In a hilarious column today the Globe’s Jeff Jacoby asserts that the world, or representative democracy in Massachusetts, or something equally colossal, may end if ballot Question 3 (to defund public services by cutting the sales tax from 6.25% to three percent) passes:
A vote for Question 3 is a vote to grab state government by the collar and give it a shaking it can’t ignore. Pass up this chance, and you may not get another.
Now, a 6.25% sales tax rate may not be the best public policy for the Commonwealth (personally, I favor 5%), but I can’t really see that it will end life as we know it before the next scheduled general election in 2012.
Even funnier is that this fantastic assertion comes in the final sentence of an entire column ostensibly devoted to ridiculing hyperbole. “Tax Cut Monster” (“who punishes any drop in tax rates by ravaging police and fire departments, throwing the sick and poor into the street, and reducing public infrastructure to rubble”), Jacoby asserts, is an exaggeration. His best evidence is that “the apocalypse” (his term) did not come after Proposition 2 1/2 was enacted. (Now there is penetrating analysis: mountains did not melt, therefore everything critics of Prop. 2 1/2 asserted was fantasy, but I digress). If Question 3 goes down, however, it’s the Seventh Seal.
A free BMG mug to whichever commenter comes up with the best definition of “Jacoby’s Apocalypse:” the titanic convulsion that may destroy Massachusetts if Question 3 is defeated. Here is something that he may have had in mind, from Revelations. Mind, this is only after the Sixth Seal:
[T]here was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
Enter soon, you may not get another chance!
Bill O’Reilly and Glen Beck make out, wearing nothing but thongs and hot oil… and we all have to watch.
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p>Yeah, you can’t unthink that thought.
I’ll just wait for those free lottery tickets once Mary Z is elected Auditor. NOT!
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p>I will quibble with your desire to lower the sales tax, however. I think 7.75% would be better. Why that number? Well, that’s what North Carolina collects, and everyone raves about that state — it contains some of the fastest-growing urban areas in the country.
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p>And, oh, yes, they also have a progressive income tax, with the mid-range rate of, guess what, 7.75%!
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p>Now, how are we going to be competitive with NC and other states unless we offer tax rates comparable to theirs? You’re familiar with NY.
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p>I say this not sarcastically, but knowing that every dollar in revenue a state gets is spent (because of balanced budget requirements), and most of that spending is local. On things like teachers’ salaries, infrastructure, public safety. How can that be a bad thing?
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p>If your worry is that the sales tax is our most regressive tax, I would of course have to agree, but my solution is to raise other taxes, especially corporate income taxes, and to fully tax dividend and interest income. We can take steps, short of a constitutional amendment, to make our income tax system more progressive. Let’s do it!
While we’re talking sales tax, how about devoting some of the sales tax to local cities and towns proportional to the amount collected? Cities and towns just have one major way to raise revenue — property taxes — and this single mechanism creates clear winners and losers.
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p>Given that wealthy towns usually have very little retail, and poorer cities usually have a lot of it, this would be a step towards balancing things out in this state.
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p>I’d propose that it not be optional, though, to prevent cities and towns from cannibalizing each other.
Not because I believe in Carla Howell’s assertion that the money the state doesn’t get is the money the state can easily cut from the budget. But similar to your argument, I think we should remove or at least lower the regressive sales tax and get the revenue through more progressive taxes – either corporate income, or even by raising the personal income tax rate (while raising the exemption amount).
You’re not voting on reducing this regressive tax and replacing it with a progressive tax. You’re voting on reducing this regressive tax and the programs which it funds, replacing it with nothing.
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p>Want to change how we pay for things? Cool!
Want to eliminate how we pay for things? Not cool.
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p>It would be one thing if the legislature’s leadership came out and said: pass 3, and we’ll raise the corporate income or personal income tax rate. They haven’t said that. There’s no reason to think that they’ll raise any tax to cover the lost revenue; instead, they’re going to cut and it’s going to hurt cities & towns and it’s going to hurt the vulnerable.
Seems like at this point a week away, the question is a coin flip so either way we’re going to find out. Although, knowing our politicians in MA, having a question pass referendum petition can be a mere formality WRT it becoming law (knowing they “must” follow the ballot result but quickly enact a new law countering the “will of the people”).
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p>We’ll know in another week… at least how the vote goes.
… Jacoby chapter 17 starting in verse 5
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p> skip a bit brother…
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