Perhaps, as you state in your March 29 editorial, it isn’t the job of the state to distribute/sell liquor. However, it has done so in this state since the end of Prohibition and in the process has provided the state treasury a valuable source of revenue.
Said revenue is a tax to be sure, but it is a voluntary tax. (If you don’t want to pay the tax you don’t have to buy the product.) Enough people have wanted the product over the years, that we have been able to avoid a state income tax (an involuntary tax). The reason a state income tax has been rejected by the voters in recent years is that the majority of Washingtonians know that the Legislature can’t be trusted with the open-ended license-to-steal that such a tax represents.
An example is as near as our federal government. If the average citizen had a choice as to whether the tax he could voluntarily pay would go for some of the ridiculous ways Congress spends our hard-earned money, would they? Why then do our elected officials do these things? Because they can, that’s why — we’ve given them the money to do it — or perhaps more accurately, they’ve taken it (the federal income tax didn’t start out to be what it has become). Now, do we want that type of model for our state?
Mike Thompson
Everett
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