Citizens in Massachusetts are trying to get the state income tax there repealed and replaced by nothing:
"In light of stagnant private sector wages and thousands of jobs leaving Massachusetts, which is better for Massachusetts workers: keep the state income tax — or end it?
Please note that both ballot choices spend $47 billion in Massachusetts.
Voting “no” means that the Massachusetts state government decides how and where to spend the whole $47 billion.
Voting “yes” means that the Massachusetts state government decides how and where to spend $35 billion. And 3,400,000 workers and taxpayers each decide how and where to spend their $3,700 share of the other $12 billion."
With this going on just as the feds want American taxpayers to clean up their regulatory nightmare with our $700 billion, Kentuckians might want to think again about the $27 billion unfunded public employee benefits we have to deal with.
Do we really want to keep feeding our Kentucky politicians, hoping that their promises to straighten up their act really soon will someday be true?
3 comments:
Why not an era of "Good Government"? Oops!
That's one of those pesky American values that Republicans and Norquist fans don't want to talk about--along with Liberty and Justice for all.
Why not government along the lines advocated by Thomas Jefferson who wrote:
"The care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
Good government goes hand in hand with justice. Justice involves fairness. Fairness involves proportionality. Oops!
That brings up another one of those pesky American values that Republicans and Norquist fans don't want to talk about.
In Federalist Paper 12, Alexander Hamilton wrote:
"The ability of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned, in a great degree, to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates. Commerce, contributing to both these objects, must of necessity render the payment of taxes easier, and facilitate the requisite supplies to the treasury."
Were there a proportional tax on the movement of the stock transactions, mortgage sales, bundled packages and that ticking time bomb, global derivatives, then Wall Street wouldn't need to come to Congress pleading poverty for its greedy and avaricious excesses.
Derivatives are a $400 trillion counterparty contracts that are almost complete unregulated and largely unreported. Tax Wall Street and let Wall Street pay for its own bailout.
If anyone has had a real chance to purchase all the good government it could stand, it's Massachusetts. Give me more than a slogan and a couple of 200 year old quotes and I'll talk about anything you want.
Derivatives are only a time bomb when they are backed up by a recklessly applied government guarantee.
Wouldn't proportionality mean the same percentage for everyone? That has always seemed fair to me. No tax brackets, not tax deductions, just a low flat rate. Everyone pays it. Seems so simple.
With the Hamilton quote, sounds like he's advocating a consumption tax. I could possibly go with a percentage tax of financial transactions if it ended all other taxes. I think the FairTax had some gray area concerning whether stocks were considered assets. I could see how they are. It'd inhibit short term trades for more long term investing. Possibly something to consider.
With housing, instead of a yearly property tax, just a flat percentage on purchase and then it's mine forever. Seems fair.
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