Over at Tapped, The American Prospect magazine’s web site, young Matthew Yglesias has a post with some interesting implications for all you California anti-taxistas.
Yeah, you. And you, too. Yes, we – particularly those of us who are self-employed and cash out the occasional shares of, er, Google – get hit and hit hard on cap gains and income and all sorts of other tuff. But saying that means the state is "overtaxed" is using anecdote to devise policy. Silicon Valley’s self-employed money managers are in the minority. And yes, you pay more because you make more – that’s how it works. And yes, it's as much as your Dad made in a year. You would prefer something different? 'Cause that's possible....
Yglesias makes the second-hand observation (coming off sites run by the Democratic Leadership Council, the moderate group that brought you Bill Clinton) that taxes can, indeed, be too low. How so? Well, when the services taxes are supposed to support – schools, roads, sewers, water pipes, fire departments (just to name the most popular) – are too crummy to provide basic services, you end up with a dumb, ignorant and poorly served citizenry.
Starting to remind you of any large states with lots of Pacific Coast real estate? It should. Gov. Terminator like to talk about how he wants to restore California to the glory it knew when he first came here in the last 1960’s. Yeah, back well before Prop 13 destroyed local governments – the folks who provide schools, streets, firemen, teachers and water pipes – ability to raise money and provide basic services.
Prop 13 is bad for business. And it’s about time that case was made -- loud and clear – to the state’s business community.
Link via Kevin Drum who, for some reasons, skip the California angle which, given Gov. Terminator’s ambition, examined rather closely by The Bee’s Dan Weintraub on Sunday, has some national import.