Another thing to thank Tim Eyman for.

Goldy, once again: We are never going to have an income tax in this state.

What @1 said, even if there are giant tax exemptions for other sources, too.

Wow, that is depressing. Ohio makes a terrible showing, too, being spanked by Kentucky that way. And how embarrassing for California, which once had tuition-free state universities. Thanks once again must go to to that rat bastard Ronald Reagan for showing them the "light".

In the end, we get the society we pay for.

Fixed that for you.

You are worse than Louisiana! I am shocked! Given that our state constitution says that the only budgets that can be cut when there is a mid-year shortfall are health care and higher education, I thought they would be much lower than they are. I guess that's because of our TOPS program, which pays full tuition for anyone with enough of a pulse to get through high school with a 2.5 GPA.

I've worked in higher education in Indiana, Kansas and Washington State. Obviously both Indiana and Kansas are conservative places. I never heard the denigration of higher education in those states that I have here, in Washington.

I think that is ultimately what makes it so easy for the legislature over the years to chip away at higher education. They did this even during the boom years long before 2008.

Of course, we don't necessarily help our own cause when the football coaches at the state's flagship universities boast the highest state salaries.

@2; So you think it would be wrong to have the Boeing Corporation pay more in taxes to educate the engineers that help make them money, so instead you would rather either pay higher taxes yourself, or have a less educated society. That says a lot about you doesn’t it?

(I would tell you to look up the word externality, but I can see that would be way beyond your level of education)

@8: The football coaches are the highest paid employees in about 30 states if I remember the map correctly. So obviously highly paid football coaches don't stop other states from doing a better job funding higher education than we do.

Washington State and its elected officials and citizens pay a lot of lip service to public education, both K-12 and higher ed.

But actions always speak louder than words and the spending in this state proves it. (As well as the outcomes.)

@10. Yes, this is true. My point about this sad fact for WA, has to do with the usual higher ed bashing lobbed at the public institutions in this state.

When you think about how newspapers and their readers like to complain about higher education, they usually throw in the exorbitant salaries as fodder for the blanket attacks. For good measure, people through STEM around while blasting liberal arts and confusing it with liberalism.

I find the schism between how we revere service members and deride all others who work in the public sector rather jarring. Even a civilian who works for the military is generally afforded some respect for serving their country while most everyone else who works in the public sector is considered tantamount to a welfare case.

Dying to protect our corporate interests overseas is great, but I think we should give equal respect to those who teach our children, study diseases, fight fires, maintain our bridges, ensure the safety of our food supply, etc.

And maybe then everyone wouldn't piss and moan about how much it costs to pay for all these services. Nobody seems to care much how expensive the military is.

We were at the other end of that graph in the Evans era (a Republican). Where we're at now is in large part due to 30 years of Democratic neglect.

You can do it, Senator Tom! Help us replace Alabama in the punchlines nationwide!

@10, 12 - Do we have any information about how much of that per-student spending is for sports? Does this report consider that a part of educational spending?

#9, the last time income taxes made it to the state ballot, the campaign was very well financed and the question lost in every single county including this one. If you can't even get a majority for an income tax in King County, you're screwed. Washington State will never have an income tax. If it bothers you tremendously, you could always move to California, which has a sales tax just as high as ours and a very high income tax too.

I don't see a ball and chain around your ankle. Take Goldy with you.

Also, #9, don't worry about Boeing. In 30 years, Boeing will have relocated everything to South Carolina.

p.s.: Also in 30 years, higher ed will be unrrecognizable in today's terms. The whole idea of a campus, and a four-year undergradate degree, will be quaint anachronisms except for the ultra-rich who can pay $200,000 a year to send their kid to Harvard or Stanford. Everyone else will be going to "college," which won't even be called that, online.

#13: a kindergarten teacher? Clerk at city hall, maybe?

@18: Not surprisingly you miss the point, as I make a six figure income, I would pay more in California, and you would pay less, I think it’s great that you’re willing to help subsidize me.

#21, you don't know how much I make. In any case, sales taxes would not decline if Washington State had an income tax. All we'd get is a new tax in addition to the other ones. They might toss a crumb to the poor, but I'm not poor. Face it, the fuckwits who claim to be progressive always shove it to the middle class.

Did any of you look at the data? A big part of the gap is tuition. Students in Washington pay the 9th lowest per student tuition.

I'll agree that public funding of higher education in Washington doesn't match the wealth of our state (or the numbers going to college), but that's only half the story.

But please, don't let facts get in the way of whatever narrative about unfair taxes and lack of funding you wanted to soapbox about...

Did any of you look at the data? A big part of the gap is tuition. Students in Washington pay the 9th lowest per student tuition.

I'll agree that public funding of higher education in Washington doesn't match the wealth of our state (or the numbers going to college), but that's only half the story.

But please, don't let facts get in the way of whatever narrative about unfair taxes and lack of funding you wanted to soapbox about...

"It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for." - Will Rogers

@2 I've no dog in that fight, but I think it is stupid to pull an option off the table because of some random decision nearly a 100 years ago.

@17 your conveniently forgetting California's unfortunate prop 13 which totally screwed the state for decades. Again if your gonna talk tax reform it all has to be on the table. Otherwise your just embarrassing yourself.

@18 so your solution is to just give up and curl into a ball?

@19 a meaningless comment. Of course 30 years from now things will have occurred we can't conceive of now. Hell I was alive 30 years ago, I could make lists. What is your point, prediction? or are you just whining about your own mortality?

@20 I have no idea what you were trying to convey by that post but I'll take a stab at an answer. Yes Kindergarten teachers are a good thing and should be paid a middle class wage. As should a clerk at City Hall, after all government runs on "paper" and without Clerks we couldn't trace it.

@22 Ok, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assume that you at least prefer government to anarchy, so how do you propose government raise revenue?

No no don't answer by telling me what taxes you think are bad or what you think government should or should not spend money on or do or not do, just tell me how you think government should be funded. It is a simple question.

I've no dog in that fight, but I think it is stupid to pull an option off the table because of some random decision nearly a 100 years ago.

You have no dog in that fight, you say? If that means you don't live in Washington State, then fuck off and go somewhere else, you fucktard piece of shit.

@27 please go away forever.

@27 let me know when your done pissing your panties and can actually define your ideas.

After Boeing and Microsoft bleed us dry they will leave. We are the host. They are the parasites. They, of course, have a massive propaganda machine to convince us of the opposite.

In the end, we get the government we pay for.

No, in Washington, the little people pay for however much government the state's big corporations and super-rich decide we should have. Speaking of big corporations and education, don't you just love how the legislature recently decided that the little people should subsidize resident public university tuition for non-immigrant H1-B workers and their families? Microsoft and Amazon don't need Washington STEM graduates. They can import them on the cheap and use resident tuition as a taxpayer-funded bonus. But Microsoft and Amazon give us back so much in return -- not in taxes, but in dog-walking, car-detailing, and food delivery jobs -- that we should all be kissing their feet in gratitude that they don't move to an even bigger tax haven. After all, it's not like Microsoft didn't move paper ownership of its software to Nevada or isn't moving its Azure server farm to Texas. They'd move everything else in a heartbeat, and then who would get those dog-walking jobs? That's just what you get in a federal system where big business can play states off against each other in a race to the bottom.

@ Unbrainwashed: What I conclude from I-1098's failure is that well-funded last-minute advertising and editorial blitzes work ... at least for a while. When the for-profit hospice industry and the Catholic Church blitzed Death With Dignity, that worked the first time, too. You can keep rotely repeating that Washington will never have an income tax and try to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy -- the state's "Democratic" Party politicians certainly do -- but good luck trying to fool most of the people forever.

#28, no.

#31, the income tax lost in every single county of the state. That's not the result of clever advertising. The voters of the state will never approve an income tax. You can kick and scream all you want, but it will not happen, ever.

After Boeing and Microsoft bleed us dry they will leave. We are the host. They are the parasites.

The parasites, you say. So you want Boeing to go, and you want Microsoft to go? What do you do for a living? Fix nitrogen from the air?

@19 and several other comments made by the same individual really hammer home the point. "I got mine, fuck you if you want the same."

As for online courses replacing physical campuses: I think it wouldn't be a long term realistic picture. People often see higher education as a conduit that blows information into a student's head absent any other factor. The education isn't limited to what happens in the classroom. If a student knows to take advantage of many different opportunities they develop a broad range of skills that will serve them well after college. Just about everyone who has ever graduated from college benefits from the interaction with other students in the classroom and outside of the classroom. That isn't my opinion, it is a fact.

Students with degrees earned largely on-line and their employers are going to realize relatively soon that they haven't developed into the creative problem-solvers that people who've participated alongside others---in real life.

#36, blah blah blah. Really. Blah blah blah. College costs have hit the wall, as evidenced by the skyrocketing student loan default rate. Your rationalizations sound like exactly like the crap I was hearing from real estate weenies until 2008.