A Case Against Further Tax Cuts
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172 responses to “A Case Against Further Tax Cuts”
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Cut spending starting with schools.
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You need to be more specific. Which level of schools? If K-12, where should the cuts be? Fewer teachers/larger classes? Fewer sports teams? Fewer counselors? If one is advocating cutting spending, one should specify what spending should be cut.
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Inflation-Adjusted K-12 Education Spending Per Student Has Increased By 280 Percent Since 1960 in the US.
Are our publicly educated citizens 2.8X better educated than they were in 1960?
A 10% budgetary haircut would be good.
Let the bloated administrative bureaucracies in public BigEd figure out what to cut.
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I feel like my grandchildren are or will be much better educated upon graduation from high school than I was.
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I feel like I would have been much better educated upon graduation from high school had my parents not moved to Virginia.
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The problem with schools is not funding. It is policy from Richmond and the local school board. In Fauquier County, the schools consume one half of the county budget. All we got last year was sour grapes. Mind you every teacher got a raise. The 40 million dollar middle school rebuild and consolidation plan is now approaching 90 million dollars. SOL and NAEP scores are not delivering the significant investment made by citizens.
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It may be an example of the chicken and the egg. Citizens tell the schools, “We are not going to give you any more funding until you show us better results.” Educators respond, “We’re doing the best with what we have.”
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That’s the essence of the overall general argument in general.
“We are not getting enough for our taxes already, and we’ll be damned if we give you anymore until we get more for what we are already paying for”
works that way for most state govt services… from transportation to higher ed.
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Or you can look at the actual data and see school expenditures increase for the past few decades with no improvement.
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“No improvement”? I graduated from high school several decades ago and I can see that high school graduates are much better prepared than I was.
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I disagree. Critical thinking skills are non-existence. This is especially true in the sciences. What new discoveries have there been that you can cite? The best entrepreneurs of the past couple decades have been dropouts… SAD
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280% inflation adjusted increase in per-pupil spending since 1960 for public K-12 in the US.
Inflation adjusted.
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If you’re not spending enough to start with – that’s what happens. You’re starving the system. They saw this with transportation and they took action to get more funding for it. Now, the part of the general sales tax devoted to transportation generates as much money as the gas tax does.
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Starving the system with $30k per pupil in some VA counties. Right.
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Isn’t it 10K?
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I think the national average is something like 18k.
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Yeah and Arlington is something like 25k and AFAIK these numbers never account for school facilities and construction and debts required to finance them – only the annual school budget amortized across enrollment.
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Yeah and Arlington is something like 25k and AFAIK these numbers never account for school facilities and construction and debts required to finance them – only the annual school budget amortized across enrollment.
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yes… and cost of living is involved…
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We keep adding things for them to do that they were not doing before.
Imagine a voucher school trying to do ALL the things that public schools do these days.
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Why do schools have to do everything exactly?
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not sure your meaning? but every child has to be accorded the same opportunities as other kids.
Would voucher schools provide ALL the things that public schools provide? Would they also have to accept autistic kids and others with special needs? Sports, band, foreign languages, etc or would they be very basic without all the bells and whistles?
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Yes, that is the argument. Why pay more to an observably incompetent government?
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can’t be too incompetent, got a AAA credit rating…
I hear you Mr. Dick. What bothers me is that once in a not-too-distant memory, educators did better with what they had, and it was far less than current funding.
“The 40 million dollar middle school rebuild and consolidation plan is now approaching 90 million dollars.”
Another example of government incompetence and another reason to cut taxes.
“SOL and NAEP scores are not delivering the significant investment made by citizens.”
Of course not! Government leaders NEVER take accountability for results. They just scream for more money, more money, more money.
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The supervisors caved and wrote the check to the school board. They should have spent a fraction of the money on an overhaul of a/c and heat and kept the two old buildings going for another generation. Structurally speaking they are in great shape. Just old and not shiny new.
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New schools cost money.
“The Stafford County School Board awarded a $139.3 million contract to Howard Shockey & Sons, Inc. to construct what is being called ‘High School 6’. The high school will be located between Route 17 and Truslow Road. The decision was made on Tuesday during a school board meeting.Sep 14, 2023”
the real world….
Highways cost the devil also
so do new prisons…
and new hospitals…
it’s not 1950 anymore…
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Better use of that money would be to turn Truslow road into a 4 lane highway. That is dangerous road. No shoulder. Just asphalt laid over an old turkey path.
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The spend more in Massachusetts and get better results…
Virginia spends LESS than average and get less results.
You’re all in on anti-govt !
I can see how it might affects your voting!
“yet there are no demands that large companies, such as big oil companies, for example, give refunds to their customers when they bring in record profits.”
No, they give dividends to their shareholders.
In the context of government, who would be analogous to the shareholders of a large company?
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And I would view the coming rebates, third in five years, as similar to such dividends. Three in five years is not a sign the state is starving. Of course in this case one share and one thousand shares gets you the same dividend.
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Rather than being seen as shareholders, citizens, in this analogy, could be viewed as customers, consumers of state services. This is why I don’t like the comparison of government to business; the analogy breaks down almost immediately.
Furthermore, not all companies give dividends.
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And I would view the coming rebates, third in five years, as similar to such dividends. Three in five years is not a sign the state is starving. Of course in this case one share and one thousand shares gets you the same dividend.
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Rather than being seen as shareholders, citizens, in this analogy, could be viewed as customers, consumers of state services. This is why I don’t like the comparison of government to business; the analogy breaks down almost immediately.
Furthermore, not all companies give dividends.
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But then you have things like “cooperatives”, where the customer is also a shareholder.
If you’re going to compare government to business, the best comparison is probably to a “cooperative”.
Anyone who gets an electric bill from a cooperative knows that they return excess profits to their customers.
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I don’t think comparing government to business is an apt comparison. The point I was trying to make was that those folks who do make that comparison only make it in those areas that suit them.
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I think it is. I pay taxes, I expect services in return. Just like when I patronize a business, I expect a good or service for the money I pay to them.
Note: I do not consider keeping Bubba and all of his relatives on the state payroll a service.
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Do you want to pay taxes for services that others need that you do not?
Like Medicaid.
or K-12
or mental health/opioids
social services.. help for housing, utilities, etc?
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No, but you need to keep Bubba on the payroll to maintain the services he provides, such as guarding inmates in prisons, fixing the potholes in roads, staffing state parks, inspecting restaurants, etc.
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But as the song says:
“Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds / Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”
Read More: The Lyrics to Oliver Anthony’s ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ | https://tasteofcountry.com/oliver-anthony-rich-men-north-of-richmond-lyrics/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral
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Punching down at the poor and obese?
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What is a “fudge round”?
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Eighth from the top on this list: https://www.thedailymeal.com/1206723/every-little-debbie-product-ranked-worst-to-best/
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I concur with their #1, however that page is a lesson in diabetes.
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I had no idea Little Debbie makes that many different kinds of snack cakes.
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Poor mans Moon Pie.
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You aren’t alone. I didn’t know what they were until I looked it up.
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Except that the constitution says that the gov’t works for We The People not, as you claim, the other way around. Gov’t has to justify its requests; we don’t have to justify our limits on those requests.
Actually, I view we citizens as neither shareholders nor customers. We are assets and liabilities. We are the product and the waste of the society we are building.
Government provides services and assurances. We pay taxes for the services we use, and for the assurances that the services we don’t use, or may never use, are there in the event we may need them.
Except that the constitution says that the gov’t works for We The People not, as you claim, the other way around. Gov’t has to justify its requests; we don’t have to justify our limits on those requests.
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But we have made the requests through our representatives, and we have used the services resulting from those requests. The administrative portion of the government is just the collection agency.
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Now the people are staying stop.
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Not enough of them
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there’s confusion here. “We the people” don’t decide on an individual basis what the budget should be or not for what things or not. “we the people” hold elected officials accountable at elections – as
an electorate.The idea that each one of us has a right to demand certain spending or certain cuts because govt “works us for” is getting way off track from the actual way the founding fathers set things up.
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If we are supposed to be quiet between elections, why does BLM riot to express outrage? Are liberals allowed to sound off, but conservatives must be silent?
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elections don’t seem to fix some of the problems, like continuing murders by some police. Some folks get riled up about that and they’re not even affiliated with BLM.. just ordinary folks tired
of the police behaviors. -
“elections don’t seem to fix some of the problems” – sounds like – I’m free to complain if I don’t get my way. Have you thought that those who are demanding cuts don’t feel that the election fixed their problems? If they feel that way, they are justified, right? So why are you complaining?
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police murdering folks is a different kind of issue than “cuts”. The problem with the budget is that 3/4 of it is either Defense or Health Care. You can’t cut enough of it to balance the budget without cutting health care. Good luck on that… as they say.. you mess with Medicare and elections will have consequences…. see… it does work! It’s a joke when the “cut the budget” folk do their talk.. unless they are willing to cut Defense and Medicare, it’s a no go.
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In what way is “police murdering folks is a different kind of issue than “cuts””? Doesn’t the legislature deal with murder, set standards for police conduct, define criminal conduct, etc? Your argument sounds like rationalization, not logic.
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Oh they do set standards but some police still go rogue on local levels despite the law…
just like regular murderers… right? equating murder with budget issues is not logical at all. -
I never equated murder with budget issues. You did that when you mischaracterized my argument. Your argument is that BLM was justified to riot between elections because cops killing blacks (a false charge) was not a problem handled by the elected bodies. I merely pointed out that the legislature, an elected body, does handle both cuts and police standards, making your argument that cuts could not be discussed between voting sessions a false one.
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“In what way is “police murdering folks is a different kind of issue than “cuts””? ”
The legislatures apparently can’t stop rogue police even with laws… eh?
No problem what-so-ever discussing budget cuts ANYTIME but you totally don’t understand or want to that you get one vote and that does not entitle you to get your way about the budget. Budget “cuts” these days is essentially virtue signaling by those who advocate the cuts but won’t touch Defense or health care which is 75% of the budget.
We want defense and medical care but don’t want to pay for it!
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No, I get one vote, but I have an unlimited right to complain. About anything at any time, so long as I do it peacefully. It’s called free speech. If you don’t believe and accept that, you don’t understand the first thing about our system. The BLM riots were the violation of the governing process, not complaints about the size of gov’t. Quit twisting reality to fit your fantasy.
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You do for sure I agree (and if said or implied otherwise, was wrong) . It’s just that is where your direct role ends and elected governance takes over and if you are in the minority, you may not like the legislative outcomes. That’s the way the country was set up from national down to local. We have elections and after we have legislation and governance but those that were elected and if they weren’t the guys you wanted, you may not like what they do.
BLM riots WERE a “violation” yes, but when they occur in response to rogue cop killings that continue, they cannot be viewed in isolation as unprovoked and unrelated to the killings.
If local police will not change how they interact with those they “serve and protect”, bad stuff
will happen and like any other continuing abuse, need to be reined in if we really don’t like unrest
and rioting when it happens again and again. And really, when you get right down to it. the many cop killings that have continued have not resulted in riots at all, just protests and lawsuits.
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And the people, through their representatives, make requests that go beyond the ability of government to provide them. Just go to the Legislative Information System and under “state budget”, look at all the budget amendments proposed by members of the General Assembly.
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Yes. “We want more folks kept in prison but don’t ask me for more money for guards or prisons”… etc, etc..
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Nice try. The move to eliminate or dramatically reduce cash bond, the decision to not prosecute certain classes of criminal activity, etc have been ongoing for years.
Where is the refund of the taxes formerly paid to hold people who could not make cash bond in jail?
Where is the refund of the taxes once paid to enforce marijuana laws that are no longer enforced?
Government NEVER shrinks.
Starve the beast.
I’m looking forward to the coming federal government shutdown.
Until the progressive era, when it became a necessary tool to enact the progressive agenda, the tyranny of the majority was always defined as a problem of democracy, not a feature. Redefining it doesn’t change its inherently immoral nature. As Lincoln said, the dog has 4 legs.
“Furthermore, not all companies give dividends.”
Investors pick stocks with that in mind. One advantage to growth vs income stocks is the delay and potential reduction of tax liability. I assume you understand the math for that?
Citizens are both customers and owners. The best model of that might be credit unions. They get enough from fees and loans to cover costs, but don’t try to soak their customer/owners.
Actually, I view we citizens as neither shareholders nor customers. We are assets and liabilities. We are the product and the waste of the society we are building.
Government provides services and assurances. We pay taxes for the services we use, and for the assurances that the services we don’t use, or may never use, are there in the event we may need them.
“Furthermore, not all companies give dividends.”
Generally, the longer the company has been around, the more likely it is to pay dividends. Most of the big oil companies pay dividends.
Lobbyists?
Not to mention reinvesting profits into mega-expensive future energy projects, such as drilling or carbon capture etc, many of these projects can fail for unexpected reasons such as global politics, and dry holes.
The taxpayers, in proportion to what they paid.
WHAT? They’re taking in TOO much taxes. Stop spending on ANY programs that are not strictly academic education. Right after that certain sports can be played. Everything else, is NOT within their mission of education.
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Why would you allow “certain” sports? They are not strictly academic education. So, I take it, you would eliminate all counselors, psychologists, and nurses. Do art and band classes fall under your definition of “academic education”? What are some examples of the programs you would eliminate?
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There are enough citizens who value sports, fine arts, mental health, etc to make a school board meeting a living night of hell if there was threat to cut them. Here in Fauquier every middle school and high school has an agricultural teaching position. Why? Because that is the way it has been since the 1930s. Even though agriculture has changed from cash crops, dairy, and cattle to viticulture and farm/table styles, there is enough demand to fund the positions. Not saying you are wrong, just the reality of local school board funding politics.
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Why would you allow “certain” sports? They are not strictly academic education. So, I take it, you would eliminate all counselors, psychologists, and nurses. Do art and band classes fall under your definition of “academic education”? What are some examples of the programs you would eliminate? It is easy to say “cut spending”. It is a lot harder to say what specific spending to cut.
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Sports that are single sex only. I would eliminate counselors, psychs. Nurses, only to be there for emergencies, not to hand out Tylenol. Art and music are college degreed fields. Why would you bring them up?
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I bring up art and music because high schools offer courses in those areas.
Most sports are single sex. If you advocate only programs that are strictly academic, why should a school fund boys’ football, girls’ softball, girls’ basketball, boys’ swimming, etc.?
By the way, many school divisions prohibit students from bringing any medications to school, even off the shelf meds. So, if a girl is having severe menstrual cramps, she needs to go the the nurse to get Tylenol or ibuprofen. Under your rules, she would be out of luck.
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With vouchers, it would be possible to send your children to a school that spends it’s money according to your priorities.
I think sports should be largely self funding with sharing between boys and girls sports due to the greater income potential for boys sports like football.
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“By the way, many school divisions prohibit students from bringing any medications to school, even off the shelf meds.”
Stop making such stupid prohibitions and fire the school nurses. Nurses are in short supply throughout society. They’ll find other employers.
See how easy that was?
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I agree.
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Cut all sports save those sports which can raise enough money through ticket sales and related revenues (like advertising in programs) to pay their own way.
See how easy that was?
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OK. I have a feeling that almost all sports, including football, would be eliminated in Virginia high schools. I doubt if most parents would be in favor of that.
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Think of the after-school kid-sitting programs that would be cut; those “latch-key” children turned loose to misbehave before mom or dad gets home. We don’t need to pay the schools to entertain them with games, unless, that is, they can entertain enough paying adults to make the games profitable for the school’s balance sheet and the glorification of its principal. Forget about whether the less-talented kids actually like their sports or are socialized through playing them. Forget about the health benefits. The existence of home-schooling proves we don’t need sports (or “soccer moms” either) — right?
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I started following the state budget process under Governor Robb. In 40 years I have never attended a session where the people involved in those areas didn’t offer similar claims of underfunding. As an agency manager myself I worked to raise our budget, mainly for staff pay. It is a cat chasing its tail. If they stood at the podium and said, thanks, that’s enough, the room would all have coronaries….
As to VRS, it is strong right now, the diet COLA will protect it (not that I like that), and if we can get rid of Biden perhaps we can reverse the current situation where investment returns are too low and inflation too high.
A longer, detail response will have to wait. The ten years of budget cuts claim at the opening is laughable. Laughable. Ten years ago the General Fund was about $16.7B. The Non-GF side of the budget has grown even faster.
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I was involved in those years in which agencies had to submit budget cuts to DPB for inclusion in the Governor’s budget. Ask the people at DOC whose positions were eliminated because of those cuts. For example, there was one guy who was on his honeymoon when he learned that his position had been eliminated. On another occasion, a woman called me in tears about the correctional facility in which her husband was employed being shut down because of the cuts.
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Is the Virginia government a jobs program?
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More than that. A guaranteed job for life program. Individual agencies, departments, functions can be reduced or reorganized without it meaning state government is shrinking. The previous actual GF decline before this year’s tax cuts was 2013.
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This differs from those “corrupt” Northern states exactly how?
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Not any more.
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Like SCOTUS?
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This is one of the inherent flaws of a representative democracy. Boomer-cons need to wake up and realize that you can’t shrink such a government or return to the basics of “the Constitution”.
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My point is that there were actual budget reductions in the recent past. My reference to a decade of shortfalls was relevant.
Here is the plan to deal with the budget shortall in 2015. https://dpb.virginia.gov/forms/20141015-1/Item471_10_2015_SavingsPlan.pdf
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Oh, so the tearjerker stories of jobs lost were just an example of budget reductions?
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Steve implied that there were not budget reductions. I gave examples of budget reductions.
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A shortfall means the revenue estimates were off. You are pointing to the classic “Washington Cut” where spending fails to grow as much as expected or desired, but still grows.
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A shortfall means the revenue estimates were off. You are pointing to the classic “Washington Cut” where spending fails to grow as much as expected or desired, but still grows.
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How is the loss of a gov’t job from a budget cut any more painful than the loss of a job in coal or oil because of the Biden war on fossil fuels? Are the gov’t workers too stupid to learn to write code?
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A lost job is painful no matter where it happens. As for the lost jobs in coal, they occurred primarily the coal fields played out and because coal became noncompetitive with natural gas. Fossil fuel production has increased, although jobs have decreased. On the other hand, jobs in renewable industry have increased considerably. https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/28/politics/solar-wind-fossil-fuel-jobs-report-climate/index.html
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Actually, the jobs lost in the coal fields were because Obama kept his campaign promise to bankrupt the coal industry. ”
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” Obama said during a 2008 interview with the SF Chronicle. A 2015 study found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 during Obama’s first term. During Obama’s second term, the industry employment in coal mining has fallen by another 33,300 jobs.
My reference to learning to code was deliberate. In Dec 2019 candidate Biden addressed the issue:
During a rally yesterday, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden spoke to a crowd in Derry, N.H., a town
that many miners call home. He acknowledged the economic setbacks and job insecurity that coal miners face these days, and gave them some advice: learn to code.
According to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, Biden said, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as
hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”
According to Weigel, the comment was met with silence from the audience.My point was to call attention to, and remind us of, the hypocrisy of the Democrat party, which styles itself as a champion of the working man, but throws him to the wolves when it suits their goals.
The sanctimony of Biden’s remark is exceeded only by its stupidity.
As for the gov’t employees who lost their jobs, it’s a tough break. I survived it several times during my working career, and always managed to come out better in the end. Have faith in yourself and keep trying.
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“Are the gov’t workers too stupid to learn to write code?”
Years ago I dealt with one from the Virginia State Police who was some sort of “IT guy” who didn’t know that passwords on Windows XP are case-sensitive.
That was part of a much larger, much more messed-up situation potentially involving spoilation of evidence due to the actions of the VSP. I can’t go into more details than that, not here anyway. All I’m gonna say is that someone at the VSP needs to pay more attention to minor details like what address a hard drive is being sent to.
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“Are the gov’t workers too stupid to learn to write code?”
Years ago I dealt with one from the Virginia State Police who was some sort of “IT guy” who didn’t know that passwords on Windows XP are case-sensitive.
That was part of a much larger, much more messed-up situation potentially involving spoilation of evidence due to the actions of the VSP. I can’t go into more details than that, not here anyway. All I’m gonna say is that someone at the VSP needs to pay more attention to minor details like what address a hard drive is being sent to.
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This is why Virginia is trying to have a real IT company in charge of IT rather than all these little SILOs who have folks with little or no training pretending to be IT.
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I wish them luck.
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had that going on in the Navy also. Major fighting over NMCI.
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I’m all too aware of NMCI.
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oops! The basic issue is that every single unique piece of hardware and software had potential security flaws especially is not kept updated. The more different kinds you have, the bigger the risk. Ransomware running amok in organizations that don’t do IT “right” and that includes full backups on a daily even hourly basis. Too many yahoos that either are ignorant of the risk or don’t care.
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When I worked on a DoD contract, I was responsible for making sure that the systems for the application were STIGd and patched.
The only thing NMCI did was to provide the slow-as-molasses-in-January VPN used to access those systems.
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I thought they standardized systems hardware and software and you had to choose from the ones on the list and could not roll your own?
These days, you get malware loose on one machine and it gets on the network and you’re toast.
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This was a specialized application custom written for DoD. We also had Oracle DBAs and developers to manage and maintain it. I assume it was too specialized for NMCI to provide it, or out of the scope of the NMCI contract.
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that was the standard excuse.. “we got special software and mission”. The fact that they did not keep it patched… and maintained…. and still wanted to connect to the network… was always
the issue… Do they require standards for patching and the like? DO they require audits and software like Tripwire? -
Yes, they sent an auditor to make sure all the STIGs were applied. They also required the Microsoft Windows patches to be applied monthly.
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They’ve moved from standard configs to standards for maintenance and updates! What happens if they find you are not doing the STIGs and patches? Do they shut off network access?
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I don’t know, it was never a problem for us, we kept up to date on that stuff!
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In my time… there were SILOS all over the place and each one made the argument that
they had a unique mission with special needs… they’d try to get the waivers…but they
had no real intention of maintaining the security of the configs… unless NMCI and Network Security got in their face about it. Even then, they did not take backups serious.. and IT, in general, was
considered an “overhead” issue that did not have a paying sponsor. Management were total
yahoos on it. -
I was a contractor for DoD and I’m 99.99% sure that maintaining the security of the application hosting environment was part of that contract.
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It is. But there are two environments. The contractor facility and the govt facility and if you
are a contractor working IT at a govt facility.. it’s the govt managers that decide IT security
policy and, in fact, they can and do task contractors to do things that they could not do
with govt employees… to evade network security policy. The thing is, there are a LOT of
foreign actors these days whose job is to find the holes in DOD assets and exploit them.
If they get in to one computer , they can then often go through the network to the other
computers… bad karma… -
I have never seen that and I would expect that any contractor worth their salt would NOT play along with violating security policy even if directed to by a government manager, if only because the government manager WILL blame the government contractor for it if SHTF.
There may be EXCEPTIONS to a security policy, but these HAVE to be documented and approved with justification.
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Oh the contractor is between a rock and a hard place. If he doesn’t do the deed.. the COTAR
will ask for a replacement or go look for another contractor , etc. Did happen. Totally undercuts the govt IT folks trying to conform to policy.
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We’d get audited by network security where they’d send a summary of our equipment and the current status of the systems with regard to updates and security patches.
it was always a battle trying to convince our folks to do the job right but by the time the next audit was done, we would be goats again.
scofflaws and yahoos…
Regarding VRS, you ignore my point that infusing a chunk of money now would reduce the unfunded liability that will need to be covered at some point and save the state millions over the long term.
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You guys know the deal with VRS. It always is the can kicked down the road until a crisis or election is at stake. Both parties have come to the rescue over the years in my observation.
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I am proposing that we kick the can down the road a little bit less often.
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I’m for that, with respect to VRS and in all areas.
I was not in favor of borrowing from VRS.
Spending Social Security surplus (or more accurately lending it to the federal government) is how we got ourselves in our current fix nationally.
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Too noisy. Pick it up and carry it down the road.
Or, attach it to the chicken and let those on the other side of the road handle it.
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Better chance that VRS will be raided again as a back up rainy day fund for the General Assembly.
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WWRRD? Hint:RR = Ronald Reagan
Laughable is right. Do the “hidden taxes” imposed by regulation count? Like putting a “green energy subsidy charge” on most people’s electric bill to help poor people afford what the politicians know will be skyrocketing electricity costs? Or the public university leadership which charges some students far more than it costs to educate them so they can subsidize other students? Who elected those people?
How many schools would provide special education if it were not for the law requiring it which in turn results in tax increases to pay for it?
How many localities would fund Social Services if it were not for the law that requires them to and in turn, tax to pay for it?
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Are you suggesting we need to enshrine social services in our constitutions (because the States won’t fund them unless the state constitution or Congress makes them do so, and because Congress won’t do so unless the Constitution makes it do so)?
Oh, I forgot, that’s the way it works already.
So what is better? Giving back rebates but waiting each year to see what the revenue forecast will be…
OR
Cut taxes to the bone with no buffer and from year to year see if revenues continue to generate enough to fund and if they do not, increase taxes to make up for the shortfall?
is there a 3rd option?
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Run the whole thing on credit and present the bill at the end of the next cycle… just like the households in the State.
SURPRISE!!
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We haven’t sunk that low in Virginia. Still a cash basis here. I’ve never advocating cutting taxes “to the bone” and my top priority remains indexing, something that only slow builds as a revenue reduction. A tax restructuring that really didn’t give me personally much benefit, but lowered the burden on the middle class folks, would be fine with me. Dick’s right that $400 is a rounding error in my annual spend. But for many it is two or three weeks of groceries.
But Dick’s argument for “mo’ money” is a song I’ve tuned out long ago….
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Also illustrating the adage that once Government passes a tax they aren’t very likely to give up that new source of money, regardless of need.
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Not just taxes. The politicians promised that the tolls on the Dulles Toll Road would only exist until the construction costs for the road were paid off.
That happened decades ago.
The tolls? Still in place.
NEVER trust a politician.
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$400 is a bar bill, or a 10 minute excursion through West Marine if I don’t feel like waiting for delivery from Defender.
But you just nailed one thing, the burden is disproportionately on the middle income, but that’s because their only weapon is their vote, and it’s easy to take that from them for they have neither the time nor the inclination to look past the buzzwords like “woke” or “fascism”. Frankly, maybe that is for the best because they haven’t the capacity to even understand beyond the sixth grade level.
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Paying down long-term debt and reducing unfunded liabilities is a worthy use of surplus tax funds. The federal government is headed for a fiscal reckoning. Virginia needs to bullet-proof its balance sheet to survive the inevitable storm.
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Finally, another person who actually engages with the arguments I put forth.
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Yes. And THE reason we have surplus in Virginia is BECAUSE of the Fed spending more than they take in. It’s basically stimulus paid for with debt!
The Feds do not collect enough tax money to pay for DOD and domestic health care. The rest of it in terms of actual big money is a gnat on the butt of a dog!
You could make draconian cuts on the rest of the Federal Agencies and hardly touch the deficit.
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-federal-tax-dollars-go
We simply don’t collect enough tax to pay for it.
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“It is somewhat curious that these are the folks who often demand that government be run like a business, yet there are no demands that large companies, such as big oil companies, for example, give refunds to their customers when they bring in record profits.”
If there were several alternative governments from which one could choose to pay taxes, you might have a point.
If the owners of government (i.e. citizens) held their ownership interest in proportion to what they paid (as shareholders do), you might have a point.
If paying taxes were optional, you might have a point.
I am a taxpayer in Virginia. I am not a customer of the government in Virginia. Customers have choices, taxpayers do not. I am a victim of the bloated, ineffective, and largely incompetent government in Richmond. That government has steadily increased spending by more than inflation + population growth with nothing positive to show for that increased spending. K-12 education is but one example of governmental failure.
If the government of Virginia were really a stockholder owned corporation I would mortgage my house to raise funds to short it.
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You make Virginia sound like a third-world country. In fact, Virginia students scored in the top 10 in the latest NAEP 8th Grade math test (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/prek-12/naep-math-scores)
and one national organization ranked Virginia’s schools as fourth best in the nation
(https://www.thecentersquare.com/virginia/report-virginia-has-4th-best-public-schools-in-the-country/article_caf7af08-0d07-11ed-aad0-53a4b31425be.html
) So, it would seem that Virginians are
indeed getting a decent return on their money. -
…or if there were free-market to choose electricity (like Pennsylvania). The Virginia Way is a bit taking advantage of those stuck here due to government jobs etc. as a captive market
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7 Maryland 9.44%
26 Virginia 8.23%-
I guess you noticed no one has challenged my premise that Virginia is not a high-tax state. The comments so far have mostly been from people who dislike taxes on principle.
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except for maybe DJRippert who thinks Va pretty much sucks across the board… even if low
taxes, does not get his money’s worth! He has a place over on the Eastern Shore of MD I think,-
I happen to agree with DJ about that.
But I don’t have any family ties to Virginia that would make me think otherwise!
I lived in Elmhurst, IL prior to moving to Manassas, VA (not by choice).
If you know anything about those two places, you know that was a DOWNGRADE, made worse by the higher cost of living in Manassas. (What are you paying for, EZ access to 6-figure government jobs you can never be fired from? Well, not THAT EZ, given the 2-hour commute!)
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What was good at Elmhurst? Looks to be a suburb of Chicago. You’ve never driven the urban roads around Chicago? ugh!
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One current difference between the places is that Elmhurst has 6% of school students on free and reduced price lunches, while Manassas is around 45% and Prince William County is around 30%.
I can draw some conclusions about that.
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What’s the industry there?
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Lots of light and heavy industrial, corporate HQ, transportation, it’s quite diverse. There’s still quite a bit of manufacturing in the area, too.
Not the one-trick pony that NoVA is with it’s dependence on the Fed.
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sounds like you’re going back……..
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Probably not there, but someplace like it. I’m honestly sick of Federal IT work. Hopefully that won’t be a blight on my resume when I try to find a private-sector IT job.
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NoVa Dc Md is somewhat unique and not in a good way because it’s HQ for the Fed govt and it’s got all these high grades that had guaranteed career tenure and that’s way different than most career jobs. IT is not a job that will usually get you into management except as IT head and even then, others without IT bonifides will move laterally into those slots and folks below them have to
hold it all together. -
That’s pretty much what I see. At least with government contract IT work, you won’t get stuck in a rut. That rut WILL come to an end eventually and you’ll have to find another job. In the meantime, it’s like patching holes in the Titantic.
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The schools. The infrastructure. The parks. The street lighting. Hell, even the houses there are built better.
Oh, and the culture is a lot better, too. Manassas has a real trashy element to it, always has.
One of the nice thing about the suburban roads around Chicago is they’re on a grid pattern, so there’s no 10-mile detour to get around a closed road like there is around here.
So? What does that have to do with anything that I mentioned?
not usually a sign of a fiscally responsible state… Virginia is – AAA
In Illinois the locality does a lot more than the state. In that case…
https://patch.com/illinois/elmhurst/city-elmhurst-keeps-aaa-bond-rating-seventh-straight-year
outstanding!
” As of January 2022, 49 counties and 31 cities across the nation have a AAA bond rating from all three major rating agencies – Moody’s, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s.”
It is!
In fact, I’d go so far as to say you could take two identical people, have one grow up in Elmhurst and one in Manassas, the one that grew up in Elmhurst WILL have the better outcome.
“I guess you noticed no one has challenged my premise that Virginia is not a high-tax state.”
That’s like saying that the 10th largest mass killer is better than the largest mass killer. It sounds good but tells us nothing. Those who question taxes are inherently morally superior to those who demand taxes to pay for their pet projects or to enrich themselves and their friends.
There is a simple solution. Contract the Swiss to do it for us. They apparently know what they’re doing.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/economically-stable
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There are things that run like a Swiss watch…and then there are things that run like a Virginia government agency.
The bottom line is we need to try to make Virginia a good quality state, including cost-effectiveness. The perceived fear is that we rely so much on Fed gov’t spending (and our favorable location close to DC) that we ignore the need to be competitive as a state.
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I’ve long thought that Virginia, without the Federal government, would be about as viable as Mississippi, if not worse.
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