Washington State shows how to tax fairly

Washington's tax was anticipated to bring in $248m. Instead, it's projected to bring in $849m in the first year. Those funds will go to public school operations and construction and infrastructure spending.

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Capital gains taxes are levied on "passive income" – money you get for owning stuff. The capital gains rate is much lower than the income tax rate – the rate you pay for doing stuff. This is naked class warfare: it punishes the people who make things and do things, and rewards the people who own the means of production.

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The Washington State tax is levied exclusively on annual gains in excess of a quarter million dollars – meaning this tax affects an infinitesimal minority of Washingtonians, who are vastly better off than the people whose work they profit from.

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(Sidebar here to say that market-based pensions are a scam, a way to force workers to gamble in a rigged casino for the chance to enjoy a dignified retirement; the defined benefits pension, combined with adequate Social Security, is the only way to ensure secure retirement for all of us)

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Washington State's soak-the-rich tax is ironic, given the propensity of California's plutes to threaten to leave for Washington if California finally passes its own extreme wealth tax.

There's a reason all these wealthy people want to live in California, Washington, New York and other states where there's broad public support for taxing the American aristocracy: states with rock-bottom taxes are failed states.

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The Washington tax windfall is fascinating in part because it reveals just how rich the ultra-rich actually are. Warren Buffett says that "when the tide goes out, you learn who's been swimming naked." But Washington's new tax is a tide that reveals who's been swimming with a gold bar stuck up their ass.

  Pluralistic

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.