Taxes

You will never hear a Republican say "Taxes are low enough already. We don't need to cut them any more." For a Republican, cutting taxes is not the result of a rational train of thought. It's more like the automatic reaction that results when a doctor taps someone's knee and their leg jumps. In fact, it would not be going too far to compare Republicans to the creatures in a zombie movie; instead of mumbling "Brains . . . brains . . . " as they shamble down the street, they mumble "Tax cuts . . . tax cuts . . . "

It's a human characteristic to want to get something for nothing, and Republicans rely on that when they tell people they can pay less taxes and still get all the government services they want by "cutting waste". Sadly, no. If you want your government to take care of the elderly, and children, and the disabled, and keep your highways fixed and your sidewalks clean and your libraries open and stocked with books you'd like to read, you're going to have to pay for it. If there's not enough in the budget to pay for all the services you want, the solution is to raise more money. The solution is to RAISE TAXES.

Aren't taxes too high already? The Republicans think so, but as we've already seen, the Republicans always think taxes are too high. You can't go by what they say. The answer to the question Aren't taxes too high already? isn't "Yes, because they're higher than I'd like them to be", the answer is "No, not if they aren't high enough to pay for everything we want". That's the only true measure of whether taxes are too high.

So, if we're going to raise taxes, how should we do it? One thing we shouldn't do is raise the sales tax. That's one tax that already is too high, yet for some reason, whenever it's time to cut taxes, it's never the sales tax that gets cut.

Some quick history: Back in the ancient days of the 1980s, a collection of mobbed-up bankers and crooked state politicians ransacked the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation. The RISDIC went belly-up in 1991, and over a billion dollars in deposits in various credit unions vanished like so many soap bubbles. To cover the cost of reimbursing the people who lost their money, the state raised the sales tax from 6% to 7%. It was just an emergency measure until the financial crisis was dealt with, but darned if it isn't seventeen years later and the sales tax is still at 7%. And the sales tax is the most regressive tax in Rhode Island. People who are too poor to owe income tax have to pay the sales tax.

So, if we're going to cut the sales tax back to, say, 5%, how do we make up the difference? By the time-tested liberal method of soaking the rich. Why should rich people pay higher tax rates than everyone else? Well, why shouldn't they? They get to live in a society where the rules allow them to accumulate as much money as they want. Instead of being grateful that they're allowed to do so, and even that they get to keep most of it, they mostly just whine like spoiled children because they aren't allowed to keep more.

But rich people create wealth, and higher taxes discourage them from doing so. Nope. Rich people do not create wealth, rich people accumulate wealth. Wealth is created by everybody, and the better quality of life people lead, the more wealth they can create. People who are better-educated, with better health care, living in healthier places, create more wealth. And the way to produce a higher quality of life is with higher taxes. That's why states with low tax rates tend to be poorer than states with high tax rates. If you lower Rhode Island's taxes until they're as low as Mississippi's, then you'll end up with, well, Mississippi.

But if you raise taxes on rich people they'll move out of the state. Even if this is true, which I doubt, so what? It's not as though rich people are a perishable resource. Rich people who leave, if they leave, can and will be replaced by other people as they become rich.

So, if I'm elected to the General Assembly, I'll work to lower the sales tax and make up for it by raising the top income tax bracket by whatever amount is necessary to eliminate the budget deficit.