It’s time for Washington State’s voters to wake up to the dangers that progressive lawmakers pose.
It’s time for Washington State’s voters to wake up to the dangers that progressive lawmakers pose.
W hen Seattle holds its deserved Super Bowl victory parade this week, it will be in a downtown that is a shadow of its former prosperity.
More than 35 percent of office and retail space downtown is vacant, with even some prime waterfront properties sitting empty.
The metro area as a whole is weak. Its joblessness rate was 5.1 percent last November, up from 4 percent a year before. The region lost 12,900 jobs last year, the first annual decline since the recession of 2009.
It also has the highest inflation rate of any major metro region in the country, with consumer prices soaring 29 percent from 2021 through 2025.
Housing prices are through the roof in Seattle, with the median price of a single-family home at $907,000 in December. In each of the past three years, the number of homes on the market over $5 million in value has grown with an exodus of high-income residents.
The explanation is clear. Seattle now punishes job creation with a minimum wage of $21.30 an hour and a payroll tax on firms with payrolls over $8 million. In 2022, the state enacted a 7 percent capital gains tax, and Washington’s Democratic governor, Bob Ferguson, has just proposed a 9.9 percent income tax on millionaires.
Seahawks players, who each will collect a $178,000 bonus for winning the Super Bowl, would be affected directly. The Ferguson-backed levy includes a “jock tax” that would sock both home team and visiting players based on their “duty days” spent in Washington State. Critics say a 9.9 percent rate would harm the competitiveness of Seattle-based teams, since Washington would move from being one of the nine states with no income tax to the one with the eighth-highest rate (on pro athletes) in the nation.
If the Ferguson tax is passed by the legislature, let’s hope it’s challenged in a referendum. Since 1932, voters have rejected the imposition of an income tax eleven straight times.
It’s time for voters to wake up to the dangers facing their state. In 2017, CNBC ranked Washington as the nation’s top state for business. Since then, progressive local and state legislators have done everything possible to tarnish that. CNBC now ranks the state as 41st in business friendliness and 48th in cost of doing business.
Seattle may have taken home the Super Bowl trophy this year, but when it comes to economic sanity, it’s sporting a straitjacket.