The Ballad of Jerry Brown, Part 5: Tax Fun

Well, as my swan song for the week, I'm going to talk about a couple of topics. One is of great relevance to our future, and one, well, isn't. This is the relevant one.

Jerry Brown's life seems to get harder by the day as he hits wall after wall while trying to pass a budget. His budget plan, as you may know, fell short by a few Republican votes to get on a ballot for voter approval. The Republicans demanded, among other things, "changes in employee pensions and environmental regulations [and] restoring money to county fairs." Now, Brown seeks a way to make a budget pass while not passing exclusively cuts. Republican leaders claim that the governor is using scare tactics to put pressure on them to cave in, and claim that they are open to negotiations.

While this is interesting in and of itself, what I find more discussion-worthy about the article is the way it points out what I find to be a major flaw in how the state runs. The supermajority required to pass tax increases seems to clog up the state budget process every single year. Can you imagine such a requirement at the federal level? The government would probably be unable to pay for almost anything, even things that majorities of Americans would consider critical, such as entitlement programs. I'm not passing judgment on whether we should have said tax increases. That's for you guys to decide. (It's not that I don't have an opinion, I'm just not going to say it.) But I do know this much: You can't have it both ways. Either you can have your programs and pay for them, or you can not have the programs. Trying to do both only creates a huge hole later, a hole that the state has clearly fallen into. That's not to say a government shouldn't spend; it just needs to realistically figure out how it could be paid for. Take, for example, Denmark. It has one of the most comprehensive arrays of social programs in the world. It also has one of the highest tax rates. That isn't a bad thing per se: the people of Denmark get what they pay for. Their government works well for them. (It must be doing something right, since the Danes are some of the happiest people on earth, according to recent studies.) The point is, you have to pay somewhere along the line, and that's going to mean higher taxes. Suck it up.

So that's my opinion. What do you guys think about what's going on with the budget right now?

*Clicking on the title will take to the SF Chronicle article I used in part to write this post; however, you won't be able to actually see it for two days because of an annoying marketing gimmick they use to get people to buy the print edition. Ah well. If you're that curious, come back on Wednesday.