KPLU Local News
(2010-10-20)
Listen Now:
null
Bill Gates, Sr. is the public face of an income tax initiative that would target Washington's wealthiest residents- including himself.
AP photo.
(KPLU) -
Who do you consider rich? Someone making $200,000 a year? $300,000? More? A poll conducted for KPLU and KCTS-9 by the University of Washington shows there is not agreement among Washington voters on what it means to be rich.
When candidates Barack Obama and John McCain were asked to define "rich" during the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama said, "If you make $250,000, you're doing well." McCain sparked laughter in the audience when he said he thought someone making "five million" was rich.
The recently conducted KPLU - KCTS 9 - Washington Poll mirrors those answers. Republicans in the state are more likely than Democrats to say it takes more than a million dollars a year to be rich.
Political affiliation isn't the only thing that appears to color the view of who's rich and who's not.
How much you earn also seems to be a factor. The more you make, the higher you set the bar for "rich."
Bill Sundstrom is an economics professor at Santa Clara University who writes about income inequality. He says the results of the poll are not surprising. People, including high income earners, tend to compare themselves to those they're around every day.
Sundstrom says people making $200,000 a year may work around people making substantially more and driving nicer cars than they do so they say, "I'm middle income, they are rich," Sundstrom said.
One surprising result of the poll is that even people in the middle and lower income brackets seem reluctant to tax the rich.
Initiative 1098 would establish an income tax for people making more than $200,000 a year. At the same time it would lower taxes on some middle-income earners and small businesses.
University of Washington pollster Matt Barreto says, while you'd expect voters making less than $60,000 a year to overwhelmingly support the measure, that's not the case. 45 percent oppose it.
Frank Walker, a retired accountant from Spokane, is one of them.
"I'm a very poor person and I don't think we should tax people that make more than me," Walker said.
Bill Sundstrom, the economics professor, says there has often been a reluctance by people to "stick it to the rich." Some are simply opposed to taxes, others worry it could hurt the country's productivity and then there's the belief that the rich deserve their riches.
"There's a strong undercurrent in this country that people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps," he said.
Frank Walker is a perfect example of that attitude.
"Bless the rich," Walker said.
"They lead the way in the world. They're really good people. I love them. Taxing them feels like revenge and I won't go there," he said.
We also asked Washington voters if it's a good or bad thing that the income gap between rich and poor has continued to grow. Most said it was a bad thing. But, among Republicans and Independents combined, nearly 50 percent said it was neither good nor bad.
A TV ad running for income tax Initiative 1098 shows Bill Gates, Sr. being soaked in a dunk tank.
People's ambivalence about who is rich and whether we really should soak them may very well play out when Washington voters mark their ballots.
For more on the 2010 Election and Washington Poll Data, check out KPLU's Election 2010 page.
© Copyright 2012, KPLU
