California and Washington: The Mysteries of Taxation

I am about to leave Seattle for New York for the next leg of the “Great Book Promo” adventure and, as usual, I enjoyed my stay in Washington State. Good thing too, because eventually we will be moving to Bainbridge Island, WA.

But what strikes me… and this is really anecdotal… is how much better things seem to work in Washington than they do in California, even though Washington has no personal income tax and California has one of the highest rates in the country. Is it just the population difference that does this? Seattle is certainly not a small place, though it’s no Los Angeles. And the general gestalt is equally liberal (well, roughly). It’s all a mystery to me.