Tag: issues

The FairTax

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I began to take a closer look at the FairTax proposal because Mike Huckabee (currently the most visible supporter of the FairTax) is rising quickly in the polls and also because I have had some co-workers ask my opinion on the proposal. My immediate answer was, “I want more details.” I read two articles on the same day, one for and one against the FairTax, that helped me to clarify my position.

From Responding to still more absurd attacks on the FairTax I gathered the following:

Lambro is right in asserting that some people actually spend all of their earnings just buying the basic necessities of life. What Lambro obviously doesn’t understand is that under the FairTax every single legal household in this country would receive a check (probably in the form of a credit to a charge account or a debit card) every month equal to the amount of the FairTax which that family would be expected to pay on those necessities during the ensuing month. By way of example, using current poverty statistics the “prebate” for a household of four people would be $506.00 per month. Add that $506.00 to the fact that no household will see anything deducted from their checks for income taxes or for Social Security or Medicare taxes … and you see a substantial rise in real income for the very families that Donald Lambro was so concerned about; the poor and middle income. The president’s own tax reform commission stated that the FairTax was the only tax reform plan out there that would completely untax the poor (at the federal level). How does that square with Lambro’s dire warnings on the effect of the FairTax?

That is what immediately sounds appealing about the FairTax. There would be no taxing people and then giving money back (vouchers, credits, or deductions) based on activities we decide to subsidize. I’m not sure how it works out that, “You don’t pay any more for your toilet paper and milk than you do now,” if the government is still taking the same amount of money and we are getting more in our paycheck. I guess they expect that your toilet paper and milk type necessities will only cost as much in taxes as the prebate you receive each month.
Huck’s Daft Tax Plan made these points:

To avoid the risk of getting both a national sales tax and an income tax, FairTaxers would have to repeal the 16th Amendment. Good luck. Huckabee’s magic wand will come in handy.

Then, there’s the rate of the sales tax. FairTaxers say that a 23 percent rate would be enough to replace current revenues. What they really are talking about is a tax of 30 cents on every dollar — what most people would consider a 30 percent rate. The government would pay the tax on all its purchases, a gimmick “done solely to make revenues under the FairTax seem larger than they really are,” writes economist Bruce Bartlett. Budget trickery aside, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that the rate would have to go as high as 57 percent.

The tax would apply to everything, even medical expenses, so it would amount to an incredibly regressive tax on even the most necessary purchases of low- and middle-income taxpayers. The home mortgage deduction would be gone, and instead buyers would pay a 30 percent (at least) tax on their homes. To make up for this burden, the government would send monthly “prebate” checks to all Americans based on income. (And you thought our current tax scheme was complex?)

The addition of a sales tax and an income tax would be unwanted and I agree that repealing the 16th Amendment would not be easy, but if people were willing to pass the FairTax they would probably do so by setting income tax rates to 0% across the board. If the plan were successful for a few years I would think it would be easy to convince people to repeal the 16th Amendment.

The funny think about whatever rate the taxes would be set at is that the amount of money is not changing. If we are talking about replacing current revenues with the same level of revenue then whatever rate they establish is the same rate we are paying now, either by ourselves, or through increased costs for the goods we purchase. The only difference is who pays and when. The same holds true for the mortgage argument. If I am taxed at 30% on the interest of my mortgage payment that sounds bad, but right now I get taxed on my savings instead of my debt. The current system encourages debt. It appears that the FairTax would encourage savings (which would not be taxed). That seems to be a better system to me.

I like the idea of the FairTax, but I am under no illusions that it will make me wealthy overnight.

Tags issues, taxes

Local

Citizen Reactions

I would love to be able to contact Mike Wylie and Amiee Christensen and help them recognize why Lehi is doing things that make them feel “less desirable.” Their reactions to the idea of raising prices on non-residents for Lehi programs were published today in the Daily Herald. I’m not saying that their reactions were completely wrong, but they can’t honestly expect to have Lehi sit like a doormat while others take advantage of city programs.

“Lehi is now trying to push us out,” Wylie said of Lehi’s proposal. “It is one city trying to act like a grown-up and spank the child… I did not do anything wrong. Having lived in the South, and having lived in areas of prejudice, that is almost how I feel I am being treated now.”

Communities should work together to ensure children have access to sports and recreation programs, and when they don’t, it leaves children to roam the streets, and everyone pays a price, he said.

In an e-mail to the Daily Herald and Lehi Council members, Amiee Christensen said she grew up in Lehi but high home prices had forced her move to Eagle Mountain. She said that while she agreed with the sentiment that Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs need to “grow up, I am outraged that there is a proposal to even make it difficult for me to be buried with my family in Lehi. I am living in Eagle Mountain only because I cannot afford to live in Lehi. The low cost of living in Eagle Mountain has forced me and my family to move from the city that my family helped build.”

If Lehi is angry about traffic, the city “should punish the one that is making the problem, the state,” she said. “They are the one that is slow to act and quick to point fingers. I am sad to say that I am from a city that will throw temper tantrums that rival a 2-year-old to get their way… Maybe we should realize that the people of the cities west of Lehi are good people who are sometimes not completely in control of their destiny and they just might need a helping hand from the closest big brother — Lehi.”

Ms. Christensen appears to be unaware of the fact that the mayor of Saratoga Springs has just finished opposing Lehi’s position on the traffic problem, which was directed at the state, in a very public manner. I have a hard time believing that she would expect “a helping hand from the closest big brother” while they are poking big brother in the eye.

I agree with her that the people west of Lehi are generally good people, just as the people of Lehi are generally good people. What needs to happen right now between these cities is a conference of residents and city officials between the cities to talk about their different perspectives on problems such as overcrowding in Lehi programs and Lehi streets and the problems with the solutions proposed by UDOT and now endorsed by Saratoga Springs. If the cities want to cooperate on one issue they should be cooperating on all of them. Lehi want’s to cooperation on the traffic/MVC issue and I think they would be very willing to cooperate on the community programs issue if they felt that they would not be ignored on the traffic issue.

So let’s all stop acting like children (as each side has accused the other of acting) and sit down like adults to discuss our different perspectives and find solutions that are mutually beneficial.

Tags community, issues, Lehi, transportation

Local State

Biting the Subsidizing Hand

Post author By David
Post date November 29, 2007
No Comments on Biting the Subsidizing Hand

A local example of the negative effect of subsidies is playing out right now. Lehi citizens have been paying taxes to support services that benefit people in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain. The result is that the people in those cities are unaware of the real costs of the services that many of them take for granted in Lehi. It sounds like they are about to find out what those costs really are.

Saratoga Springs’s commitment to a proposed freeway through Lehi appears to have cost its residents access to Lehi community programs.

Call it retaliation or tough love, Lehi is moving to make it expensive and harder for Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs residents to join community programs, or even be buried, in Lehi.

Lehi Councilman Johnny Barnes gave a letter to Lehi Council members on Tuesday asking that beginning Jan. 1, participation in all community programs “be restricted to Lehi citizens first.”

Residents from nearby communities may be invited to participate if there is space, but “the costs to those participants will reflect the actual cost of the programs,” said Barnes.

Council members instructed staff to begin figuring new fees and participation rules for the council to consider.

Councilman Stephen Holbrook said the day has come for Lehi to make recreation fees for nonresidents “extremely higher, so our citizens can have first choice” and that increase should extend not only to sports programs but library use, senior citizen programs, park rentals, the literacy center, and burial fees.

“Two weeks ago in a pre-council meeting there were comments made concerning a letter sent out by Mayor Tim Parker of Saratoga Springs indicating their strong support of UDOT’s (freeway) plan for 2100 North,” Barnes wrote in his letter to council members. “I stated that in my opinion, this was a clear demonstration of Saratoga coming of age as a city, and felt that if they want to be a city, they need to act like a city.

“In making this statement, I hold firmly to the opinion that along with having the right to take a strong aggressive position comes the right and obligation to provide services to their citizens. This would include all services, not just the ones that are convenient to them or are able to be funded.”

How did this all come about?

Well Lehi has been very accommodating of the burgeoning cities to the west and now that because of that our city council is very aware of the costs of the services that they are virtually giving away. Though this act may be seen as retaliation by some, it makes sense that we should not be too concerned about the costs of restricting access to our programs for people who are apparently uninterested in the costs we will suffer as a result of their preferred freeway.

It’s all a matter of perspective but Saratoga Springs does not appear to care about the Lehi perspective on this project. I recognize that there are aspects of the Mountain View Corridor project that Saratoga would have a perspective that would be lacking in Lehi, but if those cities want to leech off of the programs that have matured here in Lehi then they should be willing to work with us.

The mayor of Saratoga could not be ignorant of Lehi’s vocal concern over the 2100 North alignment preferred by UDOT. If he cared about them then he should have made a better case for why Lehi’s 4800 North proposal was inferior. Everything I have seen suggests that 2100 North is marginally better for anyone who is just passing through Lehi than the plan proposed by Lehi, but it is substantially worse for residents of Lehi.

Tags community, issues, Lehi, subsidies, transportation

culture

SEP Subsidies

A story this morning instantly made me think about the discussion that followed when I wrote about Funding Mass Transit back in July. This story is about a driver who chose to use biofuel in his vehicle:

Bob Teixeira decided it was time to take a stand against U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost.

His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes. He has been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government.

To legally use veggie oil, state officials told him, he would have to first post a $2,500 bond.

SEP stands for somebody else’s problem. It refers to things that are in plain sight but we rarely (if ever) think about them. (from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) Fuel taxes are one of those things. Because of their SEP nature we rarely think about the cost of maintaining roads. Most people drive their cars everywhere without a single thought for the wear they are putting on public infrastructure. They blithely fill their vehicle without thinking about the silent tax that they pay without question. The only time people think about gas taxes is when their is a proposal to increase them. They never think about them otherwise no matter how underfunded the roads become.

I’m not saying that this unconscious approach is necessarily bad, but it is not unlike our health care problem where we fail to recognize the actual costs associated with the types of care we partake of and thus we don’t consider whether that cost is worth the benefit that we receive. (In most cases it is, but how often do people run to the pharmacy or the operating room when a lifestyle change would be a better – though harder – solution?)

Because it is so easy to pay the fuel taxes it is difficult to accurately compare the costs of using cars vs mass transit. Until that comparison can be made we can only guess at the best approach to hit the moving target that is our traffic problem. Right now we usually only hit on a solution when traffic comes to a standstill.

Tags economics, issues, transportation

National

NYT On Health Care

I was impressed with the New York Times editorial The High Cost of Health Care. I don’t really have time to review it here right now (it’s quite long) but it is well worth the read and I would like to come back to it later to review it. They talk about some of the approaches to lowering our health care costs, but they don’t attempt to endorse any particular approach. I hope, and believe, that this was an attempt to paint a broad picture in advance of future articles which will explore the issue in more depth.

Tags health care, issues, media, New York Times

National

Many Primary Ideas

There are a variety of ideas for how we can fix our primary election process. They range from a lottery system proposed in comments and a post earlier on my site to more authoritative proposals such as rotating regional primaries as outlined by Trey Grason (go to page 25 of the PDF – hat tip the Senate Site)

Unfortunately, it is too late to fix the process for 2008, but steps can be taken for 2012. The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) is hoping to generate support for rotating regional primaries as a step toward that goal. The association’s bipartisan proposal, created by the nation’s chief state election officials, divides the country into four regions and establishes primary windows in March, April, May and June.

I was also interested in the proposal published in the New York Times by Jonathan Soros suggesting a national primary day where individual voters could opt to vote early.

There is, however, a simple way to establish a national primary and yet still allow retail politicking to meaningfully affect the course of the campaign over several months: allow early voting, with regular reporting of the tally.

Here’s one way it could work. Set a national primary date of June 30 and create a window for early voting that opens on Jan. 1. The early votes would be counted and reported at the end of each month from January through May. . .
If we began counting and reporting the interim results in advance of a national primary, the voters who cast early ballots would play the same role as voters in Iowa and New Hampshire do now: they could signal viability or create momentum for their favored candidates. These early voters would be self-selecting, trading the opportunity to watch the campaign unfold for the ability to demonstrate early conviction.

Most important, every voter, no matter where he or she lived, would have the freedom to make this choice. Right now, when one votes is determined by where one lives.

The national primary day has drawbacks, but I’m sure there are detractors to the rotating regional primaries as well and I know there are those who gripe about the lottery idea. I’m not ready to advocate for one idea over another, and I’m sure that all of them would offer an overall improvement over the current mess. What I would really like to see is an widespread, active, and public conversation now – not sometime after 2009 – to decide how we would like this system to operate because the current setup is going to lead to perpetual campaigning (like having candidates declaring six months into the four year cycle) unless we take steps to rein it in.

Tags elections, ideas, issues, media, New York Times

State

Utah Legislative Tenure

First I would like to thank Steve Urquhart for his comments. And in case anyone got the wrong impression, I had no intention to spar with Steve over this issue or single him out. I respect Rep. Urquhart for his openness on this and many other issues. He has convincingly demonstrated his honest belief that “sunlight [is] the best disinfectant.” The major reason that I singled him out is that I know that he is one member of the legislature that understands the value of blogging discussions.

All that being said, this post is mainly some of my further findings after his comments to my previous post. He said that term limits came in a wave in 1994, but it would be more accurate to say that 1994 was the tail end of the wave. 15 states enacted term limits before 1994, 3 more (including Utah) did so in 1994, and 3 have enacted term limits since 1994. Of the 6 states that have repealed their term limit laws (that’s 28% of states that had such laws), it appears that none of those laws ever lasted long enough to limit the term of any legislator. No state where term limits actually started limiting terms has gone back. My assessment would be that Utah retreated from that legislation prematurely.

The second part of Steve’s response was quite enlightening:

Of course, I realize that people can, and will, argue that we just want to hold the offices for life. That’s their right, and for some legislators it might be true. But people should consider the average lifespan of a legislator. In the House (largely through self-selection), it is right around 4 years. (I heard that number and have never independently verified it; but, it seems accurate. I’ve been there 7 years, and there aren’t many Reps who’ve been there longer than I have).

Since he had not verified the 4 year average I went to the website for the Utah Legislature (a very good site, by the way) and did some quick checking on the 75 members of the house and all 29 senators. In the Senate the mean term length is 7 years with an average of 6.93 so by the time we next have elections the average term will be sitting at 8 years (the longest current term being 18). 14 of the 29 have served between 3 and 7 years, most of the other 15 have served more than 7 years.

In the House, where Steve serves, the mean length of current consecutive service is 5 years with an average of about 5.2 so the average will be 6 years before we next vote. The are a number of representatives who have served 3 years or less consecutively who have previously served in the House, sometimes for more than a decade. If we factor in lifetime service for these representatives the average goes up to nearly 5.5 years. About 70% of the members of the house have served no longer than Steve, although there are many who have served 7 years like he has.

It is comforting to see that we have a pretty good rate of turnover in our state and I hope that it stays that way. So long as we have consistent turnover I think we need to focus more on correcting the imbalance of power between the major parties – as Obi wan had suggested – at least here in Utah.

Tags issues, numbers, term limits

State

Term Limits

I asked what people were interested in and the interest seemed to be term limits. I decided to do some initial research and found a good resource on term limits. The states that currently have term limits are:

ARIZONA
ARKANSAS
CALIFORNIA
COLORADO
FLORIDA
LOUISIANA
MAINE
MICHIGAN
MISSOURI
MONTANA
NEBRASKA
NEVADA
OHIO
OKLAHOMA
SOUTH DAKOTA

In addition I was surprised to find that Utah was on a short list of states where term limits had been enacted and later repealed.

IDAHO
MASSACHUSETTS
OREGON
UTAH
WASHINGTON
WYOMING

A little more digging and I learned that Utah enacted term limits by statute in 1994 (just before I was paying close attention to politics) and repealed them in 2003 before they ever affected any legislators (the limit was 12 years and the statute only lasted for 9). So now we know that our Utah legislature is not anxious to limit themselves.

Now I would love to hear from anyone who has experience in the states with term limits. Jason has voiced his unqualified support of the limits in his state. Does anyone else want to share? Are there any opinions on lifetime bans versus limits of consecutive years of service? I am not ready to choose sides on that yet.

I would also be interested to know more about the decision to end limits before they began in Utah. Perhaps Steve Urqhart might have some insights there that he would share (hint – information from 2003, or hints on where to get some would be nice because my short search led to a bunch of dead links).

Tags connections, issues, questions, term limits

State

Step Forward on Education

There has been lots of talk since November 6th about moving on to improve education after the defeat of vouchers. People on both sides of that debate have talked about working together towards a common goal. I have been happy with the tone of talk, but I have wondered what is the next concrete step that we can approach to demonstrate our genuine interest in improving education. After reading The People Have Spoken, and Fans and Foes Vow to Work for Change I have had an idea of where to take a next step.

I’ve never heard a credible argument against merit-pay or performance-based pay for teachers. Does this mean that I have not heard enough discussion on the subject or is it evidence that this might be an area where people who want to improve education can agree? I think that an effort to bring performance-based pay for our teachers would make a great demonstration of our commitment to making changes to improve our education system.

Tags Education, issues

Issues To Vote On

While casting about for something to write today I began thinking about what issues are important to me. There are many political subjects I am interested in, but not always new material to write about. Sometimes there is discussion worth following that I don’t feel I have anything to add (like the current warm-fuzzies coming from the "let’s move on from referendum 1" discussion). Other times the news is truly dead or full of things I have no interest in. At those times I have subjects that I am interested in, but I am looking to discuss the issues and not just pontificate in a vacuum. The question is, what should I discuss that other people are interested in?

The answer seemed obvious – ask.

If I were talking about what modifications to our primary election system who would be interested? What if I were talking about the value of term limits for elected officials?

Based on past experience there seems to be some interest in those subjects, but I would like to hear whether others think those are worth discussing and would be interested in participating in such a discussion. Please let me know which of these would interest you – "both" and "neither" are perfectly valid answers.

Tags issues, questions