In the US in particular, people are stupendously bad at looking outside of their own area for models of how things work differently (or the same) and how we can be informed by them. Or they'll pick an example like yours and refuse to see that maybe, just maybe, there's a middle ground between 30-50% taxation and no income tax at all.
Our state has no income tax -- everything is down to the ~8% sales tax (it's actually lower, but you add on city fees and such), as well as a few even less reliable sources like timber industry money, sell-off of state timber lands, etc. It's a startlingly bad way to run a state, because consumer spending fluctuates more than income, and is much, much harder to project for. The result is that basic services have been cut right and left, tuition (which was already steadily climbing -- my university cost $3500/year when I started $4500/year when I finished) has sky-rocketed, the already piss-poor underfunded state healthcare has been slashed...
...and this woman's bitching that it's 2 dollars more expensive to buy booze.
Aaaand that probably ran a little long, but I work for a publicly funded organization (county property taxes + a cut of timber industry taxes + cut of state timber lands) and my folks both work for the state government, so it's safe to say I hear about these things way too much.
As to no one being happy -- I had a lot of interesting conversations about the cost of public services when I was traveling in Europe. Most amazing were the kids from Scandinavian countries explaining to me that their education was expensive because the state didn't pay for room and board. And a couple in the UK saying their prescriptions and appointments were expensive, until I asked them for actual numbers and told them what mine would be in pounds. Perspective!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chiming
no subject
Date: 2012-06-07 05:33 pm (UTC)From:Our state has no income tax -- everything is down to the ~8% sales tax (it's actually lower, but you add on city fees and such), as well as a few even less reliable sources like timber industry money, sell-off of state timber lands, etc. It's a startlingly bad way to run a state, because consumer spending fluctuates more than income, and is much, much harder to project for. The result is that basic services have been cut right and left, tuition (which was already steadily climbing -- my university cost $3500/year when I started $4500/year when I finished) has sky-rocketed, the already piss-poor underfunded state healthcare has been slashed...
...and this woman's bitching that it's 2 dollars more expensive to buy booze.
Aaaand that probably ran a little long, but I work for a publicly funded organization (county property taxes + a cut of timber industry taxes + cut of state timber lands) and my folks both work for the state government, so it's safe to say I hear about these things way too much.
As to no one being happy -- I had a lot of interesting conversations about the cost of public services when I was traveling in Europe. Most amazing were the kids from Scandinavian countries explaining to me that their education was expensive because the state didn't pay for room and board. And a couple in the UK saying their prescriptions and appointments were expensive, until I asked them for actual numbers and told them what mine would be in pounds. Perspective!