Freedom

By Jason Rantz

Seattle’s new socialist mayor, with the help of Washington state Democrats, are running the wealthy out of town and they’re laughing about it. Not because they’ll miss the tax revenue generated by the wealthy, but because the wealthy aren’t the only targets.

Earlier in May, Mayor Katie Wilson appeared at a Seattle University event and was asked whether she believed progressive taxes were an “easy” solution to the region’s fiscal problems. The question comes on the heels of Washington Democrats passing the state’s first-ever income tax, naively described as merely a “millionaire’s tax.”.

“I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are like super overblown,” she told the cheering crowd with a laugh. “And the ones that leave, like, bye.”

A sitting mayor of a major American city just waved goodbye to the taxpayers her city depends on, and the room thought it was funny.

Seattle’s new mayor, a self-described democratic socialist, is already doing her level best to prove every critic right about what happens when you hand a major American city to the ideological left.

Wilson ran on the kind of platform that left-wing media usually describes as “ambitious” — government-run grocery stores, progressive taxation, and open contempt for the business community. Now she’s governing accordingly. And her latest performance should tell you everything you need to know about the people currently running Pacific Northwest cities into the ground.

Washington state just passed one of the most aggressive tax hikes in its history. Democrat Gov. Bob Ferguson signed the so-called “Millionaires Tax” into law on March 30 — a 9.9% levy on household income exceeding $1 million, effective 2028.

The tax is almost certainly unconstitutional — and was designed that way on purpose. Washington’s state constitution has prohibited a progressive income tax since 1933, when the state Supreme Court ruled in Culliton v. Chase that income is property, and property must be taxed uniformly and cannot exceed 1%.

But nearly 1,000 pages of public records obtained by The Center Square reveal the whole scheme: Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, the bill’s sponsor, wrote in an August email that, “I would like to force the Washington Supreme Court to reconsider its caselaw that considers income to be property.” He then sent a draft of the bill to Solicitor General Noah Purcell asking for “thoughts and comments about what will give us the best shot to have Culliton overruled.”

Attorney General’s Office Senior Counsel Chuck Zalesky was even more direct, writing that “the overall legislative goals, it seems to me, are to have our Supreme Court overturn Culliton v. Chase.”

A recently leaked Zoom meeting shows a Democrat lawmaker seeming to admit what conservatives have been screaming about: the intent is to extend the income tax to all Washingtonians. Perhaps this is why she dismisses concerns about the wealthy leaving the city or state. The intent isn’t to rely on them for funding; it’s to hit all of us.

Nevertheless, the income tax is on top of a capital gains tax already on the books, a Business and Occupation tax that hits gross revenue whether you’re profitable or not, and Seattle’s nation-leading combined sales tax rate of 10.35%. Seattle recently implemented a 5% payroll tax on employer compensation exceeding $1 million per employee annually as part of a so-called “Social Housing” tax, and already has a payroll tax.

The ink wasn’t dry before the departures started. Starbucks founder Howard Schultz announced he’s moving to Florida. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos already left for Florida back in 2023 after the capital gains tax kicked in. And Starbucks — the company that Wilson literally picketed and urged a boycott of after winning her election — announced it will invest $100 million and bring 2,000 new jobs to Nashville, Tennessee. Seattle could lose up to $750 million in tax revenue as a result.

That’s the company Wilson said you “should not” be buying from. Now it’s enriching Tennessee instead of Washington. Not bad for 100 days on the job.

She told the audience, “Being a progressive doesn’t necessarily mean that we keep layering on spending, and we never stop doing things.” Fine. But her actions say otherwise. She joined picket lines against Seattle’s most iconic employer. She cheered a state income tax that’s going to court. She waved “bye” to the millionaires whose tax dollars fund the very city services she claims to care about.

What makes Wilson genuinely dangerous isn’t just the local damage she’ll do to Seattle — a city that’s been in slow-motion collapse for years under progressive mismanagement, which I write about extensively in my book “What’s Killing America: Inside the Radical Left’s Tragic Destruction of Our Cities.” It’s that she’s been compared favorably to Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new socialist mayor, as if this is a model worth replicating. These two are being celebrated as the future of urban governance.

Here’s the thing about waving “bye” to millionaires: the roads they funded don’t fix themselves. The shelters and social programs Wilson’s coalition demands don’t run on good intentions. The city budget doesn’t balance on smug applause lines at a college forum. But maybe Wilson knows that. Maybe that’s the whole point?

Because when the millionaires are gone and the budget holes get bigger, the tax man doesn’t disappear — he just moves down the income ladder. That leaked Zoom call was a preview. The “millionaire’s tax” was always a foot in the door. The next bracket is yours.

Starbucks figured out Washington wasn’t serious about keeping them. It took its 2,000 jobs and $100 million to Nashville. Seattle’s mayor thought that was funny. Seattle residents might want to think about whether they can truly afford to laugh along with her.