Do They Ever Think These Things Through?
By Mitch Berg
I caught a bit of DFL Senate Minority Leader Tom Bakk and House Minority Leader Paul Thissen on the Keri Miller show on MPR one morning last week.
First – while I often bag on Miller for painting the toenals of liberal guests on the air, she did stick a few good questions in there.
But I liked this bit here. Bakk said (paraphrasing closely) “Minnesotans keep saying they’re overtaxed. It’s just not true“.
He pointed out that since Jesse Ventura’s cuts to the personal income tax back in 1999 and 2000, Minnestoans have “paid less in taxes”. It’s wrong, of course; business taxes get passed on to Minnesotans as surely as the income tax does. And if you recall, Ventura, who had to run to the DFL to get any legislative support at all, turned about a third of the surpluses of his first two years into tax cuts; the Legislature – which was dominated by DFLers, including Bakk, at the time – spent the other two thirds on permanent entitlements, laying the groundwork for the endless deficits we currently fight with.
But let’s take Bakk at his word for the moment, and assume that Minnesotans’ tax burdens dropped, and stayed dropped, during the Ventura Administration.
Minnesota also rode out the last two recessions – this one and the 2001 Dot Bomb – better than most of the United States. Our unemployment rate was, stayed, and is in the lower ten of rates in the US, and was for both recessions.
Just saying – Keri Miller? Please keep booking Bakk. He’s a never-ending fount of material.
March 28th, 2011 at 8:12 am
Not over-taxed? Compared to what, or to who?
That’s like saying “I know you paid $100 for that hamburger, but you were not overcharged because look at all the free lutefisk you got with it.”
Yeah, but I didn’t want lutefisk on my hamburger, you forced me to take it and then billed me for it besides.
I would be happy to pay for a better Minnesota, if I got to define “better.” I’m not so willing to pay if you’re defining “better” because the things you want me to pay for are stupid. And that guy over there, the things he wants me to pay for are even worse.
Since we can never hope to get everybody to agree on everything to buy with our tax dollars, the smart play is to buy only the absolute minimum, the bare essentials that we all agree we must have: clean water, sewer treatment, firemen, cops. Everything else people want, they buy ala carte.
Wow, what a concept. If only a bunch of really smart guys had sat around for about 10 years working out the theoretical and legal basis for limiting government in that way. Wouldn’t it be great if there were some document that specified exactly what government could do, everything else being forbidden to the government but reserved to the people, instead?
March 28th, 2011 at 8:37 am
Sheesh Nate, what have you got against lutefisk?
March 28th, 2011 at 9:28 am
Lutefisk – The dish so awful that Andrew Zimmern – who travels the globe eating third world delicacies including boiled camel anus and fermented sheep testicles claims he hasn’t been able to acquire a taste for it.
March 28th, 2011 at 9:40 am
Since we can never hope to get everybody to agree on everything to buy with our tax dollars, the smart play is to buy only the absolute minimum, the bare essentials that we all agree we must have: clean water, sewer treatment, firemen, cops. Everything else people want, they buy ala carte.
What about infrastructure (e.g. roads and bridges)? I assume that utilizes such as power and water are bought “ala carte” because people chose to use them and pay for their use (which I’m fine with in principle).
Sheesh Nate, what have you got against lutefisk?
It’s (a) fish and (b) it smells awful. 😉
March 28th, 2011 at 10:56 am
Who doesn’t like a slice of boiled camel anus every once in while?
March 28th, 2011 at 11:31 am
No worse than haggis, I suppose. And if that’s your fancy – indulge yourself. But . . . on your own nickel.
Just don’t open an all-you-can-eat-boiled-camel-anus-stuffed-with-lutefisk-buffet and expect me to foot the bill.
Which is exactly what the DFL wants to shove down our throats.
March 28th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Nate is just such a hater.