As I addressed earlier an economy consists of four things: the movement of goods, people, information, and capital. Get these things flowing around, and as many fingers on them as possible, and one has a very healthy economy.
With a healthy local or regional airport we can do three things very well when we are moving people, goods and capital. Bremerton National Airport should become a passenger airport. We are uniquely situated to host regional airlines like Horizon and if it is couple with train that connects Belfair to the Shipyard/ferry terminal we can have a lot of people coming to Kitsap for a lot of reasons. Those people bring capital, and capital brings jobs. ‘Nuff said.
Washington’s tax structure is kooky, weird, unfair, backwards, punishing… I can go on with adjectives, or I can just show you.
Let’s look at a Rich Guy. He makes $10 million a year and lives in a $2 million mansion on the beach. He pays zero in income tax to the state of Washington and about $10,000 in property taxes. Now we have and Average Joe. He makes about $50 thousand a year and also pays no income tax to the state. He owns a modest home valued at $300,000 and pays about $3,500 in property taxes to the state. Rich Guy makes 200 times the income of Average Joe and yet pays less than 3 times the property tax!
Our tax system is terrible and is exactly why the state is having budget issues. We need to reduce property and sales taxes (taxes that inversely affect poor to middle income individuals) and institute a state income/payroll tax. The wealthy in our state have made their millions namely because of the infrastructure our taxes have paid for. If it wasn’t for the reduced risk of investment that is a direct result of tax dollars invested into our ports, roads, schools, police, etc… no one would be able to accumulate wealth.
Our tax dollars enable people to be rich by paying for things they couldn’t do on their own. It is time for the same rich to start paying their fair share and ease up on the burden suffered by bottom 98%
