CT Blue

Paul Choiniere of the Day has written a reasonably good op-ed piece about the tax situation in this state. He points out what everyone who pays attention already knows: that the tax burden in this state is regressive, and that despite the squawks of the business community the business tax burden is not especially high. One might add that the disparity in burden is even greater if you consider the impact of what you might call voluntary taxation: the lottery, which trades on the ignorance and hopelessness of the poor.

But I come not to praise Choiniere, but to quibble. He states:

With the public clamoring for smaller government, reductions in spending and the curtailment or outright elimination of some state services will have to be part of the solution.

Now, lets first stipulate that “smaller government” is in the eye of the beholder. George Bush felt that smaller government consisted of a government that taxed less, ran up debt, made endless war and spied on each and every citizen. That’s one definition, I guess, but not a terribly compelling one. Putting definitions aside, where is the evidence that the “public” is clamoring for smaller government? Lets consider the health care debate. Even when the well had been poisoned for months by right wing propaganda and Democratic rhetorical incompetence, the “public”, as measured by the polls was still in favor of health care reform, which was, according to the tiny group of actual clamorers, the sine qua non of big government. The numbers consistently went up when people were asked about specific provisions of the health care bill.

So it is with almost every issue. If asked, people might well say that they favor small government in the abstract (though they rarely clamor for it), but support dissipates when we get down to specifics. Why, consider this tea party person, and actual clamorer, queried by the New York Times:

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

Sane people also tend to reason like Ms. White, only they are not so starkly hypocritical.

What concerns me is the extent to which our media has drunk the right wing Kool-Aid. Even a person like Choiniere, in the process of writing a column that debunks one right wing myth (the overtaxation of the rich), casually buys into another for which there is precious little empirical support.

In the specific case of Connecticut, I really believe that the public would get behind reasonable tax increases fairly allocated. That means a reasonably progressive income tax. It means property tax reform, and a constitutionally mandated source of revenue for the towns from a broad based, progressive tax. What they don’t like, and always get, are changes to the tax system that end up hitting the people at the bottom the hardest. Choiniere mentions (he does not endorse this) the possibility of re-imposing tolls on the highways. I can’t imagine a tax that more skillfully blends regressivity with resentment.

Unfortunately for the states, and thanks to Susan Collins (alleged moderate from Maine) our states are in terrible shape because funding for state governments was, at her insistence, stripped from the stimulus package. The result is state governments on the verge of bankruptcy and a recession made more stubborn due to layoffs in the public sector as states and municipalities, legally required to balance their budgets, deal with falling revenues. This was predicted by the people to whom no one listens because they are always right.

And that brings us to the second part of the sentence I’ve quoted from Choiniere. In fact, elimination of state services (with the layoffs that would entail) would be counterproductive. He’s right that they will happen, but wrong that they should.

They just evolve.

Remember Lucky Duckies?

Lucky duckies is a term that was used in Wall Street Journal editorials starting on 20 November 2002 to refer to Americans who pay no federal income tax because they are at an income level that is below the tax line (after deductions and credits).

They’re back, in a new guise. They’re the 47 per-centers:

Forty-seven percent.

That’s the portion of American households that owe no income tax for 2009. The number is up from 38 percent in 2007, and it has become a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio. With Tax Day coming on Thursday, 47 percent has become shorthand for the notion that the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole.

But, as David Leonhardt goes on to explain, the talking point is as untrue now as it was then:

The 47 percent number is not wrong. The stimulus programs of the last two years — the first one signed by President George W. Bush, the second and larger one by President Obama — have increased the number of households that receive enough of a tax credit to wipe out their federal income tax liability.

But the modifiers here — federal and income — are important. Income taxes aren’t the only kind of federal taxes that people pay. There are also payroll taxes and investment taxes, among others. And, of course, people pay state and local taxes, too.

Even if the discussion is restricted to federal taxes (for which the statistics are better), a vast majority of households end up paying federal taxes. Congressional Budget Officedata suggests that, at most, about 10 percent of all households pay no net federal taxes. The number 10 is obviously a lot smaller than 47.

The reason is that poor families generally pay more in payroll taxes than they receive through benefits like the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s not just poor families for whom the payroll tax is a big deal, either. About three-quarters of all American households pay more in payroll taxes, which go toward Medicare and Social Security, than in income taxes.

The entire article is worth a read.

But does the truth matter? After all, like the genes which inspired the concept, memes care for nothing but one thing: survival. As Jon Stewart demonstrates here, this meme is thriving in all the usual places: