{"id":11125,"date":"2010-05-28T12:30:33","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T17:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11125"},"modified":"2011-09-01T07:59:43","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T12:59:43","slug":"chanting-points-memo-lga-cuts-are-destroying-minnesota-part-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=11125","title":{"rendered":"Chanting Points Memo: “LGA Cuts Are Destroying Minnesota!” (Part IV)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the first three parts of this series, I showed that the example of government fiscal starvation Jeff Rosenberg used in his plaintive plea for more Local Government Aid (LGA)\u00a0– Brainerd shutting off some of its streetlights – was not borne out by the numbers.\u00a0 I also showed that the DFL’s claim that cities are raising property taxes to make up for LGA cuts isn’t even half the truth – indeed, it’s more like 1\/7th the truth, as property tax levy increases have outstripped LGA cuts by a factor of 7.5 to 1\u00a0 – and that’s after <\/em>Governor Pawlenty’s “unallotment”, without which the disparity would have been more like 16 to 1.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, we’ll be looking at LGA in Greater Minnesota – on the many, many cities that get no <\/em>LGA, and on one city that receives it, but has run its fiscal shop much more responsibly than the DFL-clogged Big Three cities.<\/p>\n

That’s next week.<\/p>\n

For today, though, I just want to answer some questions.<\/p>\n

A couple of people, on blogs and in the comment sections, sniffed “but you’re not controlling for inflation”, with one suggesting if I didn’t use constant dollars the whole exercise was moot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inflation is a factor, and as I noted people need to take it into account when considering the numbers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But as I noted the other day, property tax levies have risen 59% in the past eight years.\u00a0\u00a0 Even with the cuts to LGA, the total amount of LGA plus levies has risen 34%.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inflation during the same period <\/a>was 21.94%.<\/p>\n

“But the government inflation rate is higher!”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Well, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it?\u00a0 Government is more expensive than most things – mostly due to labor.\u00a0 The median government job pays much better than the median private sector job; add in benefits, and the fact that government is the most-unionized sector of the economy (thus immune to the salary contraction that we in the private sector have dealt with in recent years. and “government inflation is higher” is a key reason to cut<\/em>, not raise, the amount we spend on them.<\/p>\n

And it brings up a key question that ties into liberals and conservatives’ views on what government really is<\/em>: should government be immune to hard times in the private sector?\u00a0 More to the point – should the taxpayer be required to keep government immune at all costs, when they themselves are suffering in a way that government employees are not?<\/p>\n

This will be an especially important question next year, when the current “recovery” grinds to a halt under the avalanche of new Obama administration taxes; indeed, stagnancy or a double-dip recession will likely be tied directly to the growth and voracity of government.<\/em><\/p>\n

So not only is the complaint about inflation numbers wrong, but it completely avoids the real point; government should not be immune to hard times in the rest of the economy.\u00a0 Government is not <\/em>a family member that we are obligated to support; it is at best an employee.\u00a0 Not much different than the millions that are getting laid off, although the worst government can expect is that they’ll get a pay cut, and it’ll be temporary, and that when things do <\/em>turn around (when the grownups are in control again), they’ll bounce back just fine.<\/p>\n

More next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the first three parts of this series, I showed that the example of government fiscal starvation Jeff Rosenberg used in his plaintive plea for more Local Government Aid (LGA)\u00a0– Brainerd shutting off some of its streetlights – was not borne out by the numbers.\u00a0 I also showed that the DFL’s claim that cities are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,144],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-11125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chanting-points-memo","category-governor","tag-pawlenty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11125"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11129,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11125\/revisions\/11129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}