[cloverich]

Which policies specifically? Certainly not the income tax on million+ income, seems pretty modest. We moved from TX. Property tax rate is low, no income tax sub million in income, schools are great (and almost all new), roads are fine and transit seeing massive investment. They definitely need to fix budget, but there's _ample_ wealth here to deal with it. I think they'll figure it out.

_Oregon_ has bad policies (10% income tax on all, upwards of 14% on high income earners at 400k); schools are in a rough place, their legacy pension system is a disaster. But Washington seems fine imo. TX and such states will always be a draw while their cost of living is low, if you don't mind the heat and general lack of outdoors (relative to PNW). IMO the weather and housing prices are the main tradeoffs between WA and TX.

[jandrewrogers]

You can add in the increasing B&O (revenue) taxes, payroll taxes, data center taxes, and the expansion of the extremely high sales taxes to things that effectively make Washington uncompetitive. The cost of doing business has become unreasonably high and is so badly structured that it creates perverse incentives for how you organize business.

And then you have a litany of new business regulation across every sector of the local economy. My recent favorite, which fortunately did not make it out of this session due to heavy lobbying by tech, was requiring data centers to turn-off power during periods of high electricity demand. It's insane that this is even being seriously considered.

Oregon is also a mess but it has always been a mess.

Texas isn't the only alternative. Turning Washington into California with worse weather even makes California relatively attractive.

[ActorNightly]

>You can add in the increasing B&O (revenue) taxes, payroll taxes, data center taxes, and the expansion of the extremely high sales taxes to things that effectively make Washington uncompetitive.

None of this matters. We have been hearing how California is doing the same shit for years and people are moving out in droves, but turns out California house prices are still high because people are staying there and its still a very good place to live and work on the average, despite way higher cost of living.

So Washington is going to do just fine.

[j2kun]

Oregon has some decent things going for it. Multnomah county is rolling out Preschool for All and it's wildly popular. I know lots of people who were going to move, but stayed in Oregon just because they got into the early lottery for it.

[n8cpdx]

There’s no way preschool for all is broadly popular.

It soaks the “rich” with an income threshold that isn’t indexed to inflation and kicks in at an income level where preschool is still a major affordability challenge.

And then you pay PFA and don’t get preschool for your kid because we’re still years away from having enough seats for everyone.

So it is preschool for some (multco paying for seats in existing preschool, aka kicking your kid out of their preschool spot) paid for by the broad middle class.

Even Kotek was ragging on it.

2020’s 125k/200k thresholds should be today’s 150/250 thresholds. They are not.

https://www.opb.org/article/2025/06/26/kotek-multnomah-count...

[j2kun]

This is all a temporary problem. PFA will roll out to everyone, income thresholds can be (and are) renegotiated, and as someone who has a large PFA tax burden, I'm happy to pay for it even if my kids will age out before I get the benefit. I have never met anyone outside of ranting internet commenters who is actually mad about this situation.

Establishing free universal child care as the norm that everyone agrees we have to find a way to provide is the real virtue here. Detractors like you are missing the forest for the trees.

[galkk]

“Long term care tax”

[dixie_land]

When did blatantly unconstitutional laws become modest?

[johnnyanmac]

Why are income brackets unconstitutional?