The Freedom Bulletin

Congress seems like it’s actually been getting some things done lately. In addition to the Senate repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell today, both houses recently passed, and President Obama signed, a compromise bill to both cut taxes and extend unemployment benefits. While anything that involves tax cuts is a good thing, it’s disturbing that neither Congress or Obama is taking any serious measures to reduce our national debt.

Here are the main points of the tax deal:

• The “Bush tax cuts” will be extended for 2 years.
• Unemployment benefits will be extended for 13 months.
• Workers who make $106,800 or less will pay 4.2% of their wages to Social Security instead of 6.2%.
• The estate tax will continue, but at a lower level.

The bill has some of what Republicans want (lower taxes) and some of what Democrats want (free stuff for people), but anyone with common sense can see that these are not a good combination when it comes to long-term financial success. As W.E. Messamore explains, cutting taxes without cutting spending will eventually result in higher taxes in the future. Compromise is often a good thing, but compromises between Republicans and Democrats have resulted in more spending without more taxes, and therefore a national debt of $13 trillion and counting. I’m no supporter of raising taxes – which I think are way too high to begin with – so I think that the just way to pay down the national debt would be to leave taxes as they are and significantly cut spending. Politicians need to be brave enough to make the unpopular choices that will put our country on the right financial path.

In both 2002 and 2008, the Center for Small Government sponsored a ballot initiative to eliminate the Massachusetts income tax. Unfortunately, it was defeated each time. Now, they are sponsoring an initiative – Question 3 – to roll back the sales tax from 6.25% to 3%. This is a much more modest proposal, and not quite as exciting for small government people like me, but hopefully this makes it more likely to pass.

State government simply spends too much and taxes too much. Taxes have gone up and up. Tax increases that are supposed to be temporary end up being permanent. I cannot remember any tax in Massachusetts ever going down in my lifetime. The only way that Massachusetts politicians will ever cut spending is if they are forced to.

Question 3 will cut approximately $2.4 billion from the $52 billion state budget – not as good as the $11 billion that ending the income tax would cut, but a good start. It will allow each household to keep an average of $900 more of their own money each year.

If you live in Massachusetts, please, please vote yes on 3. Even if you don’t like any of the candidates for governor, it is worth going to the polls just to vote on this question. We need to stop this unsustainable spending trend and send Massachusetts in a different direction.

I was reading a post at the CNN Political Ticker about an NAACP resolution to condemn the “racism” of the Tea Party movement. The post quoted Mark Williams, a spokesman for the Tea Party Express, who made a really good point:

“It’s the Obama administration that rolled back civil rights to a pre-civil rights era with ‘Obamacare’ in which they removed the concept of individual rights…it’s the Obama administration that put a tax on white people with a tanning salon tax.”

I never thought of that before, but it makes sense.

Suppose that there was a product that was used almost exclusively by black or Hispanic people. Then suppose that the government decided to tax it. Wouldn’t the NAACP and lots of other people and organizations call this racist?

Tanning salons are used predominantly by white people, and the Democrats’ version of health reform puts a tax on them. Why is no one calling this racist?

Is it just me, or is there a double standard here?

If you live in or near Boston, you’ve probably heard of the whole dispute between Mayor Menino and the Boston firefighters’ union over how large of a raise the firefighters should get in exchange for submitting to random drug and alcohol testing. An independent arbitrator decided to give the firefighters a 19% raise (to make up for several years without a raise), which Menino opposes, and the firefighters’ union has volunteered to delay the raise for a year.

I have a better idea: What if the firefighters didn’t have to submit to drug and alcohol testing and didn’t get a raise?

My rationale behind this is that first of all, getting rid of drug and alcohol testing is a pro-liberty thing to do, at least according to my rather unorthodox brand of libertarianism. The only thing that an employer should care about is how well employees do their job. People’s use of drugs and/or alcohol outside of work, although it might be statistically correlated with how well they do their jobs, is not itself a part of the job, and as such, employers have no right to know about or judge it. Furthermore, urine testing, the most common although not only method of drug testing, is degrading and offensive. I actually think it should be banned as a condition of employment – a radical idea, I know. Boston would be a better place if firefighters did not have to go through this.

Second of all, it would save the taxpayers money!

The firefighters ought to be happy about this idea because they wouldn’t have to undergo drug testing. If they didn’t have to do that, then they wouldn’t mind not getting a raise, right? And Menino ought to be happy about this because the city would save money.

Photo by Brett Gustafson C.C. Attribution 2.5

In a Boston Globe opinion piece today, Tom Cosgrove argues against allowing casinos in Massachusetts:

“New revenue,’’ though, is just casino-speak for a new tax: a sucker tax on those willing to plunk down cash on tables tilted sharply toward the pit bosses. A sucker tax on those willing to sit at slot machines ergonomically designed to keep players in thrall of the lights and levers for hours at a time – complex algorithms creating the illusion of near-victory as wallets empty.

I’m not sure whether Cosgrove is saying that gambling itself amounts to a tax (which would be completely false because people can choose whether or not to gamble but people are required by law to pay taxes) or whether he is just arguing against taxing gambling. I’m going to assume the latter.

Although I am generally anti-tax, I favor bringing casinos to Massachusetts. I believe that taxes on gambling are much less objectionable than income taxes because people can choose whether or not to gamble and thereby choose to avoid the tax, while everyone is forced to pay the income tax. The government could then use the new revenue to cut the income or sales tax (it won’t, of course, but it should).

I don’t buy the paternalistic argument that casinos are bad because they cause gambling addiction. If you choose to gamble, that is your choice. If you choose to spend all your free time gambling and to lose all of your money gambling, that is also your choice. The presence of casinos does not force people to gamble. In fact, by banning casinos, the government is hurting people who otherwise would gamble, because it’s stopping them from doing something they want to do.

I don’t see any good reason to ban casinos in Massachusetts. They provide a fun activity for many people (I myself don’t gamble because I don’t want to lose money, but just because I don’t find something fun doesn’t mean other people don’t), and taxing them might allow other taxes to be decreased. Why not allow casinos?