Letters from My Hometown

Most of today's Letters to the Editor of the Seattle Times were in response to Bruce Ramsey's column last week that argued against a state income tax. Two letters agreed with Ramsey, three disagreed. My favorite was this one:

I take exception to Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey's "The joys of not having a state income tax" (column, Dec. 17). I am particularly disturbed by the notion that there should be a double standard of taxation in Washington state.

Ramsey argues that what he calls the "ability to pay" principle should "hold" at what he calls "the low end," while successful people should not be taxed according to their ability to pay since "a tax on success" is "neither fair nor smart."

So, is it fair to tax failure, relatively speaking, but not success? Or is it just "smart" to exploit the poor so that the rich get to keep more of their money?

But the real problem with Ramsey's thinking is that it is based on an atomistic social theory (i.e., having no intrinsic obligations among classes), according to which individual success is credited solely to the "successful" person without regard for the contributions of those who make up that person's social and economic environment.

True fairness dictates that those among us who do well economically shoulder a proportionally greater share of the cost of maintaining an organized society.

Jan Sjåvik, Carnation

Jan Sjåvik is an immigrant from Norway, a country which, in the spirit of true fairness, has blessed its citizens with one of the highest tax burdens on the planet. And that helps explain why thousands of Norway's best and brightest, like Jan Sjåvik, continue to flock to the relatively low taxation and high prosperity of the United States, and not the other way around.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at December 22, 2003 11:03 AM