May 14, 2007 
Ezra Klein had an op ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times titled “Give bigger government a chance” online and “Government by Bake Sale” in the print edition. Ezra argues that there’s a backlash growing against conservative arguments that “smaller” government is always better, taxes are always “too high,” and privatization is the answer to all problems. He writes,
Libertarian humorist P.J. O’Rourke likes to say that “Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.” Over the last few years, that’s been true. But government can work, and increasingly, Americans appear to be anticipating its return. A new Pew Research Center poll finds that public support for a societal safety net and for government protections is at its highest levels in more than a decade — which suggests that Americans don’t think bake sales are the way to fund their schools or that Philip Morris is really who they want subsidizing law enforcement. And in recent elections, the once popular “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” amendments that seemed so unstoppable a decade ago are being rejected and, in Colorado, repealed, as voters finally tire of paying the costs in broken infrastructure and insufficient public services.
The Republicans just run on cutting taxes while promising all kinds of government largesse to get elected and get their hands on the treasury. It’s a very nice little racket that has far less to do with any kind of political philosophy and more to do with their inherent greed and corruption. They go as far as they can until the nation gets fed up and then they leave the field to the Democrats to clean up the carnage. …
… It’s not that taxes were ever popular, any more than paying your electric bill is “popular” or buying a new furnace is “popular.” But until the GOP hit on their free lunch propaganda they were just considered a fact of life (“death and taxes”) as long as the rich weren’t perceived to be getting off easy and the government was delivering services to the people. Republican campaign tactics and governance have pretty much destroyed that resigned acceptance by making people believe that taxes are inherently evil and if the government needs to do something it will magically find the money some other way. The truth is that the Republicans have been running a game that’s the equivalent of you or I taking off work without pay for weeks so we can go to Vegas and play roulette with our credit cards. One only hopes “the grown-ups” haven’t gone so far that we will have to spend the next decade suffering from the hangover.
What is it with Americans and taxes? I’m sure if you went about asking people “Do you think taxes are too high?” most of them would say yes, because that’s what they think they’re supposed to say. We’ve had years of politicians and pundits shrieking at us that taxes are too high, so it must be true, right? When some notion becomes embedded into our national mythos it can take real courage to say out loud no, I don’t think that. So most people reflexively will concur that taxes are too high, whether they are or not.
Of course, then you have to consider what “too high” means, and compared to what? Americans, I believe, pay lower taxes overall than people in many other industrialized democracies. But let’s just say “too high” is “more than I think I ought to be paying.”
Right after the 2006 midterm elections, Lawrence Levy of New York Newsday wrote a column about the suburban voters who had swung away from Republicans and voted for Democrats.
Suburbanites are not anti-change, just anti-extremism of any stripe – whether Democrats in the ’70s or Republicans in the ’90s. They’re not anti-government. Many people move here for more and better government services. And they’re not anti-tax. They’re willing to pay high taxes, to a point, if they feel they’re getting good value.
That’s true generally of northeastern suburbanites, up to a point. Many years ago I moved from suburban Ohio to suburban New Jersey. New Jersey property taxes were many times higher. But my old Ohio suburb had crummy public schools (conventional wisdom said that public schools are always bad, and if you cared about your child’s education you sent him to Catholic school whether you were Catholic or not), and if there was a snowstorm you could wait days before the street in front of your house was plowed. The New Jersey suburb I moved to valued good public schools, and roads were cleared before the last snowflake fell.
But a few years later I witnessed the state of New Jersey gripped by mass hysteria over taxes. As explained in this Wikipedia article about Democratic Governor Jim Florio,
The Florio administration started during the late 1980s recession. Faced with a projected 1991 deficit of $3 billion, Florio asked for a $2.8 billion tax increase. It was the largest increase of any state in U.S. history. The money generated would balance the budget, increase aid to public schools and increase property tax relief programs. Governor Florio also eliminated 1,500 government jobs and cut perks for state officials.
A grassroots taxpayer revolt in 1990, spearheaded by a citizens group named “Hands Across New Jersey” founded by John Budzash, a postal worker from Howell Township.
My problem, as always, is that I actually read newspapers, and I knew that the new income taxes were very progressive (there was also a 1 cent sales tax increase). My state income taxes didn’t change at all, because my income wasn’t all that glorious. But people all around me were going nuts over the tax increase, whether it affected them or not. I saw “Dump Florio” bumper stickers on cars of people who appeared to make even less than I did. In fact, at one point a secretary where I worked was going around with a big “Dump Florio” pin on her chest, and I knew good and well she made less than I did. When I told her that her taxes weren’t going to go up, and explained to her how much one actually had to make before they did, she was dumbfounded. She’d been worried she wouldn’t have enough money left over from the new state taxes to live on.
Then what’s everyone so worked up about? she asked. You tell me, I said. You’re one of the people who is worked up; I’m not.
Mr. Budzash was on television and radio every time I turned around. Someone pointed out to him that, given what he probably made, his personal tax increase (if any) was negligible, and that Howell Township schools — a poorer district — would benefit a great deal. These facts appeared to throw him; apparently they were news to him. But he quickly recovered and declared he didn’t want to tax rich people overmuch because he might be rich some day himself.
Notice that some of the income tax money was to be applied to property tax relief programs. A few years later, when Republican Christie Whitman became governor, she lowered the Florio income and sales taxes. But to pay for this she cut the amount of state money going to public schools, fiddled a bit with state pensions, and outsourced the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles to demons from the Fourth Circle of Hell. In many parts of the state property taxes had to be cranked up even more to make up the difference.
The moral here is that in America, taxes are the bogeyman.
On the other hand, I think Lawrence Levy is right when he says people are less bothered by taxes when they feel they are getting value for their money. And they’re more willing to tax themselves when they value the services the government is providing. My neighbors in Ohio (who included Mean Jean Schmidt) were not bothered by crumbling public schools and snow-covered roads, but my neighbors in New Jersey wouldn’t have put up with them for a minute.
Another point: When I was a child, the grownups used to complain about their tax money going to foreign aid, but they didn’t gripe so much about domestic spending. I don’t believe most (white) voters got worked up over “entitlements” until they realized a substantial part of Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” programs were helping blacks.
The moral to that is that people are less bothered by taxes if they think they (or some group they identify with) are getting the benefit of whatever the government is doing with the taxes.
That’s why it makes me crazy when people say government is “too big” without explaining what they mean by that. Awhile back some pollster asked people if they thought government was doing “too much” or “not enough.” Most people were true to their conditioning and said “too much.” But too much of what? Not enough of what? Seems to me the government is doing way too much that it shouldn’t be doing but not enough of what it should be doing.
I think large parts of the American public might agree with the argument that we should be using our tax dollars to invest in ourselves rather than burying it in the sand of Iraq. Instead of vague promises to cut taxes and spending (the latter of which never seems to happen) Democrats should be telling people “We’re going to see to it that you get value from your tax dollars.” Then deliver lower college education costs, better infrastructure, universal health care. I’d like to see it tried, anyway.
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