Should Blue States Start Paying Their Fair Share?

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Blue Tax
The Editors, NRO
December 14, 2012

Republicans have agreed to a tax increase of $800 billion over ten years as part of the negotiations regarding the so-called fiscal cliff. Even as Republicans refuse to call it a tax hike (“revenues,” indeed), there are better and worse ways to go about this unpleasant business, and one simple reform would raise all that money and more: eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes. While we would prefer no tax increase at all, eliminating this deduction would be a sensible reform of the tax code, and could be paired with tax cuts elsewhere for a fiscally neutral simplification of our byzantine tax code.

Estimates suggest that eliminating this deduction would raise as much as $900 billion over ten years, though it may well turn out to be less as taxpayers modify their behavior in light of the new incentives. That won’t balance the budget with deficits running that much or more every single year, but it is nothing to turn the national nose up at, either: $900 billion would completely offset the estimated deficit for 2013. Progressives should welcome eliminating the deduction in that the new tax burden would fall much more heavily upon those earning $200,000 or more. As Reihan Salam points out, households in the $200,000-and-up range would pay an average of $5,166 more without the deduction, while those in the $30,000-to-$50,000 range would pay only $70 more.

A tax reform that more than clears the $800 billion mark, falls most heavily upon the wealthy, and has the support of many conservatives: You would think that the Democrats would be quick to embrace such a thing. But to the great surprise of no one, the party’s house organ has editorialized against it. Writes the New York Times:

The theory behind the deduction was that the amount paid to states in taxes is not really part of an individual’s disposable income, because it is obligatory and, therefore, should not be taxed twice. Over time, the deduction has become the equivalent of a subsidy from the federal government to states that believe in a strong and active government. That may infuriate conservatives in low-tax states like Texas, who hate subsidizing states with different views of government’s role, but it’s actually a good thing for the country.

New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are among the states with the highest taxes to deduct. Apparently it took a blow close to home to get the editors of the New York Times to notice the problem of double taxation, but then again the New York Times Company suspended its dividend payments back in 2009, so perhaps nobody over there is paying very close attention to the issue. (Chevron and PepsiCo investors will have meditated upon it.) The Times argues that states with income taxes serve their residents better than do states without them, and that the federal government should therefore continue to subsidize the aggrandizement of government at the state and local level.

The Times mistakes correlation for causality, as it usually does when it suits the editors’ politics. Yes, the average person living in Connecticut or Massachusetts remains better off across many metrics (health and education among them) than the average person in Texas or Oklahoma. There are many differences between the New England and Mid-Atlantic states and the deep South and Southwest, and the presence of state income taxes is not the most significant of them. People living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan have above-average incomes and education levels, too, and the city’s income tax has no more to do with that than does the fact that they pay very high rents, drink a great deal of coffee, and read Monocle.

I say, yes, this is a very good idea to let the Progressive States, the richest states, pay a progressive tax to build roads, schools and infrastructure, the things they are continually complaining about...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"We note that the Times is here endorsing a regressive subsidy, one that showers benefits on high earners in states that are often themselves higher in income than the national average. We wonder which other regressive policies the paper might endorse in the interests of the nice people in Greenwich and Millburn.

"We have 50 different states for a reason: Texas can have its low taxes and economic growth, and Connecticut can have its high taxes and lavishly subsidized abortions. But there is no reason for the federal government to subsidize Connecticut’s high taxes — or Texas’s crony-capitalist “economic development” schemes. The tax code is not here to provide a national carrot and stick. It is here to raise money, which Congress and the New York Times believe the government needs more of, so long as it does not derail any gravy trains in Albany or Sacramento."

 

[RobDownSouth]

Eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes would adversely affect everyone, as opposed to say, the mortgage interest deduction (which benefits only homeowners) and the charitable giving deduction (which benefits primarily fundies).

Bottom line: ain't gonna happen, Chief.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

STFU Moron.


The only people who do not have you on ignore are your fellow jackboot thug racists and homophobes...

Get back to us when you actually earn enough to get into the 53%.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Aww Chief HomoNoMo has a sad this morning!

 

[shoulderblade]

"We have 50 different states for a reason: Texas can have its low taxes and economic growth, and Connecticut can have its high taxes and lavishly subsidized abortions. But there is no reason for the federal government to subsidize Connecticut’s high taxes — or Texas’s crony-capitalist “economic development” schemes. The tax code is not here to provide a national carrot and stick. It is here to raise money, which Congress and the New York Times believe the government needs more of, so long as it does not derail any gravy trains in Albany or Sacramento."

That seems to it in a nutshell. I aswume that the blue states budget in their windfall as "business as usual".

In the US, with its large physical size and high poipulation it looks like "States if possible" is the way to go when you are trying to resolve the diversity in the country. Looks to me that cutting staes loose here would leave all to their own devices rather than have the Federal government covering for excess apending.

 

[imalickin]

Eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes would adversely affect everyone, as opposed to say, the mortgage interest deduction (which benefits only homeowners) and the charitable giving deduction (which benefits primarily fundies).

Bottom line: ain't gonna happen, Chief.

Actually dumbshit, it only effects those who itemize their deductions and those who live in states that have an income tax. You show again how stupid you are. And you can't fix stupid.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Actually dumbshit, it only effects those who itemize their deductions and those who live in states that have an income tax. You show again how stupid you are. And you can't fix stupid.

Actually assclown, if you want to get technical about it (and you undoubtedly do), it doesn't effect (sic) people who itemize who are subject to the AMT.

Message board generalizations =/= doctoral thesis.

Derp.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Meanwhile, in the Red States...

... not a doctor or nurse in sight.


The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Mark Steyn, NRO
December 14, 2012

A few years ago, my small local hospital asked a Senate staffer if she could assist them in obtaining federal money for a new building. So she did, expediting the process by which that particular corner of northern New Hampshire was deemed to be “under-served” and thus eligible for the fed gravy. At the ribbon-cutting, she was an honored guest, and they were abundant in their praise. Alas, in the fullness of time, the political pendulum swung, her senator departed the scene, and she was obliged to take a job out of state.

Last summer, she returned to the old neighborhood and thought she’d look for a doctor. The sweet old guy with the tweed jacket in the neatly painted cape on Main Street had taken down his shingle and retired. Most towns in the North Country now have fewer doctors than they did in the 19th century, and the smaller towns have none. The Yellow Pages lists more health insurers than physicians, which would not seem to be an obvious business model. So she wound up going to the health center she’d endowed so lavishly with your tax dollars just a few years earlier.

They gave her the usual form to fill in, full of perceptive inquiries on her medical condition: Do you wear a seat belt? Do you own a gun? How many bisexual men are you now having sex with? These would be interesting questions if one were signing up for eHarmony.com and looking to date gun-owning bisexuals who don’t wear seat belts, but they were not immediately relevant to her medical needs. Nevertheless, she complied with the diktats of the Bureau of Compliance, and had her medical records transferred, and waited . . . and waited. That was August. She has now been informed that she has an appointment with a nurse-practitioner at the end of January. My friend pays $15,000 a year for health insurance. In northern New Hampshire, that and meeting the minimum-entry requirement of bisexual sex partners will get you an appointment with a nurse-practitioner in six months’ time.

Why is it taking so long? Well, because everything in America now takes long, and longer still. But beyond that malign trend are more specific innovations, such as the “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology,” which slipped through all but unnoticed in Subtitle A Part One Section 3001 of the 2009 Obama stimulus bill. Under the Supreme National Coordinator, the United States government is setting up a national database for everybody’s medical records, so that if a Texan hiker falls off Mount Katahdin after walking the Appalachian Trail, Maine’s first responders will be able to know exactly how many bisexual gun-owners she’s slept with, and afford her the necessary care.

This great medical advance is supposed to be fully implemented by 2014, so the federal government is providing incentives for doctors to comply. Under the EHR Incentive Program, if a physician makes “meaningful use” of electronic health records, he’s eligible for “bonuses” from the feds — a mere $44,000 from Medicare, for example, but up to $63,750 from Medicaid. If you have a practice at 27 Elm Street and you’re treating the elderly widow from 22 Elm Street, she’s unlikely to meet the federally mandated bi-guy requirement, but you can still qualify for bonuses by filing her smoking status with Washington. For medical facilities in upscale suburbs, EHR is costly and time-consuming, and, along with a multitude of other Obamacare regulatory burdens, helping drive doctors to opt out entirely: My comrade Michelle Malkin noted the other day that her own general practitioner has now switched over to “concierge care,” under which all third parties (whether private insurers or government) are dumped and a patient contracts with his doctor solely through his checkbook. Some concierge docs will even make house calls: Everything old is new again! (For as long as the new federal commissars permit it.)

But in the broken-down rural hinterlands, EHR and other novelties make it more lucrative for surviving medical centers to prioritize federal paperwork over patient care. For example, there’s a lot of prescription-drug abuse in this country, and so the feds award “meaningful use” bonuses for providing records that will assist them in determining whether a guy with a prescription for painkillers in New Hampshire also has a prescription for painkillers with another doctor over the Connecticut River in Vermont. So in practice every new patient in this part of the world now undergoes a background check before getting anywhere near a doctor. It doesn’t do much for your health, but it does wonders for an ever more sclerotic bureaucracy.

Hence the decay of so many “medical” appointments into robot-voiced box-checking. At the doctor’s a couple of months back, the nurse was out to lunch, and so the receptionist-practitioner rattled through the form. In the waiting room. “Are you sexually active?” she asked. “You first,” I replied. I hope I didn’t cost her the federal bonus.

But don’t worry, it’s totally secure. Carl Smith Jr. was the first physician in Harlan County, Kentucky to introduce EHR. “Because of this technology,” Dr. Smith says, “we can send the patient’s prescription electronically by secure e-mail to pharmacies.” Wow! “Secure e-mail”: What a concept! It’s a good thing the e-mail is secure at American pharmacies because nothing else is. Last Christmas, while guest-hosting at Fox News in New York, I had a spot of ill health and went to pick up a prescription at Duane Reade on Sixth Avenue. The woman ahead of me was having some difficulties. She was a stylish lady d’un certain age, and she caught my wandering eye. After prolonged consultation with the computer, the “pharmacist” informed her (and the rest of us within earshot) that her insurer had approved her Ortho but denied her Valtrex. I was thinking of asking her for cocktails at the Plaza, when I noticed the other women in line tittering. It seems that Ortho is a birth-control pill, and Valtrex is a herpes medication.

So good luck retaining any meaningful doctor-patient confidentiality in a system in which more people — insurers, employers, government commissars, TSA Obergropinführers, federal incentive-program auditors — will be able to access your medical records than in any other nation on earth.

No foreigner can even understand the American “health care” debate, which seems to any tourist casually surfing the news channels to involve everything but health care. Since the Second World War, government medical systems have taken hold in almost every developed nation, but only in America does the introduction of governmentalized health care impact small-business hiring practices and religious liberty, and require 16,500 new IRS agents and federal bonuses for contributing to a national database of seat-belt wearers. Thus, Big Government American-style: Byzantine, legalistic, whimsical, coercive, heavy on the paperwork, and lacking the one consolation of statism — the great clarifying simplicity of universal mediocrity.

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, Obamacare governmentalizes one-sixth of the U.S. economy — or the equivalent of the entire French economy. No one has ever attempted that before, not even the French. In parts of rural America it will quickly achieve a Platonic perfection: There will be untold legions of regulators, administrators, and IRS collection agents, but not a doctor or nurse in sight.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

That seems to it in a nutshell. I aswume that the blue states budget in their windfall as "business as usual".

In the US, with its large physical size and high poipulation it looks like "States if possible" is the way to go when you are trying to resolve the diversity in the country. Looks to me that cutting staes loose here would leave all to their own devices rather than have the Federal government covering for excess apending.

They are, indeed, supposed to be on their own.

That is how we were truly founded...

... over fear of central state.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Better keep some irons in the fire.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Better keep some irons in the fire.

Words of iron.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Words of iron.

I seem to be collecting union-made Mopar blocks of iron, too.


I had a guy offer me a 727 trannie if I'd just come and get it out of his garage.


It's nice to be loved . . . .

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I had a tranny offer to do me at 7:27 once...


I would not park in his garage!

 

[Wat_Tyler]

That's just awful.


This is a nice fellow. I bet he'd ride along if he had nowhere else to go.


Here's a lovely article on stroker kits: http://www.musclemotorsracing.com/muscle-mike-blog/122-stroker-kits-101.html


There are a lot of notched nose jokes in it.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Meanwhile, in the Red States...

... not a doctor or nurse in sight.


The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Mark Steyn, NRO
December 14, 2012

Whose fault is that, AJ?

Have you had a problem getting an appointment to see your doctor recently? I ask this of all of you conservative concern trolls. Almost invariably, they tell me no, THEY don't have a problem seeing a doctor on short notice, but by gum they know OTHERS that do!

I've seen two new doctors in the past year. Neither asked me about guns or bisexual men.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

That's just awful.


This is a nice fellow. I bet he'd ride along if he had nowhere else to go.


Here's a lovely article on stroker kits: http://www.musclemotorsracing.com/muscle-mike-blog/122-stroker-kits-101.html


There are a lot of notched nose jokes in it.

Like Bram Stoker's Dracula?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Remember when you first started using spray paint and got hooked on huffing?



I betcha ol' Throbbie does.

His son is proof:

Oh yeah... He hu-hu-hu-, uh, huffs

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Like Bram Stoker's Dracula?

Somewhat.


The notes about QC in Chinese machining were innerestin'.


I think the replacement hand hooks are held to lesser tolerances . . . .

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The proof is in the way he likes to grind his "Crank-"shaft...





(Crank being slang for meth in the Midwest...)

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Somewhat.


The notes about QC in Chinese machining were innerestin'.


I think the replacement hand hooks are held to lesser tolerances . . . .

Gotta keep an eye on that massive fail rate...



... and that is not just a shot at man-boobs, the self-appointed troll.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Same slang here, too. It was big among bikers a while back - may still be for all I know.


There is a joke about checking run-out in there too,

 

[RobDownSouth]

Remember when you first started using spray paint and got hooked on huffing?



I betcha ol' Throbbie does.

His son is proof:

Oh yeah... He hu-hu-hu-, uh, huffs

Soon Yi says: You velly funny, AJ-San! Me laugh you long time!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Same slang here, too. It was big among bikers a while back - may still be for all I know.


There is a joke about checking run-out in there too,

I began to glaze over while reading it; not my cup o'tea...




I can smell the spray paint now!

 

[Wat_Tyler]

There's a postpartum abortion joke in there somewhere . . . .