Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell — the same guy presiding over a city where you can’t walk three blocks without stepping over a tent, a needle, or someone’s abandoned dignity — just went on camera and laughed about millionaires fleeing Washington state. Not a nervous laugh, either. A genuine, from-the-belly, “bye Felicia” kind of laugh. The people funding your entire municipal fantasy are packing U-Hauls, and the mayor of Seattle thinks that’s comedy.
Bold strategy, champ. Really bold. The city that can’t keep a Walgreens open or a public park free of open-air drug markets just told its highest earners to hit the road. What’s next — telling the fire department to take a hike because you’re tired of all the sirens?
Here’s what’s actually happening while Mayor Chuckles is doing his stand-up routine: Washington state has been hemorrhaging wealthy residents for years. The state jammed through a capital gains tax in 2021 that the courts somehow upheld, and since then the exit ramp to Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and literally anywhere that doesn’t treat success like a criminal offense has been packed bumper to bumper. The latest data shows millionaire migration out of Washington accelerating — not slowing, not stabilizing — accelerating. These aren’t trust fund babies moving money around on paper. These are business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs who create the jobs that everyone else in Seattle depends on.
And the mayor’s response? “Bye.”
We need to talk about what that word actually means when it comes out of a politician’s mouth. “Bye” means fewer tax dollars funding the police department you already defunded. “Bye” means fewer charitable donations to the food banks your policies made necessary. “Bye” means fewer jobs at the companies that used to call your city home. “Bye” means the next time you need to patch a pothole or build a homeless shelter — and brother, you’re going to need a LOT of homeless shelters — the money isn’t there.
But sure. Bye.
This is the progressive governing philosophy distilled to its purest, dumbest form. Step one: demonize wealth. Step two: tax wealth. Step three: watch wealth leave. Step four: laugh about it on camera. Step five: wonder why the budget has a crater in it the size of Mount Rainier. Step six: blame Republicans, even though there hasn’t been a Republican mayor of Seattle since 1969. Literally. Eisenhower was still warm in the ground the last time Seattle had a GOP mayor.
You know what other cities said “bye” to their productive citizens? Detroit. Baltimore. St. Louis. Gary, Indiana. How’s that working out? You could buy a whole city block in some of those places for the price of a Seattle parking spot, and the reason is exactly this mentality — the idea that the people creating value are the enemy, and the politicians spending other people’s money are the heroes.
Here’s what kills us about this. We’re not talking about some abstract policy debate. We’re watching, in real time, a major American city’s elected leader celebrate its own decline. The millionaires leaving Washington aren’t taking just their tax payments. They’re taking their businesses, their employees, their suppliers, their restaurant spending, their property purchases, and every dollar that ripples out from a high-income household into the local economy. Economists call it the “multiplier effect.” Progressives call it “the thing we don’t believe in until the budget meeting.”
And let’s not pretend this is just about millionaires. When the big fish leave, the medium fish feel it next. Small businesses that served those companies lose contracts. Restaurants that depended on corporate lunch crowds close. The property tax base erodes, which means either services get cut or taxes go up on everyone who’s left — which makes MORE people leave. It’s a death spiral, and the mayor is spinning it like a DJ.
The people of Seattle deserve better than a mayor who treats economic collapse like a punchline. But then again, they elected him. In a city where progressive politics is a religion, the congregation gets the sermon it asked for. The rest of us just get to watch from states with no income tax and functioning sidewalks.
So yeah, Mr. Mayor. Bye to your millionaires. Bye to your tax base. Bye to the businesses that were hanging on by a thread. And eventually — bye to any pretense that progressive economics produces anything other than tent cities, empty storefronts, and politicians who think poverty is a virtue.
We’ll be over here in the states where people are actually moving TO, watching your next budget hearing with popcorn. Something tells us nobody’s going to be laughing then.