Comments

1
"Cities are dying creatures and have been for over four thousand years -- don't believe the pro-city propaganda from the Stranger! People aren't meant to live stacked up in rat's warren of housing. Everyone should move to Kent's majestic East Hill! It literally is Shangri-La."
2
"Let's pass an income tax in Seattle"

Take your Geritol Goldensteinemberg and wait until Friday comes back around.
3
"Seattle could easily afford to implement universal preschool for all its children—paid for by that 5 percent tax on income over one million dollars. "

Care to show us the actual math? the number of residents living in Seattle who make that much in INCOME (probably less than 100) vs the cost of your preschool program? Or do you run government the way a drunk mohel performs at a bris?
4
Not so.

Seattle is forced to make Washington's regressive taxation even more regessive to pay for anything. We need income tax but we can't do that at the city level. All we can do is jack up sales taxes higher. And then wonder why the poor are priced out of the city.

Seattle's gun laws are thrown out or repealed at the state level. Our attempt to end the abusive distribuition of phone books is stymied at the state and federal level. Would we have that grandiose monument to the car, the world's largest tunnel, if we weren't forced to bend to the will of Washington's suburbanites and rural rednecks? Bloomberg's reforms in New York City ran into the same state and federal brick wall.

Cities are at the forefront of innovation when it comes to making wish lists for a progressive future, but the one-acre-one-vote system that lets small town minds rule America has the final say on what we get to do. Don't let a few toy trolly lines and green bike boxes fool you into thinking the battles at the statehouse and in DC don't need to be fought.
5
What needs to happen here is what happened in California. Voters there finally saw through the constant bleating refrain of the right-wingers about "compromise" and "bipartisan" for the bullshit that it always was, and voted in a 60%+ Democratic legislature to work with the Democratic governor, and broke the logjam. Taxes were immediately raised on the rich, the budget was balanced, schools and other state services were put back on an even keel, and the state economy is booming now. This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party; they mean business, and they're getting it done. We must show people that 100% of the blame for the incompetent and obstructionist legislature is Republicans, kooks and bigots and gun-addled crazies, all of them.
6
What @4 said.

What we should do is propose a statewide measure to replace the asinine B&O tax and most of the sales tax with a flat income tax.
7
@6

Flat? Fuck you, Rand Paul.
8

And you expected something different from a journal named the "Seattle Times"?

Newspapers are lodged in the place names of cities; hence they are obsolete.

High Speed Rail makes a State what a City used to be.

Look at California.

When you can commute from LA to a job in Sacramento...the subway is now the caternary line.
9
@5, hooray!
10
The problem is the tax exemptions make it so the rich get richer faster than the poor get poorer.

Time to form our own State and pull the rig out from the Red areas.
11
#10

The long timers get a free ride.

The newcomers pay full fare.

Unleash the Property Tax rate!
12
I still can't believe Kentucky, red state fuckers one and all, gets $1.51 for every $1.00 they send to the fed. It's time to end subsidies to Republican assholes!
13

#5

Right 20 years of misguided density and urbanism that left us with the same stupid traffic jams.

It's time for a purge of the Ideologues.

Bring on the Realpolitik.

14
Shut the fuck up, Bailo!
15
Is this even legal? Don't we derive our powers of taxation from the state, who will clearly end this the moment we try it?

If it is legal, I'm all for it. In fact, I'm even all for it if it's not. WA didn't wait around for pot to be legal federally to make it legal here, despite not having the legal authority to do so.
16
Oops, I didn't read the Times story. Mayors are asking for this ability.
17
Paraphrasing the local economist guy on KUOW: "if it wasn't for Seattle, Washington would be Idaho."

...and yet Olympia treats Seattle as close to shit as it can.
18
@15 There is no constitutional or statutory limit on a local income tax other than a 5-4 1933 court decision that ruled income as property (a decision for which there is no surviving precedent left in any other state or federal court). The first step is to challenge this ruling, and the surest way to do this is to pass an income tax locally.
19
@18

If you think my income isn't my property you're no better than a pickpocket.

But more importantly, to deprive people of social protection of their property, especially the pay they give 2/3 of their waking time to earn isn't merely wrong, it strikes at the core of the social contract.

As for taxing only those who through hard work, discipline and risk have earned their good lives- Go to hell you commie scumbag.
20
The quote from #1 is retarded. Urbanization has been going on for a century at least and shows no signs of slowing.

I agree with the article and, as usual, Fnarf. #6 is just a pathetic, asinine, and ignorant man who should immediately be exiled to Somalia where he can revel in his adolescent fantasies of libertarian anal-expulsive bullshit.
21
@19, you pay taxes for the privilege of living in an organized society that makes your earnings possible. Only the looniest of loons fails to grasp that. Your argument denies the very possibility of any taxation at all, which isn't even worthy of a response. It's certainly not a conservative view; real conservatives agree that taxation, progressive taxation, is necessary.

I know this is difficult for you, because every word that passes through your synapses is the product of your overwhelming need to be subservient to ideas you lack the mental ability to understand, so you repeat slogans again and again.

We can discuss the appropriate level of tax if you like, but only on a factual basis. Tax rates are lower now than at any point in your lifetime, and it's destroying the state. In addition, your assertions that "some people" (niggers, faggots, illegals, welfare cheats, libtards) don't pay tax is, again, beneath contempt. Poor people who don't pay federal income tax pay MORE tax than people who do, as a proportion of their income. That's a simple fact. You are not bearing the burden you think you are.

And your worldview, your politics, your religion are built on a foundation of lies. Stupid lies; lies a five-year-old can spot. There is nothing conservative about that, nothing.

And we're not negotiating with people like you anymore; we're steamrolling you out of the way. You contribute nothing.
22
The City runs at 1 order of magnitude. Walking.

The Suburb runs at 2 orders of magnitude. Driving.

The Farm will run at 3 orders of magnitude. HSR.

The City is a Suburb in slo-mo.
The Suburb is a Farm in slo-mo.
23
@19 You should have read the small print on that social contract before signing. See, in exchange for protecting your property, the government gets to tax you.

And no, income is not property. Income is a transaction (money that comes in), a transfer of wealth from one party to another. Afterwards, it becomes property.

Yes, that's a purely legal distinction. But since we're talking about the constitutionality of an income tax, that's what counts.
24
@22

Since I never have claimed people shouldn't pay for the government all the palaver about that I'll ignore.

As far as those who gain financially and directly more than they pay, that's a matter of public record. If citizen A pays no federal income tax, you can't argue they do. Yet the federal government operates for them precisely as for the highest bracket taxpayers. If this citizen also gets various federal, state and local programs buying their food, paying for their health care, helping with their rent and so on whatever measly sum they pay in state taxes isn't worth considering. They are, in plain fact, being directly paid for their citizenship.

Facts are inconvenient to one such as you, I know. Your worldview, not mine, hangs on flimsy premises at odds with reality. I suppose your irrational anger stems from this cognitive dissonance. Good luck with that.
25
@23

If you're happy signing away your most basic property rights, I'll make you a deal. You give up all your hard earned money and keep your filthy hands off of mine.

And again, the principal of paying my way presents no problem to me. But asking a few to pay not their own way, but that of everyone else? Yeah, that bothers me.
26
@25 You do understand that as a percentage of income, the poor in WA pay a helluva lot more than the wealthy in state and local taxes. You understand that right? That somebody earning under $20,000 a year pays about 17 percent in state and local taxes, whereas somebody earning $2 million pays about 3.5 percent.

All I'm proposing is asking the wealthy to up their share a bit. Not even make it flat. Just a little less regressive. Hard to see what's so offensive about that.
27
Ooo Seattleblues! "Commie scumbag"! I'm sure your Pastor would frown and shake his head at that sort of language.
Why don't you ask him if that's the sort of thing a good Christian would say?

You know, after you're done sucking on the crack pipe that Slog is for you.
28
The quickest way to turn Seattle into Detroit is to pass an income tax. High-income citizens will just move elsewhere and the property tax base will be destroyed.

Just another idiot proposal from a paper run by idiots.
29
Can I just say how disappointingly narrow-minded this comment thread is. Almost entirely focused on taxation, with little ability to address the larger issue.

Ah well.

Please wait...

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