Okay folks, here’s my first blog post. As you might suspect,
I’ve picked my favorite issue to write about—the “Fair” Tax proposal. If you’ve
been listening to the show, you know we’ve looked at this from various
perspectives in regard to the proposal’s potential adoption in the Show Me
State.
Let me be clear—I am only concerned about the Missouri
proposal. I need to make this statement almost every show because there are
those who will invariably call in and make some statement about how DC is
taking way too much of our money, and needs to be stopped. Hence, a “Fair” Tax
in Missouri must be a great idea!
Well, DC is NOT Jefferson City, and adopting a “Fair” Tax in
Missouri, no matter how much you delude yourself into thinking it might, is not
going to slow down the rate of spending by Obama and company. You need to
realize this fact.
Another thing you need to realize—there is no evidence that
this proposal is actually going to work in Missouri the way proponents suggest
it will. I’ve been told that I need to read the “Fair” Tax propaganda before
commenting on the idea itself. I thought this comment was nonsense from the
time I heard it from a caller, but, against my better judgment, I read through
the Boortz/Linder book last week, only to find my initial suspicions confirmed.
The book is propaganda.
This doesn’t make it bad to read, or even a waste of your
time. It simply means that if one is looking to find some type of independent
analysis as to whether this “Fair” Tax works, you won’t find it in the “Fair”
Tax publications. You see, what I need to see to satisfy my concern about this
proposal is analysis that uses inferential statistics to show that the adoption
of this kind of tax system actually provides the level of revenue the state
needs to fulfill its responsibilities. No such analysis has been offered by the
“Fair” Tax side, although I have asked for it.
Yet, even with this type of analysis in hand, it is still
possible that Missouri could be the ill-fated “canary in the mine”. Trust
me—such analysis is what I do in my other job. It’s often wrong because, at the
end of the day, we’re trying to predict human behavior. Such prediction might
be easy to accomplish in a book that assumes everyone acts according to certain
precepts, but real life is often more messy than a theoretical treatise would
like to admit.
I’ve been saying as much for the past three weeks, and my
concerns have now been realized, at least a bit. The January 29th
edition of the Springfield News-Leader carried
a front-page story about how “Fair” Tax proponents have miscalculated the tax
rate necessary to achieve “revenue neutrality.” While I applaud the honesty of
the “Fair” Tax folks in correcting their initial projection of a 5.11% rate,
the admission that the actual rate may need to be 6.2% not only corroborates
what I have been saying almost every show about the various unknowns of this
type of tax system, it should serve to sober up the people who think
that all we need to solve our political problems as a state is a simplistic set
of ideological values—no matter from whom, or from where, these values emanate.
Ideology and principles are important, but they should never
blind us to the possibility that we may be wrong in our “answers” to the
various public policy issues we confront as a state.
As I have also said on the air many a time, the “Fair” Tax
may, in the end, and in a modified form, be a good thing for Missouri. But,
since no one can know whether this is the case for sure (and remember, a
state’s lack of income tax does not make it a better place—just ask the people
in Texas paying high property taxes about that), wouldn’t it be a good idea to
1) have an open and honest discussion about what the tax rate should be based
on some credible methodology that all sides can agree on, and 2) include a
“sunset” provision in any amendment that goes to the voters just in case the
folks selling books and getting rich on the “Fair” Tax train have it wrong?
In a place called the Show Me State, it would seem having
some proof about the “Fair” Tax before we commit to it could not be more
appropriate.
Thanks for reading—and thanks for listening!