I agree but it has to be an income tax on all income over $1 million that a person collects - from any source, salary, bonus, capital gains, dividends, deferred income - in a calendar year with ZERO exemptions.

Technically this is constitutional if you do it that way.

And progressive.

How about we stop spending 29% of the budget on personal entitlements that aren't education. That would free up $20 billion to cover education.

@1 - Go ahead, watch the $1 million + folks leave the state, as has happened in every other state that has implemented such a stupid policy.

@3 and go where?

No, seriously, all the states for 3 states deep away from here have ... wait for it ... HIGHER INCOME TAXES ON THE RICH.

They ain't goin' nowhere. The whiny little bitchez.

Uh, is there a tl;dr version of this post?

Good idea. Politically it's a non-starter. Voters have no trust in Olympia, fearing the sales tax will start creeping right back up again.

Never gonna happen.

Perhaps dedicated funding will produce English teachers whose lessons stick, too? I'm looking at "soul source" here. Also "it's" used as a possessive, and "broad based" lacking the required hyphen for a compound adjective preceding the noun. Just using SpellCheck isn't enough. Yes, I'm cranky about grammar and spelling.

"that income tax would be the soul source of basic K-12 funding"

STOP STEALING THE SOULS OF OUR CITIZENS FOR YOUR SOCIALIST POLICIES

@7 - damnit, you beat me.

Here's a better idea...one that already is in the Legislature.

Education Asset Tax

Education has always been funded, in part, by property taxes.

But property...land...no longer reflects wealth. Financial assets do.

That's why HB2100 proposes to tax financial assets...the revenue can be used for education.

@3,

Which states have implemented that policy?

@7, @8: I write a thoughtful, well argued, thousand-word policy piece, and all you can focus on is a single typo?

So, um, eat me.

Goldy, as someone who would probably end up paying a decent amount in income taxes, I like this idea. Any chance The Stranger could hire a lobbyist to deliver this stuff straight to the legislature? I've heard that most of them were edumated in Washington and don't read good.

@12 - Is that what you tell your editors?

Also, that's "well-argued", not "well argued". Sorry.

It's a good idea, but hell will freeze over before it happens in this state. Washingtonians don't just not like the idea of an income tax, it's part of our identity not to have one.

The sad part is that it takes a couple of decades for the real negative impacts of underfunding education to set in, and by that time, it's too late, you're Mississippi.

@15 - Or more aptly, Colorado 1992 - 2005. There's plenty of economic discussion of TABOR (Think I-1053) and it's effects on Colorado's education system. That only took 10 years before the effects on education were well established. They had a pretty similar situation to what is beginning to happen here.
http://blog.ednewscolorado.org/2010/03/1…
It's funny, the policies that Republicans put in place cripple public education, and because of the poor state of schools, the same Republicans complain that public education is a failure, and propose private schools, vouchers, and charter schools as a replacement. It's almost as if they planned it!

This piece is absolutely spot on -- exactly what we need to ensure future prosperity.

This idea would not only make our tax system more fair and stable, but it would introduce a massive stimulus via the sales tax cut right when we need it most. Also I think the politics of calling it an "education income tax" are better than your think. Since the legislature is unlikely to act on this due to Eyman's 2/3 threshold, where do we sign up to get it on the ballot?

@12 - I was interested in the intent of your piece and it makes perfect sense from a policy standpoint but if you're going to write about teachers, for heaven's sake, someone in your organization should demonstrate that teachers do some good already. Being the alternative newspaper for the Seattle area doesn't mean you get to flout grammar and spelling rules. There were not one but three errors that a person who passed freshman English in high school should not have made, much less either a journalist or a copy editor. Come on, Goldy. The Stranger can do better, and you know it.

@20 - You know what? No. I can't do better. I wrote and posted maybe 2,500 words today, plus all the research and reading and thinking that goes with that, and my process makes it very difficult for me to proof my own work.

I wish we could afford to copy edit Slog, but we can't. So my suggestion to readers is that you either ignore my occasional typos, politely and helpfully point out my errors when I make them, or fuck off.

@4
In 2008, Maryland creates a millionaires tax bracket
2008 - 3,000 $1million + incomes
2009 - 2,000 $1million + incomes
net revenue loss $106 million

Ignoring the Laffer curve doesn't mean it won't hold true.

@21

http://www.despair.com/med24x30prin.html

@20+21 - We'are the editor's. Point out the mistakes in the comments ant the righters ALWAYS fix them in there text. Although you've can gave the writer shit fur mistakes, it doesn't meaning the content is suspect.

@22 - and what is your control group? Can you compare the cohort of millionaires of a similar state that does not tax wealth above a threshold? Are you claiming that the recession had no impact on the number of millionaires in Maryland?

@25 - What? It is a bedrock principal of the Left that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. There's no way the rich haven't be making out like bandits despite the Obama economy. How dare you challenge the orthodoxy...