Friday, July 8, 2011

The "No New Taxes" Fantasy

There is no free lunch. We pay our taxes to support security for all of our citizens, wealthy and otherwise. Plug the tax loopholes, kill the subsidies going to fossil fuel providers, and step up to the cash register to pay legitimate bills for maintaining the infrastructure that supports an egalitarian way of life.

Social Security is a huge pool of money, but it exists because we pay for it during our working lives. This is not a tax designed to meet the day-to-day expenses of governance, it's a savings account administered as a trust fund so that those of us who are fortunate enough to live to see retirement can be sure of having some of that retirement supported by what we have saved.

Large pools of money draw politicians like maggots to rotting meat. Tell your representative and senator to keep their mouth hooks off the Social Security landscape. "No New Taxes" in Minnesota has already put us $6 billion in the red. Let's start paying it off, but not so fast that our bridges collapse in the "rush hour" traffic.

Let's look briefly at the current "rush" to reduce the deficit at both the state and federal levels. We're told that our current debt is unsustainable, that soon, we will be spending our entire budget just to service (pay interest on money already borrowed) our debt.  Too bad, but that's the way credit systems work. Whether it's your mortgage, credit cards, or your line of credit, once you incur the debt, you must pay the lender. This is both a legal obligation and a moral responsibility. So, paying the debt does not involve "new taxes" at all, it simply requires us to do what we said we would do when we borrowed the money.

The obligation we're talking about is an old one, stretching back years, or decades, spanning times when the economy was good. Now that it is not so good, can we simply declare bankruptcy and stop paying the bills? Yes, at the individual and corporate level, but at the cost of a poor credit rating in the future, impoverishment of our moral standing in the community, or the demise of a once-profitable business. No, at the democratic government level. We incur debt at this level because of perceived legitimate needs at the time the debt was incurred. Maybe the cause was to fight global totalitarianism, maybe to clean up the aftermath of the "perfect storm", maybe to build national networks of rail, road, electrical or communications grids.

Whatever the need, it was judged sufficient at the time to justify incurring the debt. Now we must pay the piper, even if our individual contributions (taxes) have to be somewhat larger than we had earlier anticipated.  The popular slogan, "no new taxes", deceives us into thinking that we are going to be spending money we don't have on "new" programs. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Current budgets at the state and federal levels address continuing needs that have, in many cases, not been fully funded at the outset. Some of these programs need to be phased out in an orderly manner if they are no longer in the best interests of the citizenry, but this can be done carefully, with aforethought, so that the providers of these services can retrain and relocate without creating a major economic upheaval at home or abroad.

In future essays here, we will explore how population changes, opportunity costs, and undue reliance upon the science fiction of Ayn Rand have resulted in the current crises of government spending. For now, it will suffice to simply do as we have always intended in the past, that is, pay our bills, even if the rates on existing tax bases have to go up.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Hope for Florida afterall

We can all be grateful that visitors to Orlando can now focus on the family entertainment fantasies being played out at Disney World rather than the side show emanating from the Orange County Courthouse. Those dissatisfied with the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial, should redirect their vitriol to the gullibility of the American public, all too ignorant of the protections we enjoy because of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

Florida still has a long way to go to qualify as the apex of civil rights in the U.S.  But, yesterday's verdict takes a giant leap forward from the heyday of the Orlando Klavern blowing up the residence of NAACP worker Harry T. Moore, killing both Harry and his wife, Harriette.  In 1972, the end of the 28-year reign of terror by then Sheriff of Lake County,  Willis V. McCall, revealed a change in the times in Florida, long a stronghold of anti-union and segregationist sentiments. Perhaps it was the influx of retirees and snowbirds seeking respite from northerly climes, as Isabel Wilkerson suggests.  Or, maybe just the relentless force of reason, implying that justice for one can mean justice for all.

We'll never know what the verdict might have been had Casey Anthony been black, but the day after America's birthday, all Americans can celebrate the fact that a jury of her peers lost no time in affirming that a person accused of first degree murder cannot be deprived of life or liberty in the absence of compelling evidence to convict.

Cross-posted to The Rennaisance Post