So check this out: http://www.enterprisenews.com/…
It is amazing to me that our state and city governments continue to run inefficient and low-quality programs all in the name of “local control.”
By ensuring that every city or town has its own health, education, and emergency services, the governments are doing a great disservice to both their people’s well-being, and their wallets. It comes as no surprise to any of you reading this that MA has extremely high taxes — and this is certainly one reason. As a result of local control, taxes need to be raised to feed programs that double-count the exact same health or educational programs going on in the next town. This not only makes health, education, and emergency services more expensive (directly or indirectly), but also makes their quality diminish.
Imagine — regionalized health services could bring in the expertise of personnel from around the area and be able to gain funding to obtain cutting-edge technology and processes. With local governments, the funding and the personnel are not as widely accessible.
The same goes for education — a small school system with limited funding provides many less opportunities for its students than a regionalized one that is both larger and better funded.
We can only hope that our local and state politicians can wake up to realize what the rest of the country already has — specialization and cooperation work better than every town providing all services. It is brings up taxes — and in return we only get poorer quality services.
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p>Well, no. Massachusetts’s tax burden ranks twenty-eighth among the states. The tax burden here is 10.6% of income, less than the national average of 11%, according to the Tax Foundation. The myth of “Taxachusetts” is just that, a myth.
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p>That being said, it is certainly a sensible idea to require all municipalities to participate in the Commonwealth’s pension and benefits programs. I’ll go one step further and argue that the Commonwealth should get out of the pension business altogether by (1) freezing benefits in the state pension plans and (2) shifting instead to a defined-contribution plan, like most of us in the private sector have. Perhaps the biggest advantage of this move would be that it would eliminate the problem of underfunding of pension plans, since the government’s contribution would be both defined and paid at the outset rather than subject to concealment using unduly favorable actuarial assumptions.
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p>TedF
It is difficult, but impressive to argue that Massachusetts residents pay less in taxes than the national average. Actually, we pay much more. Visit this link and see how according to the latest Census data, Massachusetts ranks 7th in total tax per-capita, and MA tax-payers shell out about 28% more than the national average. I find that slightly ridiculous – even outrageous when we are spending money unnecessarily (i.e. the well-intentioned “local control” programs mentioned above).
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p>I agree with “Veritek for Pres,” we can and should push our state government to save our tax dollars by consolidating small health centers. It makes sense theoretically and practically. If large, rural states like Colorado and South Dakota can rank 47th and 50th in terms of per-capita taxes, and still have health care on par with MA, why should we pay extra for these “local control” programs?
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p>On a separate note, as a (D), we cannot afford examples of unnecessary spending. I’m not trying to sound like Ron Paul, but we can’t give the GOP this type of fuel. It’s plain, simple – the state must reevaluate programs such as these and cut taxes for MA taxpayers and voters.
Your numbers are correct but meaningless. Massachusetts taxpayers pay more tax per capita because we earn more per capita than people in most states. In fact, according to the Census Bureau data I’ve linked, Massachusetts is third in per capita real GDP.
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p>The meaningful numbers are the ones I’ve cited, namely, numbers that focus on tax as a percentage of income, not tax per capita.
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p>TedF
The question is not whether we’re suffering more under the yoke of taxes than any other state, or whether a nickname worthy of The Simpsons is accurate…we’re talking about waste here.
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p>Taxes are important, and it’s important that they go where they can do the most good. The thing that irks me about this article is that we’re sending our taxes into redundant bureaucracy, rather than into the goods and services that will allow our economy to grow.
Certainly a big part of the reason to vote “YES” is because we barely know where the money is going.
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p>To wit:
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p>-Every other week seems to bring a news story about an overpaid pensioner or poor investment decision.
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p>-Of course there’s the obligatory Patrick Cadillac and drapes or some other random tale of political largess.
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p>-Don’t even have to mention Big Dig.
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p>-We hear that the MTA pays 100% of its employees’ health insurance and think, wow, I wish I was receiving that benefit instead of paying for it.
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p>Then, we drive through the toll and a government drone (who was until February, packin’ reaches for the change. We’re told, he earns $60K per year.
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p>Yeah, the Governor says, we cut some costs in that big, bad MTA.
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p>What the Governor didn’t say is this: we had to cut costs because of the stupid interest rate swap we entered into that, starting in June, will cost us nearly $900 Million per month. Savings to taxpayers net of stupid interst swap equals
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p>But forget about all that stuff, right? It’s all little stories. Look at the big picture. Let’s look at where the money’s going … let’s look … and look … and look.
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p>You can’t F***ing see where the money’s going! Line items after line item: local aid, medicaid, public assistance, other HH&S, debt service, higher education, group insurance….
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p>There are 68,000 state employees out there delivering buckets of government goodness, and they might as well be delivering Game-Boys. The public can’t tell, and the fuzzy images delivered to us through the media, and the politicians is incomplete at best, and corrupt at worse.
the Commonwealth needs better PR? Actually, I don’t disagree at all. On one of the local blogs recently, someone actually asked, hyper-cynically, “Name one politician that’s done anything for the people lately…rah rah rah!!”(rah rah rah added). I chuckled… but then seriously had to think about what I would use as an example for that guy.