“The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention…
“It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal, if not the only, reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and luck amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed, everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid off, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons.”
George Orwell, “1984.”
Kansas Lotto? Kansas Powerball?
For years the political and legal establishments – there’s a large overlap in membership – have quietly but effectively screwed the working class and poor of Kansas.
It’s not just that we’ve encouraged gambling through state sponsored lotteries and casinos. It’s that it was done cynically, knowing full well all the social costs attendant with legalizing gambling.
Not only is it a way to prey upon the poor financially, but all the indices of social pathology soar; bankruptcy, embezzlement, and divorce, to name just a few. (It’s justified “as more money for schools,” forgetting that schools are supposed to serve society’s needs, not society serve the school’s needs.)
Other shameful forms of exploitation of the less affluent include 30 year tax abatements on real estate taxes for big developers. (Home owners have to pick up the tab for the cost of infrastructure.) TIF bonds and STAR bonds are ways to shift the risk to the public while retaining the reward for private corporate interests when big projects like the Kansas Speedway, Cabelas, etc are created.
Finally, special benefit districts are another way to shift the cost of capital spending on roads, sewers, street-lights to surrounding property owners from the business owners who actually benefit from the improvements. (Think the SPRINT campus in Overland Park.)
One particularly egregious program is called “PEAK” (Promoting Employment Across Kansas). It allows businesses which move here to withhold state income tax from their employees and keep the money for themselves.
Talk about corporate welfare!
Carson Tappan Thinking inside the box
This is an inescapable truth that every sophisticated observer of our community would reach if sentient the last 30 years. Yet these facts are lost on someone like young (high school sophomore) Carson Tappan, whose “Where the Buffaloed Roam,” a documentary “satire” premiered at B&B Theatres Overland Park 16 Theater on 135th Street on February 17th.
The film the Louisburg High School sophomore created is skillfully constructed and edited. It is totally persuasive, but only if you are 15 years old and unthinkingly accept the world view of the Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) and the Kansas branch of the National Educational Association (the teacher’s union better known as the KNEA).
If you believe everything your high school staff wants you to believe, your loyalty and faith in authority may be touching but it means anything you produce is entirely predictable. It is the perspective of the educational-industrial complex and/or its spokesperson, Barbara Shelly of the Kansas City Star, who, not surprisingly, was sitting in the row in front of me at the premiere.
The point of view can be summed up in the proposition that Kansas was a utopian society until January 10th 2011, when Sam Brownback was sworn in and our prairie idyll became a nightmare.
The black night of fascism, corporate cronyism, greed and oppression descended on that date. Before that time we enjoyed a Golden Age, where “moderate” Republicans and “progressive” Democrats worked together, hand in hand, to create an earthly paradise, that is to say fully funded K-12.
In fact, young Carson is a likeable enough lad; bright, sincere, and capable.
However, so thoroughly has he been brain washed by KNEA operatives to accepting their world view that I thought of The Exorcist’s Linda Blair, a similar case of bodily possession by an evil spirit.
I half-expected that during his closing remarks at the film’s end, his head would spin 360 degrees, followed by projectile vomiting, and a demon’s voice screaming: “F—k you, Sam Brownback!” – rather than “F—k you, priest!.”
The voice of the Devil would not be Beezlebub’s, but Yael Abracadabra’s of the Star, who are one and the same as far as I’m concerned.
While Tappan says he was raised by “his parents and Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart” (Jesus wept!), the real inspiration for his work seems to be the films of Michael Moore and Sasha Baron Cohen.
The whole bag of tricks of these masters of the genre (left wing mockumentaries) are employed: 1] a disingenuous narrator/interviewer (what was called “playing dumb” when I was his age), 2] sarcasm, 3] stacking the deck as far as who you spoke to and how you edited their remarks, 4] complete absence of any historical context, 5] a smug sense of intellectual and social superiority to these who held opposing points of view.
It was this last element that was the most offensive feature of the evening.
It was significant that last week was the 40th anniversary of “Saturday Night Live,” the television program which was the original source of the hipper-than-thou attitude that characterizes Mr. Tappan’s film. The appeal of this message is simple and direct, i.e. by watching this movie/TV show/music video, etc, you’re showing yourself to be a with-it young sophisticate. You’re in on an inside joke and can laugh at those ignorant, uncool, unsophisticated souls who are not.
Think I’m exaggerating?
First of all, there was the conversational buzz throughout the movie theater before the film started. I overheard the name Brownback repeated dozens of times, always in scornful and profane terms.
One such conversation went on in the row behind me: “The only people who support Brownback are rich, straight, white dudes! That’s what, three percent of the population? Oh, yeah, and the thirty percent of people who are against abortion! How on earth did he ever get re-elected?” (Yeah, that is a problem, particularly since so much of the film looks like out-takes from Paul Davis campaign commercials from last fall.)
The tone of the film, with its deliberately campy renditions of “Home on the Range” and old educational film footage from high school civics classes, is very tongue in check. You are definitely not in an irony-free-zone!
We had our predictable “Looking for Roger” moment from the Michael Moore film of the same name. Instead of Moore trying to interview Roger Smith, the president of General Motors, we have our Miami County Sergei Eisenstein, who pretends to go to the State Capital to interview Governor Brownback. We had our very own “Borat” moment when Tappan asks Brownback’s budget director, Shawn Sullivan, why the State of Kansas can’t just print more money. (Quantitative easing anyone? Janet Yellen, call your office!)
This was obviously intended to exasperate Sullivan into making an angry or otherwise inappropriate remark. When he calmly explained to Tappan that states do not have this power, the kid had him dead to rights! Golly, was that ever funny! Didn’t that stupid conservative know this this hip teen was putting him on? Wow, was that ever devastating satire!
Actually, for a self-described satirical look at an issue, the movie’s tone was less humorous than angry and aggrieved. Probably the most disturbing feature of the film was an interview with a Lenexa parent named Heather Ousley.
Every cliché and false premise promulgated by the education lobby was crammed into that five minute interview. I particularly like; “In education, like everything else, you get what you pay for.” (Has she ever heard of the KCMO public schools?)
I also treasured; “Brownback and the legislature are deliberately trying to destroy all public education. They’re out to PRIVATIZE!” (If Mr. Tappan is correct, in one of his shticks in the movie, that taxation is the “T” word for conservatives, privatization is the “P” word for liberals)
Ms. Ousely also spoke movingly of how she wants Kansas students to be “thoughtful, creative, and informed.” I think she was referring to the tweet a Shawnee Mission East student sent during a meeting with the Governor: “Told him he sucks,in person. #heblows a lot.”
Hearing Ms. Ousely reminded me of something I’d seen last fall, in the heat of the governor’s race. It was an editorial in the Hutchinson News by editor Jason Probst.
Probst said,in the same scarcely controlled voice of tearful outrage as Ms. Ousely’s,that he was going to be voting against Sam Brownback because the Governor wouldn’t support the Medicaid expansion that would benefit the editor’s unmarried 20 year old daughter and his soon-to-be-born, out of wedlock, grand-daughter.
The editor waxed nostalgic, recalling how government assistance had helped him 20 years earlier, when the expectant mother, his daughter, was born. The message from both Ms. Ousely and Mr. Probst was the same – unless you are willing to spend to confer government benefits on them at the level they deserve (and demand) you are an unfeeling, selfish monster.
The most dishonest portion of the film came in the interview with the two so-called experts; Duane Goosens, former state budget director, and Martin Dickinson, tax law professor at KU Law School. As the only two people in the film with any kind of in-depth knowledge on these subjects,their bias, selective recall, and feigned indignation were inexcusable.
Goosens’s interview blames the school funding “crisis” solely on Governor Brownback and the current legislature. This completely ignores the fact that school funding has been a constant battle in Kansas since the late ‘80’s, when Judge Terry Bullock found that the state had not met its constitutional obligation to provide a “suitable” education.
Every few years since then the courts demanded that the legislature dramatically increase funding to fulfill this mandate. Every time the legislature and governor have complied, only to be met with a new lawsuit or a new ruling in a pending lawsuit, demanding yet another dramatic increase in school spending. This despite the fact that spending has increased in the interim far in excess of the rate of inflation and enrollment growth. It is clear there is no limit to what the education lobby and their political allies will demand on their behalf. If annual base aid per pupil were increased to $5,000 in response to the Gannon case,how do we know that we won’t be told in a few years that it needs to go to $10,000 or $15,000 as the bare minimum that human decency(as defined by the KNEA) allows?
You only have to recall that Judge Terry Bullock threatened in the summer of 2005 to not let schools reopen that fall if the legislature didn’t immediately meet the demand for increased school spending in his latest ruling.
General Phil Kline said shutting down the schools meant just that, i.e. the schools would cease all functions, including making payments on bonds issued by school districts. While Bullock was more than happy to jeopardize the educational interests of Kansas children to make a political point, it’s obviously not fair to jeopardize the financial interests of bond holders. (People complain that Brownback’s tax cuts hurt the state’s credit rating but didn’t worry much about what a default on its bonds might have done.)
Once the bond default loomed, Bullock quickly backed down from his threat to shut down the school system. That was the moment when Kline’s fate was sealed, more than anything he did later about abortion clinics. You are courting professional and personal destruction if you challenge the legal and political establishments of the state, and that includes outwitting and thus embarrassing a powerful judge like Bullock.
Goosens also glossed over the fact that the current school funding crisis started in 2008 and 2009 with the Great Recession. Governors Sebelius and Parkinson made real and significant cuts to state spending on education, at the college level as well as K-12. Not only were the palmy days of annual increases of up to 10% in state spending over with, but there were actually credible reports in the national media that two states, California and Kansas, faced bankruptcy. Not only could they not pay their current bills but they were not even able to pay citizens’ tax refunds!
State base aid per pupil was reduced from $4,400 to $3,700. Overall, funding from all sources (state, federal and local) has been slowly and painfully restored only just now, by using a variety of expedients, many of which are admittedly short-term, stop-gap measures.
However, the amazing thing is that there was little, if any, outcry at the time by the KC Star and other media about these substantial cuts. There were no organized protests from educators, no marches on Topeka, no demonstrations at the Capital, no “satirical” films, no poignant letters to the governor from school children,no anguished repudiations of their political party by Kansas Democrats for betraying its heritage. In short, nothing compared to what Brownback has faced.
Could it be because of his ideology and party affiliation?
Professor Martin Dickinson’s comments in the film center on what he characterizes as the unfairly regressive nature of the tax cuts passed on Brownback’s watch. Yet for years far more regressive measures have become accepted policy in this state without so much as a “discouraging word” from Dickinson or any of the other Brownback critics.
Whether it’s been 30 year real estate tax abatements, tax increment financing bonds, STAR (Sales Tax Revenue) bonds, special benefit districts, or sales taxes (i.e. the 1% tax hike passed by Seblius in ’09), PEAK; Kansas state and local governments have given out myriad tax breaks to corporate interests at the expense of lower income Kansans. All this was justified in pursuit of “economic development,” which means in practice stealing businesses from Missouri.
It’s only when Brownback creates an exemption for pass-through entities like limited liability companies and proprietorships that a populist firestorm erupts. If the aim was to get professionals to move to Johnson County from KCMO, what else is new? Where’s the beef?
Where were Ms. Ousley, Professor Dickinson and the Star editorial board when Sebelius concocted her scheme to sell off the KU Medical Center to private interests?
Where were these champions of progressivity when that obscenely reactionary measure was proposed? Oh yeah, I forgot, Sebelius is a liberal Democrat and she and Dick Bond, GOP mod squad honcho, were in bed together on that one.
Make no mistake; I am anything but a Brownback loyalist.
See my 2013 post, “Up on Brownback Mountain” or “I Just Wish I Knew How to Quit You!”
Nor am I an unmitigated fan of the legislative leadership.
Consider the Plaza Lights Celebration. It’s the pre-legislative session event when our statesmen and stateswomen in Topeka are feted,no expense spared, by lobbyists and special interests. The lavish spread was hosted for years at the Polsinelli law firm on the Plaza. Now that the Old Guard of Steve Morris, John Vratil, etc., has been kicked out, a new day has arrived. The party has been moved to the other side of the Plaza, to the Husch, Blackwell Firm.
I do feel, however, that Brownback and the Kansas legislature have been given an unfair rap in the Buffaloed movie. For instance, the governor was lambasted for using the word “experiment” about his economic vision for Kansas. Apparently some claim that this sounds too cold and clinical. Maybe it sounds like it’s a “risky tax scheme” (where have we heard that before?).
If he had simply said that he wanted to try a new approach because the old one wasn’t working, no one could fault him, whether from a policy or semantic standpoint.
I recently heard from a blacksmith in Bucyrus, Kansas that he, for one, likes the state income tax exemption for small business owners like himself that Brownback created.
He’s using his tax savings to put money back into the economy as the law intended. Neither he nor most of the other 200,000 Kansans taking advantage of this tax break qualifies as a member of the “1%.”
Maybe it’s time to give the Governor, the blacksmith, and Kansas a chance to work and succeed. After all, a majority of Kansans agreed last November.
TL;DR
However given the author – guy born to wealth with no accomplishments of his own – it is safe assume we are being presented with an argument for lowering the quality of public education in Kansas so our intrepid reporter here can save a few tax dollars on the monies his daddy left for him.
Good for you, silver spoon.
Did you bother to read my post or did you just leap to a negative conclusion when you saw my last name ? If you had read it,you’ll see that I deplore corporate welfare,crony capitalism, tax code provisions handcrafted by special interests,policies which prey on the poor;which are all things that I shouldn’t say,according to your crude Stalinist world view,which defines me as a “class enemy”. I received the Kansas City Bar Association Robert C.Welch Award for providing pro bono legal services to the poor.I have given and raised money for local hospitals and schools. I have worked in food pantries and represented people for free when their civil liberties have been threatened by phony criminal prosecutions. I worked in Washington as a consultant for the Department of Defense and served on the last Johnson County Charter Commission,which studied ways to reform its governance. I ran for the state senate and the JCCC Board of Trustees. I graduated from Princeton and KU Law School and have been a practicing attorney for 38 years.I have served on my church vestry and on various charitable and corporate boards and represented my state on the RNC and as a delegate at three national conventions. Who the heck are you to tell me that I have accomplished nothing on my own?(Mr. Fake Name.i.e.”FlyinBrian”-gee,that’s clever!)
Read again, the comment from FlyinBrian.
You are approaching Glazer territory. That comment was an ask and answer, you answered. The crack in your carapace is cash. Why apologize for your family’s accomplishments? Tell him thanks for the mention, and you will think about him in St. Barts next weekend.
Attacks on the messenger reveal an untenable position on the subject.
Interesting article.
By the way, I like Glazer’s articles, but he can be tetchy and grumpy on occasion.
I appreciate the comment. The problem is that they are always varying the angle of attack. Sometimes it’s against my family,for unspecified crimes and abuses. Sometimes it’s me personally,for things I have supposedly done(again,never specified).Now,it’s for things I have not done(again,by people who know nothing about me and just assume the worst but with nothing to back it up.) You notice that it’s rarely on the merits of my positions. A rhetorical brush back to the head,like the one I just administered,feels good and even shuts them up for a while.For example,when Hearne ran the photo of the grotesque ‘mini-me’ bearded Harley,the H-Man(Harley,not Hearne) was stunned into submission for a few hours. That alone made it worth all the abuse that goes along with writing the post!
Tough but fair.
I’m actually delighted to hear from you,MJ,as long as its something other than your usual “tea bagger”reference.
As always, Dwight, your efforts here provide a rich and detailed narrative. A very interesting read to be sure. While you know I’m on the other side of the aisle from you, I don’t consider myself a total ideologue and there is much generated from my side that deserves scrutiny and criticism and you are a credible source to deliver it.
Surprisingly to myself, I got almost all the way through your post without feeling the urge to respond in writing here. I almost felt sorry for you, having to sit in a room full of liberal heathens and endure their slanted rhetoric and I admire your willingness to attend events from the dark side.
Alas, I did not make it to the end without feeling the tug from my keyboard. It was the paragraph that started out ” I do feel, however, that Brownback and the Kansas legislature have been given an unfair rap.. ” that hooked me. Maybe it was your choice of words that sealed it. Like “experiment” and “new approach”. To me, all Brownback did was double down on the failed policy of “supply side” economics. There was no new approach from my perspective. Different maybe, but certainly not new. Maybe just the semantics of those words from our friend, S. I. Hayakawa.
Please endure a bit of “rhetoric from my liberal playbook” as some here call it. In my humble opinion, it is not having the “supply” of additional dollars in their pocket from lower taxes that causes businesses, large or small, to hire workers or purchase inventory, it is “demand” for their product or services that causes that behavior.
I guess what frustrates me the most is how conservatives tend to view the government as evil. To their way of thinking, only the private sector creates jobs. Only the private sector creates demand. When they economy is running most efficiently, the private sector generates about 70% of the activity and the public sector 30%. The economy needs both to succeed. To my way of thinking, if the private sector hits a speed bump and the activity level drops, the economy needs the public sector to step in and help cover the shortfall for a period until the private sector activity picks up again. Public stimulus money tends to go right back into the economy in the form of purchases like groceries, house payments, new cars, etc. It creates demand. The public sector creates no value, no good for society from the view of the right. It’s that view that is in error, again, in my humble opinion. I’d love to know more about the details of your friend, the blacksmith in Bucyrus. If there is no demand for his services, I would tend to think he is just going to pocket his largesse as opposed to putting it back into the economy. I think that is the expected behavior of all the businesses and “job creators” in Kansas with regards to the question of what to do with their largesse. Having money in their pockets without demand for their product or service will not motivate them to hire or invest. If there IS demand for their product or service, not having that money in their pocket won’t stop them from borrowing. Lenders won’t hesitate to lend when they see demand. It is demand that powers our economy, not supply, imho.
See, no insults there. I respect your opinion, Dwight, and I hope you can force a bit of respect for mine. Thanks again, for your usual interesting and well supported post.
I like goverment cheese.
Score one for the rookie!
Decline and fall, fall down baby….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLzFhOslZPM
What doesn’t come through here, and what Brownback and his administration have failed to communicate to the public, is the fact that Kansas publicly-funded schools, at all levels, from K-12 to university level, have been overloaded with lavishly paid administrative staff, at the expense of teachers in classrooms actually teaching. The Wyandotte County superintendent gets $250,000 in pay, not including benefits; the KU Chancellor gets $650,000, also not including benefits – which include the free use of a house, domestic staff, limo, and executive jet aircraft; school administrators in other districts get between $110,000 and $160,000 per year not including benefits. There are hundreds of these people in the system, and compared with the parochial and private schools, something like five to ten times the number of non-teaching administrators, depending on districts. The value added is somewhat difficult to detect – the Catholic schools work with poor black and Hispanic students, but consistently get better results than public schools in the same area – and those parents pay twice for schooling, both in increased rents supporting the bloated public system, and in payments for parochial school tuition. These points – which have been supported by voluminous research over the years – are not being communicated, and they should be. That would clear up a lot of the controversy and more clearly define the real issues here.
Thanks, H Luce. Not sure if you are new here but this has been talked about here quite a bit. Rich Steele wrote a number of pieces that generated discussion on this and I would encourage you to go into the archives and read some of his offerings, along with the comments. The archives can be accessed above on the right side. You bring up very valid points. I think even we liberals will admit that the administration expenses in almost all districts show some excesses and the existence of so many districts that could be merged also creates some waste. Good points !!
I had a look at Mr Steele’s articles – only back to January 2015, there probably were more, but I didn’t look back farther due to the clunky interface – out of 33, I looked at about 15, of those, 3 were on school finance.
Again, they were pretty short on facts and figures although there was a good comparison between school admin salaries and median per capita and household incomes in Ford County. Although he reported that the JoCo superintendent got something more than $300,000 in salary, there was no corresponding comparative analysis. It would be a good idea to have such a comparative analysis widely disseminated, along with pertinent statistics about the numbers so employed, and some kind of analysis of their work product and the value added to education. I’m thinking it would come up a bit on the short end. Comparison to the parochial and private school systems in Kansas would also be in order.
Currently, about 62% of state spending is on education, and if this number could be significantly trimmed, the forecast budget crisis could be forestalled or eliminated, leading to improvements in the state’s credit rating. Mr Steele reports that the State of Kansas spends something on the order of $8600 per pupil per year, up from $8300 last year. Compare this with the cost of tuition in JoCo parochial schools: “The parish cost of education in Shawnee, at Good Shepherd Parish School (K-8) is $5300 per year (http://goodshepherd.eduk12.net/thispage.asp?PageName=Enrollment+Info) and Bishop Miege High School charges $9600 per year (9-12) (http://www.bishopmiege.com/s/100/3col.aspx?sid=100&gid=1&pgid=894). These are costs for non-Catholics which reflect the true costs incurred. The average cost per pupil per year from K-12 is thus: $6623 per year. This is substantially below $8600 per year – it’s $2000 less. Figures in outlying districts may be even less – for example, in McPherson, the yearly charge is $2500 for non-Catholics, grades K-6, and in Lawrence, it’s $4300, grades K-8. These are important differences in cost which if analyzed and acted upon might lead to a solution of the current budget crisis.
I will laugh when Kansas goes under because of their tax abatements, freebies, and thief of business from their neighbor. They have always had an air of superiority for no reason and a huge delusions of grandeur complex. It even happens to people who move there.
Good riddance.
You make an excellent point. Kansas only looks good because of Missouri reverting to a pre-chordata stage of development . (If you think our government and our schools are bad,take a gander at what’s going on two blocks from Westwood!) That hardly gives us Kansans much reason to boast.
The odd thing is that from our KC perspective- Eastern Kansas schools and universities are well funded. Olathe and Blue Valley have built amazing school districts that rival some of the best facilities in the nation.
Capital improvement is going on left and right on higher education campuses. Tuition has been flat. National Rankings have gone up. Brand new MBA school for KU.
I am sure there are underfunded districts in Western Kansas that lost out from him changing the distribution scheme for state-pooled monies from property taxes. I wonder how much of that problem is due to demographics, populations, and assessed property taxes in the western counties.
Only a fool would walk into a Blue Valley district high school and think they are left wanting for anything.
And if the Democratic party is so concerned with Brownback or Brownbackistan they need to put up a charismatic and trustworthy candidates so that people have a better alternative.
Amen
It is not just a Kansas or Missouri problem, attracting business on the backs of potential employees. A Missouri insurance company, promising Kansas, that they would move and employ a minimum of 50 employees if only Kansas would grant some form of tax abatement. Two year later, the insurance agency moved, the promised employees are no where to be found. Kansas City lost the earnings tax on 20 employees, Missouri lost withholding and taxes on Kansas domiciled employees, and Kansa lost part of its property tax.
As a lobbyist for a Chamber of Commerce in Montana, I was told to lobby to grant tax abatement for a firm looking to move to Butte, Montana from Idaho. I told my Chamber members that the move would never happen, but I lobbied for the situation that would have brought jobs to a neighboring city, dreaming of tax revenue to deal with its superfund site. We passed the abatement, but the firm didn’t move. Instead, the firm used the abatement to get Idaho to pony up. Later, I explained the contractor hired by the company to expand the firm in Idaho was my client, and he had already broken ground on the expansion before the proposal was ever presented in Montana.
What states have to understand is that they compete with eachother. As time goes on, each state takes more and more from their captive industries until the industries move. The best example is the Anaconda Company, an industry that was the source of many fortunes, the Hurst fortune included. Montana saw it as the golden goose, paying for good school, and everything anyone could want. With an income tax rate of 11% and property taxes based on an 11% valuation, the citizens of Montana were shocked when Anaconda shut down, and no long paid the tax base. It’s hard to think of those golden eggs, after that very tasty goose dinner.
A very interesting take,which confirms what I’ve suspected. Its amazing to me that critics are always saying that “X’s policies make Kansas the laughing stock of the nation”as if every other state is not confronted with these problems.
Stomper…I read you discussion of “supply”/”demand” to focus on your belief that government stimulus creates demand and stregthens economic malaise. What I take from your post is that when the folks have walkin’ around money, they spend it. It gives them the ability to act on latent demand. In other words, they are able to take the gift money from the government (which is available via either through increased taxes or via printing of the money) and satiate their wants/demands. That money then goes into the wind machine and blows around going from one seller of product/service to another (the salon owner takes her earnings and spends it at the butcher shop, who takes the money and spends it at the ballgame). The way the government gets these dollars to the pent up spenders is to either make handouts of the cash to them or pay for the infamous “shovel ready jobs”…which are “project jobs”, temporary in duration (build/rehab unnecessarily one of the numerous interchanges now being redone throughout KC). This is all fools’ gold I believe, because if the funds from the government come via printing, or via taxes, at some point as Margaret Thatcher noted: the government runs out of other people’s money. And continually printing money will ultimately ruin the value of the currency.
The other way to build demand (meaning, as above, to get money into the hands of the pent up spenders), is to reduce their taxes. There is no dispute that they would then have more money to spend, enabling them to fulfill their demands. The government gets less but so what…we don’t now need the government to print more money to give away…we STIMULATE the economy not by giving people money, buy by letting them keep more of what they have already earned. Of course, the LEFT won’t sign on to this, because they want more and more “free money” to go to those that don’t work and, hence, have no need for lower tax rates.
The government has become little more than that place where you can now go to get free money without working…and the current scam du jour for the freeloaders is: Disability!!!! By the millioins, wasterals are discoverying the joys and financial benefits of Fibromyalgia and its kindred disabling conditions which the stooges in the government blindly accept as disabling. Let the money presses ROLL!!!
Let’s separate it between corporations and individuals for discussion purposes. Reducing the taxes for larger corporations puts money in their bank but just because they have additional funds does not mean it will be spent. Their boards answer to their stockholders. If demand for the companies products or services does not warrant, they certainly are not going to add staff or or invest in mfg, etc. Goes either into retained earnings or possibly to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Ok, for individuals, there is a difference in the spending habits between high income individuals and the middle class. With the middle class, a much much higher percent of their income goes into purchases. If the middle class gets tax refunds, yes, they will most likely be spending that money on repaying debt, maybe take a vacation, upgrade their car, make improvements to their home, go out to eat more often, etc. Large majority of that money goes right back into the economy and helps small businesses. For the high income individual, that tax refund is more likely to go into retirement accounts, etc. and will not likely increase their current spending habits.
The supply side, trickle down theory didn’t work for Reagan, and it hasn’t worked for Brownback. I’ve got no problem reducing taxes on the lower end because I DO think that money will be much more likely to work it’s way back into the economy. It’s the additional money back to the high end, larger corporations and high income individuals that doesn’t benefit economic activity. Assuming that money in the pockets of “job creators” will result in those “job creators” hiring new workers or investing in infrastructure, materials, etc. is the fool’s gold here.
Thanks Vincent, I appreciate the reasoned comments.
Forgot to address another point you made. I’m not looking, nor do I think it is fair to say that everyone on the left is looking for more free money to go to those that don’t work. Not looking to perpetuate any “entitlement” situations or to encourage anyone to “scam” the government with false disability claims, etc. My point was that assuming that companies will hire simply because they have more money is a false one.
When the left is in charge of “the government”, their desire to get more of the “rich” folks’ money into the hands of the lower class means that they don’t adequately police the “scam” claims…they simply don’t really care whether it is a scam…or not. They just want to redistribute wealth…which is consistent with their socialist/communist bent. And, when you argue that the wealthy won’t spend their tax savings, but the middle class will, I’m not buying it. Wealthy people spend more because they eat better food, they buy better clothes, their kids get better stuff. So, yes, the middle class worker would take his/her tax break and go to Applebees and then onto vacation in Branson, but the wealty will stay at The George V in Paris instead of at some boutique hotel….and they will stay an extra weekend. They will fly first class instead of coach on their way to Spain.
Their kids will go to Pembroke instead of SM/Blue Valley…etc.
You can never win your argument with me by saying that the middle class will spend their tax savings but the wealthier won’t.
Well, at least you gave me an opportunity. I’ll ask one questions and offer one point and then I’ll step aside.
Think I know your answer but the question is, do you think Brownback’s tax strategy is working for Kansas based on the current budget situation and the State’s bond rating being lowered?
The point relates to your issue with the government spending federal dollars on interstate highway projects. I think even the majority of Libertarians would agree that the federal government does have a responsibility to maintain the interstate highway system and the infrastructure, following only their responsibility to protect our sovereignty from foreign powers. If I read you correctly, you believe this activity would be temporary “project jobs” and would not be beneficial. I think the companies and their workers that receive the $ might not agree. To me, this is a win/win. The feds fulfill their responsibility to maintain the infrastructure and companies/workers get paychecks. These are not people faking disabilities or trying to scam the government for “free money”. They are working class people with bills, mortgages, car payments, and kids. And, they probably vote GOP to top it off.
Anyway, thanks Vincent, for the chance to “dance”.
PS; I do love the phrase “redistribute wealth”. Redistributing wealth is what all governments do. Our armed forces exist because of redistributed wealth. Teachers are paid with redistributed wealth, as are first responders. The roads you drive on were built with redistributed wealth. Hopefully you think some of the money the feds “redistribute ” from your pocket is money worth it to you.
I’m also guessing you meant to say that the wealthy would spend their tax money in the US instead of France or Spain.
Thanks again.
In the last 24 hours I learned the identity of CFP Cowboy and while I won’t out him, I will say he is one of the sharpest political and financial guys I know. I
He’s known my identity but until yesterday, I didn’t know his. I know that I have disagreed with his political leanings but his comments have displayed a pretty good grasp on events. Now I know why. You may disagree with him but you need to be fully armed to take him on.
With that in mind, I’d like to ask CFP Cowboy his thoughts on something that happened in the last few days that I think is pretty f@(ked up. Dwight’s postings are a great place to debate these issues as the D man brings an impressive array of constituents with him when he writes. The jobs reports came out and it was great. The unemployment rate ticked downed but the market took that as bad news and the indices all dropped. The market, ( where the supply siders all live and where their tax largesse “demand” goes to nest) was afraid the Federal Reserve would raise rates a touch to reflect the improving economy. Higher rates to the supply siders was not good news. To me that is telling. More people working and pay starting to increase a fraction, good news one might think for Main Street, is not regarded as good news to Wall Street. What’s good for the working/middle classes is not good for the upper class where a substantial portion of their wealth is sitting in stocks, mutual funds, Roth or 401(k) accounts. Am I the only one to think that is problematic. Doesn’t it say something about our economy that should be questioned.
What are your thoughts on that, Caballero Dinero ?
Pure. Solid. Gold.
Always a breathe of fresh air to read your thoughts.
The KCK school district spent almost $50,000.00 on a piano and caused a firestorm of outrage, but what’s interesting is that a KCTV5 reporter checked around and found that all the highschools in the area had spent that much, or more on pianos.
Add to that the outrageous assaults on Kansas children like the one down in Chanute where a leftist, child abusing principle manufactured an offense out of whole cloth including a completely made up punishment for a child who brought an empty shell casing to school. These aren’t schools anymore they’re government mandated indoctrination and child abuse centers. We need vouchers and private competition to get force the libs to get these dumps back on track.