Comments

1
This is how it is supposed to work. The business center of an economic area will have the money even though they rely on the outlying areas. The business' that must be in rural areas such as farms are a great example of how the city collects the money. At the same time almost everyone in the state either does business with the Seattle area either through personal shopping or some type of business contract.

Redistribution of wealth is normal and good. I hate hearing how it has become a talking point synonymous with evil. Wealth collects in the darndest places like cities and greedy money grubbing assholes and it needs to be set free from time to time. Set the money free!

You do like freedom don't you?
2
This is how it is supposed to work. The business center of an economic area will have the money even though they rely on the outlying areas. The business' that must be in rural areas such as farms are a great example of how the city collects the money. At the same time almost everyone in the state either does business with the Seattle area either through personal shopping or some type of business contract.

Redistribution of wealth is normal and good. I hate hearing how it has become a talking point synonymous with evil. Wealth collects in the darndest places like cities and greedy money grubbing assholes and it needs to be set free from time to time.
3
Like I've suggested before: King County should become it's own state and let the rest of the selfish little welfare queens suffer.

4
I look forward to your parsing.
5
Yeah, the numbers are a bit confusing but trying to figure out your take on the numbers is more so. Are you saying that because King county generated a higher percentage of tax (red line) for the state that the county should have received even more education funding (blue line) than what the chart shows?
6
I think it more likely he is going to say that all those counties that get back so much more than they put in should quit whining about how high their taxes are...
7
I have to agree with the first commenter as well as point out that you're sort of comparing apples and oranges here. K-12 spending will be a function of age 18 and under population and average spend per student, and should not necessarily mirror percentage of $$ put into state coffers by the productive elements of the region (i.e., workers and businesses through their taxes).
8
@6 has it right. I'm fine with redistributing wealth, but let's be clear: it's our King County-based wealth that's getting redistributed to the poorer counties, so when poor-county Republicans complain about redistribution, it's on our (King County's) behalf. No, Republicans, we're doing just fine, we don't need your concern because we're perfectly happy redistributing our wealth in your direction, because you need all the public schools you can get.
9
The problem with the education funding is the unequal shares. We need to even the fields and stop the Rich/Poor School Districts.

@3
Hey Now! Your kinda generalizing. Snohomish county is one of King's little brothers.

10
@5,6 The last paragraph explains his point. It seems that the counties more likely to be angry about scary socialism and the redistribution of wealth, are the ones benefitting from it.
11
Packateer... I agree, and am a big fan of redistribution of wealth. But what pisses me off is the way voters in much of the rest of the state believe the opposite is true... that they are funding us. And what really, really pisses me off is the way that Republicans reinforce this lie.

Perhaps, if voters broadly understood their true self-interest, there would be broader support for funding things like K-12 at an adequate level, instead of just fighting for levy equalization to benefit their own children while starving school districts of funds in the county that foots the bulk of the bill.
12
When it come to the tab on K-12, you'd think Skamania county would pick it, up pick it, pick it up.

Sorry.

Also, I agree with the first two comments.
13
Am I right in assessing that all the net contributor counties are West of the Cascades?

I think the point here is that the predominantly Republican voting, redistributed-wealth-receiving counties SCREW THE REST OF US by voting for ass-backward policies like refusing to approve a high-income earner income tax and voting for whatever Tim Eyman is promoting.

I don't think that just because we pay we say, but I do think that we need to publish these kinds of statistics on billboards all over Eastern Washington whenever assholes like Clint Didier get all high and mighty about being self-sufficient. They are self-sufficiently helping themselves to my wallet. I'm sick of being labeled a "206er" with a sneer, like somehow it's bad to be the ones funding everyone else.

The redistribution of wealth on this particular chart is likely due to the Levy Equalization law. I kind of want that to end, but I don't want them to be even stupider over in Ea. Wa.
14


This is no different than taxing the rich to pay for schools.

15
We should become our own state.

And then watch as the rest of them flounder around without funding for their empty roads.
16
I mailed Carlyle (he's my rep too) a week or two ago asking him along with my other 36th Olympians to put forward a simple bit of legislation that says, in effect,

"No county will receive in any fiscal year any more in state funds than they paid back to the state in all forms of taxes and fees in the preceding fiscal year. Anything above this annual value must be approved in a per-project or per-program separate spending or tax bill."


What on Earth wouldn't be fair about that? Republicans should be ALL for this. Everyone pays their way equally then. If you have a special thing to pay out, like a bridge or deep bore tunnel, you make it a special bit of legislation. This would also let each county do their own thing. If someone wants to live in tax-free wooded squalor, screw it--why fight with them over it? More power to you, dude. You can have that out in Garfield County, or wherever, and then back here in King we're free to tax ourselves liberally for the infrastructure and projects we want.

To each their own.
17
WHATCOM COUNTY IS GETTING SCREWED! So is San Juan?

I like this. It will be nice to see this a little more parsed.
18
Strangee @7,

I chose K-12 spending because it was representative of the broader rev/exp ratio, and due to the way money the is spent (granted to local school districts) there is no question about where the benefit for the dollars spent should be credited. (Unlike, say, higher ed spending, where it's hard to determine how much of the benefit falls within the county where the university is located, or the county from which the students hail. Same with prisons.)

I'm not making a moral argument that King should get back benefits dollar for dollar. I'm just pointing out that King and a handful of other counties broadly subsidize the rest of the state.
19
@8- Well that's a weak argument. You're looking at GOVERNMENT RUN school and tax systems that are forced on people and then saying those who fall on the wrong side of your chart have no standing to criticize those systems. Maybe it's the system that put them on that side of the line to begin with.
20
O.k., I get that we need to make education affordable and worthwhile for areas that don't have enough money. But these are the same areas that vote for Eyman. It should be shoved down their throats that they get more than they pay.
21
Costs are higher in King county, so we actually need more funding per student.
22
@16 Ever hear anything back? And to your knowledge (since I will now consider you an expert on this issue :p) does any state in the union use such a scheme for tax revenue?
23
That graph also makes clear that, for most counties, the donor/recipient difference is in the noise. The only two counties with serious mismatches (approaching 50%) are King and Yakama. Watcom and Skagit might like to play up their "donor" status just to feel good about themselves, but basically they are balanced.
24
you homolibs are always screaming TAX THE RICH
then when the rich counties get taxed
you squeal like bitches....
25
@22 Just that Carlyle was already looking into the matter (as seen above).

@23 what are you talking about? Unless we're looking at different charts, Yakima, Spokane, Pierce, Clark, and (lesser degree) Benton are making out here like bandits. King County is completely and unfairly screwed over, and every single county except for Whatcom, and Skagit appear negative?
26
@25: By the looks of our lists, I am drawing the line for "serious mismatch" around 33% and you are drawing it around 20%. So a few more counties qualify for your list. But even for you, only a small minority of counties have a serious mismatch.
27
@26 Agreed, but still--this is just on K-12 education budgets.

What happens when we apply this universally across all sources of money paid back to the state: vehicle fees, sales taxes, liquor fees/taxes, property, B&O, everything else? How much does King County get fucked at the drive-thru then?
28
I don't know about the rest of you, but I live in the STATE OF WASHINGTON. A commonweal, if you will. I know that some of the taxes I pay go to pay for things that I might not use in parts of the state where I don't go. And I'M OKAY WITH THAT. I'm part of the commonweal, and so are they.

Obviously, this inequality of taxes paid vs. revenue received is something the people in the smaller, poorer counties need to have pointed out to them. But Americans generally have been voting completely against their own best interests for something like 20 years now. The education must take place on a much larger scale...
30
@29 screw em.
31
@29 I don't want to give money to counties that honestly believe that THEY'RE the one's who's wealth is being redistributed. I'm all for putting Joe Szilagyi's initiative into effect for 2 years in the hopes that it smacks some sense into the tea-bagging idiots who think that things like school and road funding magically grow on trees.

When they actually have to pay for those benefits, I hope they come to their senses... Either that, or they'll run themselves into the ground. Kinda like Colorado Springs:

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_143034…

32
Is this disparity because so many parents in King County send their kids to private school?
33
@18: I'm just pointing out that King and a handful of other counties broadly subsidize the rest of the state.

Based on what I can vaguely recall from my own research into this question years ago, King County gets back roughly equal to what it pays when you factor in total spending (e.g., transportation, social services, etc.). So, you may want to be a bit cautious before you generalize from just the education money.
34
@29 etc.

Goldy is using the rhetoric of the "Right" to make a point. Obviously he was much too subtle... ;)
35
seandr @33,

I'll post the source document with my more thorough piece on the issue, but according to this data, King is indeed a net contributor count, and by a wide margin. Even with DSHS expenditures.
36
Anyone who thinks rural folk - at least the chamber of commerce types who run things in the hinterlands - don't know where their bread is buttered is naive.

There's nothing inherently inconsistent about arguing the state should spend less in the cities when the rural areas are already being subsidized by the cities. The fact is, a lot of rural people don't like cities (I've hear all of the following in my years in the sticks: too many queers, too much crime, too many crazy people, too dirty, too secular, wrong family values, wrong skin color, wrong religion, wrong political party, too much traffic,) and see tax dollars spent in them as a big waste.

Since "those people" aren't going to do anything sensible with the money, might as well give it to the right thinking folks in the provinces - you know, God's people, the ones who grow your food and who will survive the coming apocalypse. This thinking is the norm outside the coastal cities. Rural conservatives aren't dumb; in the context of their world-view, urbanites are worthy of only pity or contempt and there's nothing morally wrong with taking their tax money.
37
The false premise of the taxpayers spending more money per student automatically makes them learn more has been argued many times in the past. I will go a different direction with two points. (1) Taxpayers are still spending many dollars outside of the classroom that do not go toward the education of students. (2) If parents paid a portion of thier own kids education they would demand better results, currently since it's "free" they get sub-par results.
38
@ Goldy: I think you'll very much enjoy this graph as well. It's the same sort of break down, but this time it's total State dollars paid to the Federal Government vs. total received...

http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/sh…
39
Just like it is in the comics, Garfield could disappear completely and there would still be plenty of interesting things going on in the world...

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
40
So, @36, rural republicans are serious when they say:

1. Stop ALL government spending - EXCEPT spending that personally benefits themselves and their friends.

2. Cut ALL taxes - EXCEPT taxes for people they and their friends personally dislike?

I always assumed that republicans were selfish and greedy. Can I just make that assumption a truth then?

Are rural republican really so inhuman and callous? I've never lived in the sticks (unless Tallahassee counts... which it might) so I don't know too many of those people, but are they really that bad?
41
@40 -

1. You'd never hear it put that way, but yes.

2. No, on this the advocacy is consistent - cut all taxes. "Starve the beast" is the operative phrase. (The fiscal austerity sideshow is all about spending cuts and is entirely driven by a desire to keep the economy in the tank through November 2012.)

Do you intend irony when you call rural republicans "inhuman"? They are as human as you, and prone to the same tribal tendency to dehumanize the other, the people they don't know. Or did you mean "inhumane" as in lacking compassion? Those I've known are very compassionate to those within their circle; they just draw a different line as to who is worthy of compassion than I do.
42
this chart just looks at public school funding.
if you homosexuals want a bigger piece of the pie you need to stop screwing each other and start reproducing.
in the meantime thank the breeders who are raising the kids who will grow up to change your shitty diapers while you drool on yourself in the home where the other homos dump you when you're no longer buff.....
43
asshole @42,

This chart just looks at public school funding, but if you read the post you'd see that the same ratio of revenues paid to benefits received is reflected in state spending across the board.
44
@35: I stand corrected. This is really good info that everyone should be made aware of.
45
43

yes dear, we know.
you liberals are always screaming for the rich to be taxed.
the richest county in the state is being taxed and you squeal like a bitch.
careful what you wish for.
asshole.
46
I'm with Joe. How better to educate wingnut assholes than to force a vote on whether they should continue to be subsidized.
47
BTW, Goldy: Much of more of this please.
48
From the essay itself:
To put this in perspective, King County school districts benefited from a combined $1,347,163 in state K-12 funding in 2008, but had they been funded proportionate to what King County taxpayers put into state coffers, our schools would have received an additional one billion dollars.

Goldy, you seem to have either lost three digits from King's state K-12 funding or said billion when you meant million.

I presume that it's the former, not the latter.
49
OK, how do we get this sort of info for the rest of the country?
50
I'd like to see the data for road taxes v expenditures. Maybe King could pay for 520 and 99 without tolls if we could keep our own tax money. It bugs me that we're shipping $$ all over the state, then have to pay even more for our projects in the form of tolls.
51
How much would it cost to turn that into a billboard and put it up along Highway 2?
52
N @48,

Yes, I was missing three zeros. That's what I get for copying and pasting from a spreadsheet where the values represented thousands. Fixed it.
53
Ah yes, another 'I hate Eastern Washington' editorial from Seattle dweller, far left writer Goldy. How very original. I mean, he can't have said or written this more than two or three hundred times before.
54
Eastern Washington is far overdue for secession. Actually, all but Pierce, southwestern Snohomish and western King Counties should become their own state, with maybe a reservation at Olympia. The voters everywhere but in those areas get no representation at all except in a few local issues. Certainly my suburban eastern King County neighbors are sick and tired of elitist liberals like Goldy telling them what is good for them.

Then we can tax the hell out of the whiny liberals for fruit and vegetables and wine, ship everything through the Columbia and gut the only real outgoing customer the port of Seattle has, and charge out of state costs for all the elitist assholes from King County who buy vacation cabins near farms and complain about the tractor noise.

Yeah. I like this idea of teaching those folks from Eastern Washington a lesson. Of course, the lesson would be how much better off they are without the big government expenses out of Western Washington, but hey, a lesson is a lesson.
55
@40

I think you can assume that 36 is one of two things. He is a liberal pretending to be conservative (badly.) Or he is a fringe lunatic. Either way he isn't representative.

What you can assume is that conservative want government to act within the very limited sphere of powers they were granted by our federal and state constitutions. You can assume that they want government to live within its' means just as the taxpayer must. You can assume that they are sufficiently busy taking responsibility for their family and career choices without being asked to provide for those of others. You can assume that they think slowly eroding the thrift, good sense and need for planning of the people of the nation by various welfare programs is a poor idea, particularly if it's done on borrowed money.

I can and do assume that even far left fringe elements like Goldy want the best for this country. I can assume that if he has children he wants them to grow up in place made better than it was when he was growing up. I can assume that he is wrong about nearly everything, but that he isn't malicious, just wrong.
56
In other news far left commentators are so consistently popular that Keith Olbermann has had his contract renewed by MSNBC, the propaganda arm of the Democrat party.

Wait...oh, he got the sack. I thought that all Americans loved progressive politics, so that can't be. It must be a mistake.

Nope. One more fact challenged lefty goes down in flames. Best of luck Keith. I hear health insurance sales are booming since we all are forced to purchase it whether we need it or want it. You might try that as a career move.

Please wait...

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