The entire unsigned editorial is worth a thorough, line-by-line fisking—like the author suggesting that Olympia Republicans should "do the gracious thing and vote yes" on one worthwhile tax bill, instead of urging them to "do the responsible thing." But especially egregious is the Seattle Times lazy dig at a proposal to tax the wealth of millionaires:

Particularly industrious has been Rep. Bob Hasegawa, D-Seattle. He offers a whole string of bills, including House Bill 2100, which would impose the property tax on stocks, bonds and bank certificates of deposit over $1 million. This one could be called the Drive the Millionaires Out of Washington Bill.

Ha, ha, ha, funny. Except, it's total bullshit. For as yet another study recently showed, tax hikes do not drive millionaires out of state:

A new study focusing on New Jersey provides some of the most detailed evidence yet that so-called millionaire taxes have little effect on the movements of millionaires as a whole. ... The study found that the overall population of millionaires increased during the tax period. Some millionaires moved out, of course. But they were more than offset by the creation of new millionaires.

The study dug deeper to figure out whether the millionaires who were moving out did so because of the tax. As a control group, they used New Jersey residents who earned $200,000 to $500,000—in other words, high-earners who weren’t subject to the tax. They found that the rate of out-migration among millionaires was in line with and rate of out-migration of submillionaires. The tax rate, they concluded, had no measurable impact.

“This suggests that the policy effect is close to zero,” the study says.

I'm pretty sure the Seattle Times editorial board is familiar with this study. The citation I use is from the Wall Street Journal, a publication whose memes the Blethenites slavishly echo, so you can be sure they read it. Yet they ignore it nonetheless. Which, I dunno, just strikes me as a little dishonest.