Why I support the Millionaire Tax

The late Sam McKinney, longtime pastor of Seattle’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church, used to tell his congregation, “I won’t tell you how to vote; I will tell you how I am voting.” I don’t have the influence, or the basso profundo, that McKinney had, but I will tell you how I am voting on I-645.

I voted against the initiative which — it’s complicated — is a vote for the tax. I-645 would repeal the income tax passed this year by the legislature and signed by the Governor. That measure imposes a 9.9% income tax on Washingtonian’s with an annual income of more than one million dollars. So, if you’re still tracking, a vote against the initiative is a vote for the tax.

I did so with some ambivalence. Former Governor, Christine Gregoire, argues that Olympia (the state capitol) doesn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem.

The legislature needs, argues Gregoire and others, to get its house in order and rein in its spending. She has a point. Tax monies need to be spent effectively and accountably. The record on that front isn’t always good. King County, for one jurisdiction, has some real splotches on its record of late. And we’ve tended to throw money at public education (you can no longer argue, at least in Seattle, that teachers are underpaid) without getting improved outcomes.

So why do I support the “Millionaires Tax”? It boils down to two reasons. Our state taxation system is famously regressive. We have no income tax and so rely on a very high sales tax, plus an additional gasoline tax that makes our gas prices among the highest in the nation. Such taxes hit middle and lower people hardest.

Washington State really needs a complete overhaul of its taxation system. Depending on your point of view the Millionaires Tax is a down payment on such an overhaul, or it is the camel’s nose in the tent that will result in an income tax not just on the highest income citizens but on everyone.

It was of great interest to me that in his piece on I-645, Seattle Times’ columnist, Danny Westneat, pointed to our Red State neighbor, Idaho, as having a much fairer overall tax system, one that includes an income tax but a relatively low one of 5.3%. We in blue Washington like to cast aspersions on Idaho, but on this one we could — and should — learn from our neighbor.

The even more important rationale for my support for the Millionaires Tax is that we have for quite some time now been on a path of public austerity and private accumulation. I recall hearing, sometime this summer, an Oregon Public Broadcasting station’s report on a mid-sized Oregon town that had closed its town museum, faced imminent closure of its library and had cuts parks maintenance to the bare bone. The very next story was about the gift from Nike CEO Phil Knight and his wife of a billion dollars to the engineering school, I think named for them, at the University of Oregon. Good on the Knights, but still public austerity, private accumulation.

One sees the evidence of both everywhere. I’m a fan of parks and libraries, both chronically strapped for funds. Homeless encampments are now an accepted feature of life in Seattle while $600K “condos” are being built not far from us in Ballard to house the “classic car collections” of some really wealthy people. Next step in that project with be “housing” for 300’ long yachts. “Terminal One,” according to its developers will be the place “where hyper cars meet super yachts.” Public austerity, private accumulation.

We’ve known for some time that we have a problem of wealth disparity, but we seem to only make it worse. Think Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” But wealth disparity is not just an abstract thing. It has real world outcomes. A mountain of research shows that it means reduced social mobility, worse health outcomes, unequal access to education, loss of democratic stability and erosion of social cohesion. Sound at all familiar?

The Puritans, my people as Congregationalist forebears, are forever getting a bad rap. But listen to what one of them, John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts counseled his people:

“Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the Counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God, for this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man . . . we must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities . . . we must delight in each other, make others’ Condition our own . . .”

From where I sit we’ve got a lot of fairly gross “superfluity” going on, while not doing all that well at the “supply of others necessities.” The Millionaires Tax is imperfect, but as the saying goes we ought not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good.”