Don't show this to Gov. Steve Beshear.
Kentucky officials have messed around and messed around with the growing public employee fringe benefits disaster for decades, apparently hoping it would just go away.
Of course, it hasn't.
The commonsense solution would involve properly funding growing obligations at the expense of other spending desires less critical to keeping the state solvent and with cutting future benefit obligations.
We are probably more inclined to do something like this, though:
Voila! Job creation!
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Turning pension mess to stimulus?
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A "public employee fringe benefits disaster" isn't. It's mismanagement by the legislature and governors in raising revenue.
None have ever advocated returning to American values and implement proportional taxation on the movement of all moneys.
Conservatives won't stand for that, because it achieves the definition of "fairness" and that's the last thing conservatives want from a tax system. They want a tax system that rewards those who figure out means to con most people out of their money without any accountable.
Alexander Hamilton understood the importance of a proportional tax system. In Federalist Paper 12, he 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."
"Requisite supplies to the treasury" are those funds necessary for government to meet its obligations, such as public employee fringe benefits.
Instead, Kentucky squanders its funds to incarcerate non-violent marijuana users to the tune of $270 million a year, basically to fund the private prison industry.
And what are the people offered? Two unacceptable alternatives. One, a sin tax, in this case, on tobacco products, or maybe only on cigarettes.
Or the Republican "solution"--which is no solution at all--to cease funding needed public programs. However, it too is all too willing to continue shelling out millions annually to benefit the private prison industry. Stop incarcerating non-violent marijuana users would put back $270 million a year into the pubic coffers. That would about fund Kentucky's budget.
Hamiltonian American values proportional tax solution seems to be a hard pill for politicians to swallow.
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