Andy Rebele

"Washington has been one of the fastest-growing states for decades. It conspicuously avoided the “blue-state disease” of low economic growth and population declines. The Seattle area is home to great companies from Microsoft and Amazon to Starbucks. Washington has been the Florida or Texas of the West Coast. A secret to the Evergreen State’s success has been that it has no income tax. But Democrats in Olympia are perilously close to enacting a “millionaire tax” of 9.9%. Washington would go from being one of nine states with no income tax to having the fifth-highest rate in the country. The tax has passed both legislative houses and Gov. Bob Ferguson says he’ll sign it. Supporters hope the state supreme court will uphold it, overturning or brushing aside a 1933 precedent under which it is plainly unconstitutional. The decision to enact an income tax bodes ill for Washington’s economic future. Eleven states have done so since 1960: West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Illinois, Maine, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Ohio, New Jersey and Connecticut. We found that every one of them significantly underperformed the rest of the nation in every economic measure we looked at, including share of the nationwide population, income, and state and local tax revenue. The 11 states in combination accounted for about one-third of national output in 1970. Today they account for slightly more than one-fifth. Since Ohio adopted its income tax in 1971, its share of nationwide domestic output has fallen by nearly half. Since Michigan adopted its income tax in 1967, its share of total state and local tax revenue nationwide has fallen by 53%. Pennsylvania’s share of national output declined 42% since its income tax of 1971; West Virginia has lagged national population growth by 56% since its income tax of 1961; and Rhode Island’s share of state and local tax revenue nationally has plummeted by a third since its income tax of 1971. In terms of the change in its share of the nation’s population, economic output and population, not one of the new income-tax states registers a positive number since the imposition of this tax. And the negative numbers are often highly negative. In every state that adopted an income tax, supporters promised the added money would be used to improve education. Washington is trying to play this card, saying the tax hike is for education, but the statements from lawmakers make it clear they want a new fund for any of their spending desires. When the Washington House approved the income tax, Rep. April Berg, chairman of the Finance Committee, triumphantly declared this plan “truly historic” because it will “make life more affordable for Washingtonians.” Many of them will not be Washingtonians anymore. Illinois added its income tax in 1969, and since then its share of the national population has sunk by 40%. By following suit, Washington will join the ranks of the incredible shrinking states." -- Wall Street Journal

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

Rule by the 8% How does 8% of a population control the laws, taxes, and economies of entire states like California and Washington? If you want to understand the math, look at the complex cap tables of some corporations. Mark Zuckerberg wields absolute control over Meta while owning just 13% of its economic equity. The Ford family dictates the direction of the Ford Motor Company with barely 2% of the actual shares. By exploiting dual-class stock structures and supervoting shares, a tiny minority of insiders engineers control over the majority. Public sector unions on the West Coast have built the same machine in government. The average voter walks into the ballot box assuming their vote has the same power as every other. They're wrong. Like retail investors holding lower-voting shares, the public is just along for the ride. California and Washington are not broken democracies. They are captured monopolies, functioning as designed. This is the dystopian reality that the tech and investor classes fundamentally misunderstand. When founders and VCs try to fight California's proposed wealth tax or Washington's new income tax, they reach for a spreadsheet, they bring data. They bring logic. They pull up projections showing that California’s wealth tax will actually cost the state $25 billion once capital flight is factored in. They treat bad policy like a bad business strategy, something to be fixed with better math. The math is undeniably correct. And they are still losing the war. The smartest guys in the room assume state politics is a free market of ideas where the policy that generates the most economic prosperity wins. It isn't. The unions' goal isn't to maximize the state's GDP. It's to maximize their own institutional power and revenue. If a tax throttles the broader economy but successfully funnels a billion dollars into a bucket earmarked for union members, that isn't a failure. It's the intended outcome The Supervoting Political Share Here is how the 8% actually captures the state. It starts with effective one-party rule. In CA and WA, Democrats routinely capture about 60% of the general electorate, making the vast majority of legislative districts completely safe. The general election is a formality; the only contest that matters is the primary. Primary turnout is notoriously abysmal - usually 30% to 40% of registered voters. That means the primary electorate represents maybe 20% of the state’s total voting-eligible population. To win that primary, a candidate only needs a simple majority of that fraction. Run the numbers, and you realize about 10% to 11% of the total electorate is deciding who runs the state. This is where the union deploys its supervoting share. Public sector union members make up roughly 8% of the population. But unlike the rest of the electorate, they vote as a bloc. They also supply the ground game - the call centers, the door-knockers, the war chests. A tiny, highly organized minority dictates the outcomes for candidates who go on to control supermajorities in the legislature. They outvote the remaining 90% of the state by default. Weaponizing the Ballot Once their candidates are seated, unions don't just trust the legislative process. They coerce it. They use the ballot initiative not as direct democracy, but as leverage. They fund extreme, economically ruinous measures and threaten to put them on the ballot to manufacture a crisis. Lawmakers and governors, desperate to avoid the fallout, cave at the collective bargaining table just to get the union to drop the initiative. When unions do push initiatives all the way to the voters, it’s usually to ring-fence tax revenues. They write laws legally restricting how new tax buckets can be spent, ensuring the money is preemptively funneled into programs that end up paying their members. Capturing the Referees The next layer is changing the rules so power can never be lost. They forcibly expand their revenue base by reclassifying private home healthcare aides as public employees just to extract mandatory dues. But the final lock on the system is the quiet takeover of the judiciary. Take Washington State. For decades, the state constitution was strictly interpreted to forbid a graduated income tax. To clear the runway for new taxes, the unions didn't just lobby the legislature; they captured the referees. The timeline is undeniable. In 2007, zero of the nine Washington State Supreme Court justices had been appointed by a Democratic governor. That same year, unions began their coordinated push for income and capital gains taxes. Concurrently, a quiet campaign started to persuade sitting justices to retire mid-term. This allowed union-backed governors to fill the vacancies by appointment, completely shielding their preferred judges from initial open elections. The number of appointed justices steadily rose to five, then suddenly jumped to seven, perfectly in sync with the moment the income tax finally took hold in the legislature. It’s the statistical equivalent of nearly 80% of the U.S. Senate being appointed instead of elected. It was a patient, geopolitical-style takeover: stack the court, wait out the political shifts, and take the territory without firing a single shot. The One-Way Ratchet Because they own the board, the union's ultimate advantage is time. The tech and investor classes view every legislative session or ballot measure as a discrete fight. The unions are playing an infinite game. It operates as a one-way political ratchet. The defense has to spend millions to win every single time just to maintain the status quo. The union machine only needs to win once. If a measure fails, they wait, tweak it, and try again. They test policies in controlled environments, like using the tiny city of SeaTac to pilot a radical minimum wage law. The catch? The mandate could be waived if a business signed a collective bargaining agreement. It was a structural trap designed to force employers into unionization just to survive. When an outright state income tax proved toxic to voters, they pivoted. They passed a capital gains tax, branded it an "excise tax" to squeeze it past their newly packed Supreme Court, and shifted the legal Overton window just enough to establish the precedent they needed. They propose, iterate, litigate, and wait. Once the ratchet clicks forward, it never goes back. Tech leaders fighting these taxes think they can optimize away a bad policy, but fail to realize they are fighting a war that was lost years ago. The system isn't going to correct itself just because someone shows that it's inefficient. For decades, the left obsessed over building a permanent majority, and failed. But the unions realized they didn't have to. You don't need to own 51% of the company if you hold the supervoting shares.

The Millionaires’ Tax passed by the House represents historic progress in rebalancing our unfair system. It sends significant dollars back to Washington families and small businesses. It expands the Working Families Tax Credit to 460,000 additional households – that’s money straight back into the pockets of working families. It saves working parents money and ensures our kids are prepared to learn by funding free breakfast and lunch for all Washington K-12 students, which has been a priority of mine since I ran for governor. The Millionaires’ Tax will apply to less than one half of one percent of Washingtonians, but make life more affordable for millions. I look forward to signing it.

DEVELOPING: Starbucks founder Howard Schultz announces that his family is leaving Seattle for Florida the same day Democrats passed an income tax on Washington state Starbucks corporate is moving to Nashville The wealth exodus is underway. Democrats have killed WA's economy