Yes, Washington does need an income tax, and the advocacy for such a tax is not class warfare.

The reason is the increasing trend of executives to shift organizational costs to the government while increasing their personal salaries for entitled lifestyles.

In my parents’ generatiion, employees were hired for talent and character. They had their jobs for life and moved from one project to the next, receiving employer-sponsored training as necessary. Salaies were high enough, in comparison to the cost of living, that a family could afford a modest home and a car on one spouse’s income. Employees and their families had health insurance

benefits. Employees received their gold watches at 65 and and retired with a pension, and often they could work beyond 65 and delay withdrawing

their Social Security until the age of 70.

Nowadays employees are viewed as specialized commodities, disposable at the end of a project or a few projects. Their compensation is viewed as “cost” to minimized. This results in a shift of coporate costs, such as education and job training, to the government. Some workers are paid so poorly that they qualify for Medicaid, layoffs are causing older workers to claim their Social Security at 62 instead of 70. Outsourcing may reduce “cost” and increase the profits of executives, but the failure to hire the local workforce results in increased government services to those without jobs.

Mr. Guppy, the author of the June 18 opinion column opposing the income tax, cited New Jersey as a state with high taxes. When there is a snowstorm in New Jersey, the government road crews are continuously clearing the highways and major thoroughfares, and by 6 a.m. the following morning the roads are clear for the morning commute. The absence of an income tax in Washington state shifts the cost of preventing snow-related workplace closures to the government.

While industry shifts costs to the government, those who profit receive disproportionate salaries. Instead of reinvesting those profits into job-creating industries, we have an executive class with a sense of entitlement to palatial homes and material greed, aping the titled aristocrats of the eighteenth century.

Instead of the “soak the rich” attitude described by Mr. Guppy, we have a “soak the govermnent” attitude on the part of profiteers.

Linda Seltzer, Redmond