 2,200 people had even built a huge tsunami shelter, but it only housed 1,000 people. I am glad I won’t be there to watch them turn away the other 1,200 – “Sorry, Bob, you snooze, you lose…” door slams shut.
Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Dumb Boomers
Many small towns had Bigfoot and Sasquatch-themed businesses because of all the reported sightings in the area in the 1970s – and it seemed ridiculously dated. It also amused me because we boomers fell for that nonsense (despite the visible zipper in the famous Bigfoot video that we all saw). Today’s zoomers and millennials are much more savvy and cynical and would never fall for Bigfoot nonsense without much more proof.
Angry Whale Museum Docent
We stopped at a whale museum in Port Angeles – where I irritated the docent. She was a charming, retired schoolteacher who had lived in Anchorage, Alaska, for years because Seattle was so depressed in the 1970s when Boeing was very slow (reminding me of what a company town Seattle used to be). She explained that blue whales communicate with sounds that are too low-pitched to be heard by the human ear, but blue whales can hear each other over a mile away. I then asked her if that meant that Mr. Blue Whale had to swim over a mile away to not hear Mrs. Blue Whale nag, and she did not think that was funny for some reason.
Also interesting: someone brought a dog into the museum, and it went crazy when the blue whale sounds (inaudible to humans) were played on the museum’s whale sound machine. It was a great reminder to keep your dogs on a leash when they’re around blue whales.
Lumbermills
We rode through several towns with lumbermills that seemed to be running at full capacity. This is in contrast to California, where all the lumbermills were shut down. The towns seemed entirely dependent upon the lumbermills, so if they shut down, the towns will die. The milled lumber smelled amazingly good too – one of the many benefits of being on a motorcycle, as we could smell the lumber for miles.
Tourist Kitsch and Trump’s Tariffs
Many of the small-town shops made money by selling very overpriced tourist kitsch like t-shirts, hats, and Bigfoots with googly eyes (that looked suspiciously like the King Kongs with googly eyes they sell in Japan). In any case, all of that kitsch is made in China, so I worry what Trump’s tariffs will do to these shops. When you can buy a Bigfoot with googly eyes for $1.50 from China and sell it for $13.99, you can make good money. But, if those Bigfoots with googly eyes are made in America and cost $15, it will be very hard to sell them at a profit.
BUT, Trump will be able to brag that he brought Googly-Eyed Bigfoot manufacturing back to America.
Conclusion
The biggest takeaway from my motorcycle trips is always the two-tiered economy. The regular people outside of the big cities where the real estate and tech wealth resides are often just getting by, and I can’t imagine what a bad recession will do to them. Those same people are also very interesting and happy though too – which makes our trips all the more fun. And finally, those people never seem to worry too much about politics, economics, or anything else…which is a lesson I need to learn.
