Sometimes the choices with regard to tax and spend are stark. As the FT has reported this week:
Jerry Brown, California's governor, has warned that the wealthiest US state will have to close schools for up to an extra three weeks if voters do not back temporary tax increases on the rich.
A ballot in next month's US election will ask Californians to support a tax rise of 3 per cent on the wealthiest 1 per cent in the state.
Recent polls have shown a drop in support for Mr Brown's plan, which would trigger billions of dollars in cuts to education if it fails.
It's a staggering scenario: that people are asked to choose between the rich getting richer and children getting an education. And yet that is where we've got to.
I guess the real question is not the micro one of the right and wrong of this but the macro one, which is can any society really survive when its value system has been so corroded that such questions are even asked?
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It is more sickening still when you consider the considerable amount of money some of the rich are paying to confuse people into voting against the measure. Perhaps they might like to tell their fellow Californians why such political advertising money could not instead be going towards education.
Here’s Joe Stiglitz on inequality:-
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/stiglitz-some-are-more-unequal-than-others/
The last few sentences say it all:-
“Tax havens discourage investment in the United States. Taxing speculators at a lower rate encourages speculation and instability – and draws our most talented young people out of more productive endeavors. The result is a distorted, inefficient economy that grows more slowly than it should.”
No prizes for guessing what will result from the high university tuition fees introduced in the UK …..
Will say one of our councils in the UK be the same position as California in ten or fifteen years time? Will it have to close state schools, because no more cuts can be made elsewhere as everything has already been cut to the bone?
They won’t close. They’ll just be sold to private educators and tought to sell debt to people who cannot afford it.
My (limited) understanding of California’s problems is that pretty much all major decisions have to be via referendum. This means that people have been merrily voting for lower taxes, better services and better pensions for many years, and now the whole edifice is on the verge of falling to pieces.
Sometimes too much democracy is a bad thing!