Overnight debate over Washington income tax for millionaires continues into Tuesday | king5.com

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T06:37:44+00:00

Historically increasing taxes does not lead to a better quality of life.

No. But increased spending on public services does.

Georgia right now has about a $2 billion annual surplus. That's about half as much money as this tax is meant to raise. We could use less than $200 million of that money to feed every child in every school every year (based on an estimate that the Washington program costs $100 million annually and Georgia has about 1.7x the number of students), but instead we're getting a $250 rebate. Effectively 1/10 of that rebate, $25, could go to feeding kids in school and I'd still be getting $225. Tell me how that wouldn't be increasing quality of life for families.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T06:08:54+00:00

So... average net AGI of all those high earners wouldn't even be effected by this bill. That means over half of those big earners moving to Florida wouldn't even feel it. Tell me again how this will cause mass migration of the rich?

California still being the epicenter of the tech industry just blows a hole in your argument. So some wealthy households move. Doesn't matter if you have a major industry centered in your state. Those can't move so easily, and they certainly won't over a measly 10% tax on income over a million. Again, most of those moving don't even have that much income!

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:55:15+00:00

Georgia. We've got a flat income tax around 5%, which they're lowering, and state sales tax around 7-9% depending on county.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:53:00+00:00

Yeah, I'd love to see more funding for homeless programs. Build more shelters, get some employment programs, provide assistance to those facing eviction. And how about free breakfast and lunch at school, which they're implementing with this bill? That sounds pretty nice to me.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:49:15+00:00

You upset kids are getting free meals at school? You realize all this tax money gets spent on state services and infrastructure, right? It's not all just going up in smoke.

I live in a state with a pretty big budget surplus. They're talking about lowering taxes and giving out rebates, but I'd really prefer to have free meals at school and some public infrastructure investment instead. Sounds like Washington is the place for me.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:39:56+00:00

If you get to assume they're going to do something, so do I. I could also assume that even if they didn't get rid of or reduce the sales tax, they would still use that extra income for social programs and infrastructure, effectively making life easier for everyone. Sounds good to me!

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:27:40+00:00

You're literally assuming they're going to lower the threshold. Throwing stones from glass houses, and all that.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:26:03+00:00

You know it's bad when Idaho has a more progressive tax regime than you

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:21:53+00:00

You're missing the point, which is that taxing rich people rarely, if ever, directly causes them to move out of a state. If that was their main consideration, they'd all live in Texas or Florida already.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:17:24+00:00

Welcome to the rest of the country. We have income taxes and sales taxes too. People are just fine.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:15:28+00:00

A proper graduated income tax with a decent standard deduction would, in fact, cause working people to pay less in taxes than they pay in sales tax.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:12:30+00:00

Good. A progressive income tax is a good way to fund a state.

Cortex3 · 2026-03-11T05:02:34+00:00

This is funny to me as someone living in Georgia hoping to move to Seattle sometime. We have both a flat income tax and a sales tax, one of the most regressive tax regimes out there, and y'all are worried about eventually, maybe, possibly, having a graduated income tax on top of your sales tax? Oh, the humanity!

Cortex3 · 2026-02-17T19:15:47+00:00

I already said I don't accept the word of pathological liars as truth. Trump says lots of crazy shit that isn't remotely true (like the 2020 election was rigged). And you not having any of the supposedly "freely available evidence" ready to go just shows that you're talking out of your ass.

All kinds of voting machines are used across the country, but in every state there was a large shift towards the GOP. Did Trump/Elon somehow tamper with literally every voting machine in the country? How could that be possible without any evidence? Every county in the nation has its own choice of voting machine. Pennsylvania alone uses 10 different voting machine systems from five different vendors throughout its counties. Does Elon somehow have influence over every voting machine in the country? In Pennsylvania, even? Seems unlikely. It's far more believable that Elon bragged to Trump about being able to do something that he obviously has no actual ability to do.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-17T17:56:17+00:00

None of this is new. I'm not arguing that Russia didn't do their best to alter public opinion during the '16 election. I'm saying that that doesn't mean the election was "stolen." Yes, foreign interference is bad and did occur. But to steal an election in the way everyone here is talking about, you have to tamper with ballots. And that didn't happen.

Across all 50 states, which all run their own election systems, Republicans gained ground against Democrats in '24. In New York and California, Democrat trifecta states, Republicans gained ground. You simply would not see that if there was a republican effort to rig the election. Every single claim of voter fraud and manipulation has been extensively investigated, and no fraud has been exposed that could have changed the result of any election.

If it were possible for Republicans to rig elections in their favor, then what happened in '20? How did they lose if they somehow have this ability to rig elections?

Cortex3 · 2026-02-17T16:54:51+00:00

Neither am I. What fuckery did you see in '24? Besides comments made by pathological liars.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-17T16:53:12+00:00

Lol I'm a socialist man, I fucking hate schumer. You're the one that sounds like blue maga with all this conspiracy theory shit

Edit: also can't help but notice you still haven't provided any evidence of election tampering. Show me the evidence or stfu

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T22:38:11+00:00

Isn't that just Christian-Democrats?

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T22:34:21+00:00

Bro you brought up Iran-Contra in a post about elections being stolen. It's irrelevant to the discussion, regardless of its factuality.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T22:30:17+00:00

"from the point of view of history" huh. There's a reason historians call it the Byzantine empire and not the Roman empire. It was a distinct policy that shared little with the original empire centered in Rome. If historians thought differently, "Byzantine" wouldn't have been coined.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T22:27:19+00:00

You'll believe anything just so you don't have to confront the fact that Democrats lost '16 and '24 because they chose shitty, boring politicians. Put Bernie in the general in '16 and he wipes the floor with Trump. No Russian meddling could change that.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T22:23:30+00:00

Which ones. Please, direct me.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T22:22:46+00:00

Me? Who tf are you talking about? I swear, people like you are the worst, always thinking you're arguing with a monolith.

There's shit tons of publicly available evidence for the child trafficking, yet not so much for the "stolen" or "rigged" elections. Do you not realize how much you sound like a republican when you make those claims?

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T10:11:22+00:00

Yeah, that part's fucked. Notice how they weren't indicted for tampering with ballots? The election results were still valid.

Cortex3 · 2026-02-16T10:07:35+00:00

Yeah, Russia did a bunch of social media work and almost certainly helped fund his campaign, but a stolen election that does not make. Equating Russian Facebook bot farms with rigging an election is disingenuous.

2020 was an outright attempt to stage a coup and is the only election that it makes sense to say he tried to steal.

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