Media & Culture

Yo, NYT! Washington’s tax code is definitely regressive, but the state’s Democratic leaders have actually been working on changing that

This morn­ing, the New York Times pub­lished a new opin­ion video provoca­tive­ly titled “Blue States, You’re the Prob­lem,” in which John­ny Har­ris and edi­to­ri­al­ist Binyamin Appel­baum take aim at a selec­tion of the nation’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic-run states for sup­pos­ed­ly fail­ing to live up to their val­ues.

The four­teen plus minute video con­sists of an intro­duc­to­ry seg­ment fol­lowed by a set of three cri­tiques con­cern­ing issues in three dif­fer­ent states under Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance: Cal­i­for­nia, Wash­ing­ton, and Connecticut.

The Cal­i­for­nia seg­ment focus­es on hous­ing, the Con­necti­cut seg­ment on edu­ca­tion, and the Wash­ing­ton seg­ment on our state’s upside down tax code.

Sev­er­al Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers were par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the Wash­ing­ton seg­ment and got in touch to ask for NPI’s take on it.

Our team watched the video and came away pret­ty disappointed.

Here’s a tran­script of the Wash­ing­ton segment:

HARRIS: Let’s go to anoth­er lib­er­al bas­tion, up here in Wash­ing­ton State. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty talks about tax­a­tion, say­ing that our tax code has been “rigged against the Amer­i­can peo­ple”. Democ­rats all the time are decry­ing the fact that tax cuts are going to the wealth­i­est Americans.

ELIZABETH WARREN [CLIP]: It is time for a wealth tax in America!

HARRIS: Democ­rats believe in a pro­gres­sive tax sys­tem where the rich pay a larg­er share of their income than the poor.

This is like the most basic pol­i­cy vision of, like, a pro­gres­sive move­ment. It’s front and cen­ter in Democ­rats’ pol­i­cy platform.

APPELBAUM: But if you go and look at Wash­ing­ton State, what you find is that in Wash­ing­ton State, if you look at the state and local tax­es that peo­ple pay there, less afflu­ent fam­i­lies pay a much larg­er share of their income in tax­es than the wealth­i­est res­i­dents of Wash­ing­ton State.

So peo­ple like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos — two of the state’s most famous and wealthy res­i­dents — are in this love­ly sit­u­a­tion of, of pay­ing less in tax­es as a share of their income than the poor peo­ple who live in that same state. And this is a fun­da­men­tal inver­sion of the val­ues that the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty pro­fess­es. There is no state with a more regres­sive sys­tem of tax­a­tion than Wash­ing­ton State.

HARRIS: And I’m talk­ing like the most regres­sive mean­ing [more so than] Texas. Which is like the con­ser­v­a­tive bas­tion of like anti tax­es… is more pro­gres­sive than Wash­ing­ton State, lib­er­al Wash­ing­ton State.

How is that real?

Oh, and guess what oth­er states on our map also are in the top ten of most regres­sive tax regimes, like Neva­da and Illinois.

APPELBAUM: There have been some changes, par­tic­u­lar­ly in recent years, but the over­all sit­u­a­tion remains resis­tant to change.

CLIP FROM THE SEATTLE CHANNEL, UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So I’m very con­cerned that at this time — which is a very poor time to dis­in­cent peo­ple from cre­at­ing jobs in Wash­ing­ton State — that we’re even con­sid­er­ing it.

APPELBAUM: From that pay­check that you earn more of that mon­ey is going to state gov­ern­ment. And so the effect of that is basi­cal­ly to exac­er­bate inequality.

HARRIS: Okay. So rich lib­er­als don’t show up when it comes to hous­ing or taxes.

The odd­est part of the seg­ment is a clip from the Seat­tle Chan­nel that shows up near the end, seem­ing­ly for no rea­son. It con­sists of a short sound bite in which a speak­er says he’s very con­cerned that we’re con­sid­er­ing “it”.

What’s “it,” a view­er might be won­der­ing? What is this speak­er refer­ring to? A pro­pos­al to do what, exact­ly, that the speak­er fears could dis­in­cent job creation?

Har­ris and Appel­baum don’t both­er to explain. They sim­ply wrap up their com­ments about Wash­ing­ton and move on to their next state, Connecticut.

A still from the video, Blue States, You’re the Prob­lem (Via The New York Times)

While Har­ris and Appel­baum do a good job explain­ing how upside down Wash­ing­ton State’s tax code is (mak­ing use of ITEP’s rank­ings and state by state data for their visu­als), they did not both­er to dive into any of the fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry that explains how we got to where we are. That his­to­ry dates back near­ly a cen­tu­ry, to a series of events that took place in the 1930s… includ­ing a dis­as­trous, inde­fen­si­bly rea­soned and extreme­ly con­se­quen­tial Supreme Court rul­ing strik­ing down a peo­ple’s ini­tia­tive that would have levied an income tax.

Nor did they talk about what the Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nor Inslee have recent­ly done to address the prob­lem. If you watch the video, you might be left with the impres­sion that Wash­ing­ton’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship isn’t doing any­thing to make Wash­ing­ton’s tax code more pro­gres­sive, when in fact, the Leg­is­la­ture and Gov­er­nor Inslee have tak­en a num­ber of impor­tant steps towards secur­ing a fair­er tax code for the Ever­green State in the last few leg­isla­tive sessions.

These include:

  • Mak­ing the real estate excise tax (REET) more progressive
  • Repeal­ing tax breaks that pow­er­ful inter­ests like Wall Street banks used to enjoy at Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ expense
  • Levy­ing a cap­i­tal gains tax on the wealthy to sup­port education
  • Fund­ing the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Tax Cred­it (WFTC)

Impor­tant­ly, the state’s new cap­i­tal gains tax requires the wealthy to pay more while the WFTC reduces tax oblig­a­tions for Wash­ing­ton’s least afflu­ent peo­ple. Leg­is­la­tors have com­mend­ably been work­ing on this prob­lem from both ends.

These were hard fought wins achieved dur­ing the 2019 and 2021 ses­sions over the objec­tions of Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors and even, in some cas­es, more con­ser­v­a­tive Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors like Mark Mul­let of Issaquah.

There’s more to do, of course, which is why Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors are cur­rent­ly work­ing on pro­pos­als to levy a wealth tax on bil­lion­aires, raise the estate tax, and make prop­er­ty tax­es more pro­gres­sive and equi­table. Leg­is­la­tors are also hold­ing tax town halls this autumn to hear from Wash­ing­to­ni­ans on this very top­ic.

None of this — none of it — was men­tioned by Har­ris or Appelbaum.

The duo also neglect­ed to men­tion that Wash­ing­ton has the ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum, and that right wing forces rep­re­sent­ed by Tim Eyman have his­tor­i­cal­ly used those pow­ers of direct democ­ra­cy to try to keep Wash­ing­ton’s tax code per­ma­nent­ly bro­ken and rigged in favor of the wealthy and the pow­er­ful. Wash­ing­ton may have Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship, but that does­n’t mean there are no obsta­cles or bar­ri­ers in the way of achiev­ing a goal like pro­gres­sive tax reform.

Con­text mat­ters. His­to­ry mat­ters. Yet so much of the polit­i­cal com­men­tary being pub­lished nowa­days is shal­low instead of sub­stan­tive. Super­fi­cial instead of sol­id. Sen­sa­tion­al instead of stu­dious. And that’s a shame.

Rather than div­ing into the issues and try­ing to unpack what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic run states, and why, Har­ris and Appel­baum zoomed through three weighty top­ics at warp speed, then threw their dis­cus­sion up on the NYT’s web­site as click­bait for the pub­li­ca­tion’s lib­er­al lean­ing audience.

“Blue States, You’re the Prob­lem” cer­tain­ly has excel­lent pro­duc­tion val­ues and slick visu­als. The dis­cus­sion, on the oth­er hand, leaves a lot to be desired. This video could have been so much bet­ter… deep­er, rich­er, and more informative.

What a missed opportunity.

Andrew Villeneuve

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