At 03:48 PM 4/29/99 -0400, Dr. Joe Dumas wrote:
>Jim Hiestand wrote:
>
>>    I am not going to argue about the meaning of tax.  I was using the term
>> as equivalent to revenues going to the state.  Years ago, when Nelson
>> Rockefeller first ran for governor of my home state of New York, he
>> promised not to raise taxes.  Instead, after becoming governor, he raised
>> "fees"  on lots of things, including auto licenses.  Likewise, we don't
>> charge our in-state students tuition; we charge them maintenance fees.
>
>Jim aptly points out a favorite tactic of politicians in their
>never-ending battle to extract more of our money to spend on their pet
>programs:  defining new terms, or redefining existing ones, to mask
>the true meaning and impact of what they want to do in order to
>confuse the public and deflect opposition.  If "tax" is a bad word,
>call it a "fee"; when people wise up to what a "fee" means, couch it
>in different terms and coin some new euphemism for it.  Call it what
>you will, though, the underlying truth is that if it is required by
>law for people to pay it, it amounts to a tax.  If it is voluntary,
>you can call it a tax all day long, but it's not a tax.
>
>>    Of course to play or not play the lottery is a choice unlike a direct
>> tax on incomes.  One can buy selectively to somewhat reduce paying the
>> sales tax.  One can even avoid paying almost all money to Tenn. by making
>> most purchases in Georgia where the sales tax is lower.  This is not
>> impossible nor even inconvenient if you live say, in East Ridge.  But I
>> don't think such a one is paying his fair share of being a resident of
>> Tennessee.
>
>I think this hypothetical person is paying at least his fair share of
>what it really takes to run the required functions of the government
>of Tennessee.  He/she is still paying property taxes to the city and
>county and lots of "fees" :) such as drivers license, car tag, etc. to
>the state government.  The problem is, people who can't or don't adopt
>this strategy are paying much *more* than their fair share because the
>state of Tennessee is spending far more money than necessary to carry
>out its essential constitutional functions.
>
>A fellow UTC employee who lives in north Georgia sent me an email
>yesterday about all the lottery-funded school construction in GA over
>the last two years.  He also stated (I have not verified the accuracy
>of this information) that Georgia's 1998 overall budget was $3 billion
>*lower* than that of Tennessee despite Georgia's higher population and
>greater business tax base.  If true, this raises some serious
>questions about what Nashville is doing with the money it is taking in
>now.  Why would it cost more to govern a smaller state?  Maybe we are
>not using the revenue we already have as efficiently as we should?
>This is the sort of thing Tennesseans need to consider before
>encouraging politicians to *take* (not just allow them to give, as
>with a lottery) more of their hard-earned money via increased taxes.
>
>>    I think it was Oliver W. Holmes who said taxes are the price we pay for
>> civilization.  I am willing to pay for I also want the benefits which
>> government provides (e.g. police protection, public schools).
>
>It is true that government must have some revenue to pay for essential
>functions.  Unless all of this money can be raised by voluntary means
>(lottery, etc.), which might be possible if government is kept small
>enough, then some sort of tax may be necessary.  I believe that our
>federal and state government programs, and the corresponding
>expenditures, far exceed those authorized by their respective
>constitutions.  Thus, rather than raising taxes or "fees", our focus
>should be on scaling back or eliminating non-essential functions.  I
>am willing to pay only a small price (to the government) for
>civilization because other than providing police and a court system to
>protect us against others who violate our rights, and a military to
>defend our territory against invaders (*not* to go around the world
>meddling in the business of other nations :( , in other words, other
>than *defending* our civilization, government has, or should have,
>very little to do with our existence as "civilized" people.  Churches,
>charities, the arts, etc., all those civilizing influences in society,
>should exist without the fiat or intervention of government.
>
>To put it in economic terms:  anything not essential for government to
>do should be left to the private sector which invariably does a better
>job for less money.  Private schools, for example, almost invariably
>spend less money per student than do public schools, yet most private
>schools somehow manage to provide students with a better education
>than most public schools.  (If they *didn't* do a better job with
>students, private schools would die out because not many people would
>be willing to pay money for an inferior education when they could get
>a better one for "free".  ("Free" of course is in quotes because
>public schools are not free, they are supported by the tax dollars of
>all citizens whether or not they have children in the public
>schools.))  Private delivery services such as FedEx and UPS do a
>better job of package delivery than the federal post office and would
>probably do a better job of letter delivery as well if they were not
>barred by law from competing with USPS in that arena.  Any economist
>will tell you that when you have competition on a level playing field,
>it tends to encourage efficiency and keep prices down.  Government
>programs tend to have no competition or to have an unfair advantage
>over the competition, are therefore not efficient and waste taxpayer
>money.
>
>> Taxes back home in New York are too high; here they are too low.
>
>I think taxes here are already too high.  By the "transitive property
>of taxation" (hey, I coined a new axiom ;) taxes in New York are *way*
>too high.  No wonder so many New Yorkers eventually give up and move
>to Florida (which, by the way, has a lottery but no state income
>tax).  And all this time I thought it was just the weather.  :)
>
>> Dumas is correct that purchases tend to be regressive.  I don't think
>> taxes should be.  Probably the poor do benefit more from government than
>> do the better off.  I think this is reasonable. It is not clear that the
>> working poor benefit more than do the wealthy.  The latter may pay more
>> for home owners private insurance but they pay no more for public fire
>> protection nor to attend public schools nor to use the roads.
>
>I don't think it is reasonable that anyone should *benefit* from
>government other than by having his or her rights and property
>protected against those who would violate them.  I don't believe the
>proper function of the government is to redistribute wealth; that is
>socialism and I am not a socialist.  Government should not be Robin
>Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.  (In practice,
>there are never enough rich people to support all the poor people
>anyway, so what really happens is robbing from the middle class to
>give to the poor, who then come to expect the gift as an
>"entitlement".)  Robbing from the rich (or middle class) is still
>robbing regardless of who receives the proceeds.
>
>We have strayed far enough from the original subject, which itself is
>only peripheral to our day-to-day struggles at UTC, that I intend for
>this to be my last public post on the subject for a while.  (You can
>all sigh with relief now. :)  I will confine further discussion to
>private e-mail or (since Jim's office is no more than 25 feet from
>mine) face-to-face discussion.  A productive "finals week" to all.
>
>Joe Dumas
>
>
 In your E-mail message you said. "It is true that government must have
some revenue to pay for essential functions." The problem is that some
people think certain things are essential and others do not. A person
earning say $100,000 a year might see no need support food stamps,or Tenn
Care;he  most likely does not use these services. But, to a person earning
only $10,000 a year with a wife and a couple of kids, these things are of
great interest. I hear people say all the time that they should not have to
pay property taxes because they have no kids in public schools. The ones
that use the system should pay. If this were the case we would be back to
the way it was in the 18th and 19th and even the twentieth century  before
World War II,when only the rich could afford to be educated.
                No matter what the Republicans say the greatest things that ever happened
to the educational system in this country were free publicly supported
education and the G.I. Bill. ( As you know they still do not like Franklin
Roosevelt and are trying to undo everything he did. They do say pachyderms
never forget. Sort of reminds me of the Serbs  still fighting a war they
lost in 1300).
               I would like to have lower taxes too. However I also want good
schools and roads. I want to put crooks away and keep them there until
their sentences are completed. I want parks and recreation area. I want
quick service when I go to get a drivers or business  license. I want our
teachers to be paid more than garbage men.
( Nothing against garbage men. I would not work under the conditions they
work under for the kind  pay they get.)I want professors to be paid enough
so that they do not go looking for higher pay in other states.THIS COSTS
MONEY.
        I think many people in Tennessee think that just because a person works
for the state that they should be paid less. State employees have children
too; With aspirations just like a CEOs' kids.
        The old saying "You get what you pay for" seems not to have sunk in with
lots of people. If the politicians in Nashville want this state to be "All
that it can be",it is going to cost money. I think the fairest to everyone
is an income tax. If that will not fly, a Lottery would be O.K. After all
we pay "SIN" taxes on booze and cigarettes. Since gambling is a "Sin" to
some folks, the lottery could be thought of as a another sin tax.