Using the power of the state — ultimately enforced by people with guns — to seize wealth from a targeted portion of the population is both morally wrong and unconstitutional.
If there is evidence that wealthy individuals are cheating, exploiting or evading the law, then the proper response is to identify those abuses and pass narrowly tailored laws to stop them. But absent such proof, punitive taxation becomes little more than envy backed by coercive force.
The United States and Washington state already impose extensive laws to prevent exploitation or cheating by “the rich”: consumer protection, environmental protection, labor law, land-use restrictions, public-interest mandates and a wide array of targeted business taxes and fees.
Before justifying new, selective taxes on “the rich,” proponents should be able to clearly demonstrate how this group is cheating or violating the common good. Otherwise, the policy amounts to democratic plundering and redistribution.
The injustice of plundering is why the Washington Constitution prohibits targeted taxes on income or property. The state constitution’s uniformity clause requires that “all taxes shall be uniform upon the same class of property.” Singling out a subset of the population for special taxation violates that principle.
Previous attempts at such taxes finally survived only because political judges went along with the charade that the tax on some people’s capital gains were framed as excise taxes on transactions, not direct taxes on income or property. This new tax Gov. Bob Ferguson applauds dispenses with that distinction and is far more plainly unconstitutional.
Ferguson, as a former attorney general, knows about the uniformity clause and would oppose targeted taxes if he had principles. That he is joining the radical voices to violate the constitution reflects a troubling reality: increasingly political courts are willing to stretch or ignore constitutional limits to reach preferred outcomes.
That erosion of restraint should concern anyone who values the rule of law, regardless of their views on taxation.
Consider a simple thought exercise: James Cameron is a billionaire because he created films that millions of people voluntarily paid to see. Where is the cheating? Where is the harm to the common interest? If wealth is the result of voluntary exchange and value creation, it is not evidence of wrongdoing.
If the goal is fairness, then fairness requires evidence, constitutional consistency and equal treatment under the law — not selective punishment justified by resentment and unworkable utopian ideals.
Jami Lund
Centralia
