US and Taxes

[LongBlade]

wow. I had no idea the States in the US had such autonomy.

I suppose given the vastness of the country and the population diversity and spread it makes sense that once size doesn't fit all.

Our country was founded on the principle of a weak central government. However, the initial blueprint, the Articles of Confederation, proved unworkable because they were too weak.

Our next blueprint, the Constitution, is what we have now. As with almost anything the government slowly grew over time in scope and size to what we have today.

[JasonPratt]

In recent years, Tennessee unofficially added a 'voluntary' tax by instituting a state lottery rather than add a state income tax.

Republicans and Democrats both agreed more money needed collecting for state budgets.

Republicans tended to argue in favor of a state income tax, since that way the tax burden would be spread more equally among all social classes, especially among the rich and the upper-middle class since as usual the lower-middle-class downward were expected to get most or all their income tax back in a rebate at the end of the year (a zero-interest loan to the state, but they wouldn't be out anything more than some minor hassle).

Democrats tended to argue that by a lottery, a few poor people could become (briefly) very rich each year at the expense of all the other poor people gambling on who would get to be rich (while ignoring who would actually be buying lottery tickets); and pretended the income tax would be money poor people wouldn't be getting back at the end of the year.

Since the high population areas are the majority of the state's population, and skew heavily Democratic (despite a generally Republican mode for the state overall), the vote passed for a state lottery. Which has, as expected, filled state coffers with money 99.999% drawn from lower-middle-class citizens (and non-citizens from the 8 surrounding states) downward, which only a handful ever see again.

In effect, the wealthy Democrats convinced the poorer half of the population to voluntarily tax themselves on a plan that kept the wealthy from paying more taxes -- while demonizing the generally more-wealthy Republicans for wanting a tax that would be shouldered almost entirely by the wealthier half of the population. In fact, Republicans that year even floated the idea of getting rid of sales tax entirely since it eats more of a percentage of lower-down income than higher-up income.


In my more supervillainish moments, I toy with how to propose a lottery tied to the sales of alcohol and/or tobacco (without of course reducing any of the tax on those items). ;)

[JasonPratt]

wow. I had no idea the States in the US had such autonomy.

I suppose given the vastness of the country and the population diversity and spread it makes sense that once size doesn't fit all.

Our country was founded on the principle of a weak central government. However, the initial blueprint, the Articles of Confederation, proved unworkable because they were too weak.

Our next blueprint, the Constitution, is what we have now. As with almost anything the government slowly grew over time in scope and size to what we have today.

Anti-federalism was tarred by association with the Confederate Rebellion (and their insistence on states' rights to determine whether to abolish or keep slavery, among other things -- the Confederacy attempted to go back to the Articles of Confederation), but has been making a bit of a renaissance among political scholars recently. A relatively short but fascinating bit of history on the topic is Bill Kauffman's Forgotten Founder, Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin, which I read a few years ago (along with the more comprehensive history of Freedom Just Around the Corner by MacDougal; and his sequel on the Civil War on its aftermath, Throes of Democracy. I seem to recall learning about Kauffman's book while reading MacDougal...)


The main legacy of anti-federalism is the Bill of Rights, which has probably been of weightier impact in American judicial and legal dispute than the "Constitution" overall.

[BanzaiCat]

Yep, we don't have a state income tax (thank goodness) though our sales tax is 8.25% on virtually everything.

At the state and local level, they lie a lot about new income schemes, promising one thing and then delivering quite another. When our state decided to start the lottery back in 1990 or so, they pimped it to the public in a way that indicated all income would go directly to the school system. On that, the public overwhelmingly passed it. Texas then had a HUGE budget surplus that gosh, surprisingly (a) did not go to schools, which is a shame as our school system here is really flucking terrible in general, and (b) the surplus was wasted on stupid liberal programs that went absolutely nowhere. Big surprise.

Another favorite of mine is the 'toll road' scam. When Houston built the Sam Houston Tollway (basically a big circle going around the city), they said once they had collected enough money to cover the cost of building the monstrosity, they'd open it up for free. Not! They went back on that word too, even raising the damn price every few years. The toll road isn't even a decent way of getting around; it's ALWAYS gridlocked, so there's no point in paying a dumbass government money to sit and not move, when I can do that for free on the interstate.

On top of that, they're now building a "Grand Parkway" that's even bigger and even further out. The construction up here by me is a nightmare. Combined with the gigantic Exxon facility they're building and I-45 is pretty much a parking lot at any time of the day. And even though I've not heard anything I'm 150% certain they'll be charging even more than the Sam Houston Tollway to access it.

[bayonetbrant]

Just an FYI guys, sales taxes in the low-to-mid teens are the norm in much of Europe :)

[BanzaiCat]

...which pays for their oh-so-better healthcare...

...huge military...

...effective social programs...

...oh hell, I have no idea what they blow their Monopoly money on. :)

[JasonPratt]

^^ Buying reserve currency.  >:D

[JasonPratt]

Just an FYI guys, sales taxes in the low-to-mid teens are the norm in much of Europe :)

Oh, certainly; that's one reason I was saying earlier our tax situation really isn't all that bad. Aside from people occasionally tripping over lumps in the code, as long as you aren't trying to get out of paying for some reason it's pretty E-Z -- and since we have a population that's sizeably wealthy (compared to the rest of the world), we can get away with not taxing quite as much.