Looney Toons from the Left

Permit me to share a letter I received from a constituent:

"My husband and I are hardworking, born and raised New Jersey professionals, who are now working hard to get out of New Jersey. Why: because -- like many here -- we no longer can afford to live in New Jersey with its excessively high property tax rates and high cost of living. Now Gov. Corzine wants to hold funding to local schools flat -- which will only mean another property tax hike (our taxes have gone up more than $2,000 in less than five years), tax our hospitals (which already are struggling), and even tax us on the water we drink.

Where is the creativity and hard choices that need to be made in this state so people like my husband and I and our children can afford to make a home in New Jersey?

The budget Corzine presented -- like so many others before it -- is just more of the same that places the burden on New Jersey residents who are already stretched to the limit.

The new state slogan -- get out while the getting's good."

Now, contrast this lament about high taxes with the patently idiotic proposals put forth by the famously inappropriately named "Fairness Alliance", a group of envycrats who clearly failed basic economics and lack any clue about human nature.

State government, you see, is TOO SMALL, taxes are TOO LOW, spending is not high enough. And we’re taxing the wrong people. Government has been permitting those horrible, evil "rich" folks – "millionaires" who make over $200K per annum – to keep too much of their own money.

So, the solution: increase income taxes for "the rich", including extending the "millionaires’ tax", and, then, impose a financial assets tax on those with more than $2 million in capital assets, like stocks. This, they predict, will raise some $2 billion. (Which, of course, is nonsense, as it assumes that the targets will sit still to be taxed by the envycrats, and that won't happen.)

Where do we find people like this? Do they honestly believe that rich folks are such rubes that they’ll sit still and let Jon Shure and his band of collectivist pirates pillage their wealth?

(Interestingly, many of these same left wing zealots object to the Patriot Act on the grounds that the government might – GASP!! HORRORS!! – go to a library and find out what we’re reading. But they have absolutely no problem when the government demands to know not only what we’re earning, but what we own. I’d be a lot happier if government took my reading list and left my paycheck alone.)

The underlying assumption is that the "rich" are either stuck here, or will come here anyway, despite the socialist tendencies of government, because New Jersey offers so many wonderful benefits.

Right.

As repeatedly noted herein, we saw net outmigration of some 60,000 citizens last year, and the pace is increasing. Disproportionately, these are higher end folks, with high paying jobs who, all things considered, prefer to spend what they earn on their own kids and not on Jon Shure’s socialist utopia. The ONLY growth industry in New Jersey is government. Private sector employment is lower now than 5 years ago. ‘Course, to the "Fairness Alliance" a growing government is desirable; they just want "someone else" to pay the bills.

Leaving aside the philosophically bankrupt idea – that the purpose of government is to get A to pay B’s bills, because A has more money – as a practical matter, it can’t be done. Sooner or later, A gets fed up and moves to Pennsylvania. The statistics simply don’t lie. The only way a workers’ paradise such as that Shure and his tax marauders contemplate could possibly survive would be to block all the exists. An economic model based on East Germany merits little consideration. Even Jon Corzine – who recently had a full body scan which revealed not a single conservative bone in his body – seems to understand that if you tax the rich, they’ll go away. We have been, and they are.

Perhaps, the purpose of groups like Shure’s is to sound so Looney Toons that Corzine’s budget begins to look almost acceptable by comparison.

People like my letter writer understand reality. As taxes progressively increase, only the people in the middle – for whom escape is more difficult – get hurt. The poor and lower income workers pay no taxes. All those "rich" folk you THOUGHT lived in New Jersey suddenly turn out to be residents of Florida (which, sensibly, has no income tax). Who’s left in Jon Shure’s crosshairs? Correct: the middle class.

Already, we see it. The Left starting by defining "millionaire" at $500K per year. That producing insufficient revenue, the left wants to move it down to $200K per year. When revenues decline even further, as the targets flee, rather than cut government, they’ll lower it to $100K per year. Pretty soon, EVERYONE stupid enough to live in NJ is a "millionaire", not doing his "fair share" to prop up the huge edifice of a bloated government. Like Sweden – which was once an economic powerhouse and now boasts an economy about on par with Mississippi – we can all be "equally" poor.

Let’s be clear: taxes on the middle class are not too high because those on the rich are too low. Taxes on everyone are too high because government spends too much. The people need to assess whether spending $25000 or so on each kid in an Abbott district warrants the taxes necessary to do so; whether the vibrant growing economy necessary to support ANY government can be sustained at the levels of taxation already in place.

Put another way, however "necessary" a particular program might appear to be, however compelling the rationale, if the taxes necessary to fund it undermine the economy, that program needs to be cut. A program cannot be judged merely upon the good intentions of the people who run it. The real world consequences of Big Government – flight of productive people to freer states – must be considered.

The only truly memorable line from Corzine’s budget address ran:

"I think the values of most New Jerseyans include the expectation that as individuals, and as a community, we must pay our own way in life."

Probably every member of the "Fairness Alliance" cringed. But if the state’s motto is not to be, as my correspondent suggested, "Git while the gittin’s good", it must be "pay your own way". If even a compassionate liberal like Corzine recognizes that – assuming he truly believes it – there might yet be hope.