VOTE Yess on 100 - Proposition 100 Protects Arizona's Basic

[Vince]

I made a gigantic blunder here - there was an INCREDIBLY well thoughtout post by derekr44 here; and I hit edit instead of quote, and ended up erasing it.

I am very, very sorry.

He had mentioned that I had said it's a 1% increase when it's really an 18% increase.

I had meant to say a 1 cent increase.

[Shadow]

That's alright.  I'm an admin on several forums and I know how easy it is to make a boo boo  I'll try to reconstruct as much as I can.

Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Emotion

This is a typical mantra coming from the Government:
Schools will close
Teachers will be fired
Ambulances will stop
Uneducated children will die on hospital beds
Prison doors will fly open
etc
etc

My mother works for a California school district.  My best friend, best man at my wedding, is a Spanish high school teacher.  My wife is a teacher.  However, I will not be voting in favor of this bill.  Why?

One very important principle to remember is that government does not and cannot create wealth or revenue.  The private sector does.  The free-market economy that has thrived in this great nation is the driving force of our economy.  If the private sector is unhealthy and shrinking, the public sector must shrink also.  If the private sector shrinks and the public sector remains the same size, you get deficits and soaring debts as a result.  Throwing more taxes upon the private sector that is currently in a recession is financial suicide!  You end up throwing more on the backs of your revenue-generating constituents.  GDP is approximately $14.6 trillion. The 2010 federal budget is 15% of GDP. Actual outlay, including deficit, brings spending to about 25% of GDP. No matter how you slice it and dice it, the economy is the private sector.

But this is only a sales tax, you say?  On the contrary, it is a blend of taxes that increases our sales tax rate by 18% (the largest single tax increase in the history of the state of Arizona) from 5.6% to 6.6%.  Don't kid yourself; it will cost the average taxpayer $400 extra in taxes a year.  Place that on an already strained economy, and you are bound to watch your tax revenues drop because less people can pay for it.  You are forgetting that property taxes have increased this year, along with the 2% food tax placed in the city of Phoenix, and the electricity tax passed a couple years ago.  This isn't just one tax; it's allowing the government to justify their spending by pulling at your heart strings for the sake of the children.  Give me a break.

Only a 3-year, temporary tax?  My ass.  The Arizona fuel tax in the constitution of Arizona has specifically stated that revenues from that tax are only to be used for road and transportation improvements, and that the tax is bound to expire in 2013.  Well guess what?  Senate Bill SB-1154 will extend that tax and allow the funds to be used elsewhere.  So not only are they breaking state constitutional law by using the funds elsewhere, they are extending the duration of said tax.  Breaking the freaking state constitution!  Do you really expect them to stick to a 3-year timeline on this one?

In an article written by Alberta H. Charney of the Eller College of Management at ASU (ironically a state-funded university), she writes how bad it will be if the taxpayers don't pass the bill.  She states that “spending by the public sector adds to aggregate demand just as private sector spending does.”  This is 100% false as I stated above.  It is unconstitutional for the public sector to generate revenue.  Taking money from the public sector to pass it through the government and back into the private sector is not only inefficient, but ineffective.  Government has to spend part of that tax money on its own operation. The proposed government tax removes $1.2 billion from the private sector but returns only $840 million to the private sector. In effect, government is always less efficient because it has to use part of the tax revenue to tax, collect and spend.

Then she works her way through an analysis that the cost of the sales tax increase will cost Arizona only 7,400 jobs. Failing to approve the sales tax increase will cost Arizona 20,500 jobs. What she doesn’t say is the 7,400 jobs are in the private sector; the 20,500 jobs are in the public sector. Ergo, approving the sales tax increase will save over 13,000 jobs.

Saying no to a sales tax increase reduces the size of government, not the private sector. Saying yes to the sales tax increase reduces the size of the private sector by eliminating 7,400 private sector jobs, saves 13,000 plus public sector jobs, does not reduce the size of government and increases taxes by $1 billion during a recession.

DO NOT INCREASE TAXES!  Plain and simply put.  You don't give blood transfusions to a patient dying of a deep wound by hoping the new blood heals the wound.  If you are losing money, you need to take a look at your budget, not look for additional handouts.  Taxing will not resolve the issue.  The people of Arizona and the citizens of the United States need to get the freaking message to our representatives that they need to re-evaluate their budgets and stop asking us for more money... money we are barely hanging onto ourselves.

[SARC]

I am in no way for raising taxes.  To cut cost and spending you need to cut bureaucracy and not teachers.  Teachers produce, bureaucrats sit on their asses and come up with reasons for to retain their own non producing jobs.  I went to parochial schools a a child and everyone taught, even the Father Superior taught classes. My parents paid tuition, they were by no means well off either. We ate a whole lot of beans and rice/ rice and beans.  The entitlement attitude in this country blows my mind.  You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It does not say that happiness will be spoon fed to you by the government or that you will obtain it at all, but you may pursue it, that means work hard/smart and make you own way.  I have been at a lot of levels in my life, from being kicked out as a teen and homeless, serving in the navy, to being homeless, to now being successful and a business owner.  I have never been given a hand out and I would not take one if it was offered.  It is my own responsibility to take care of me and mine not the governments.

[carbon14c]

The entitlement attitude in this country blows my mind.  You have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  It does not say that happiness will be spoon fed to you by the government or that you will obtain it at all, but you may pursue it, that means work hard/smart and make you own way.

very very true words...

[steyraug223]

Short term solutions cannot provide a long term correction, the problem is that due to the critical need for a correction to AZ education systems. I graduated CGUHS 2 years ago, and I can say that the education system really does need an overhaul. The easy solution (and we do love easy solutions) is to raise taxes, and on paper it does sound like it would work.

We cannot say that the government needs to be streamlined to save money, because saying this means a commitee needs to be put together to investigate overspending, this leads to meeting and conferences, which leads to more money being spent. Cutting back and trimming the government fat is not an easy thing to do, and I work for the government so I am speaking first hand.

Axis you made an incredible point, this is a time when we CANNOT afford to be paying for things like football teams, stadiums, and the like. This is a time to be lean, and work on recovering. Recovery comes from education not sports! On a related note this kind of cutting back needs to be extended to the private sector too! Nfl wages higher then a military commands' is ridiculous and absolutely not needed!

[Shadow]

Nfl wages higher then a military commands' is ridiculous and absolutely not needed!

Then stop buying tickets to games, ordering the NFL package on Dish Network, etc.

Govt will push you to believe that a tax increase is urgently needed.  What is needed is less public sector employment and less centralization.

[Fat_Santa54]

Propertey taxes are increasing this year, becase they lag behind the actaull market, what happens in 2 years if the realestate market of Arizona doesn't turn around eventaully they will start to drop. And dont say everything is on the way back up, the Stock Market is, and only becuase its the only place where people can filter money reliably, people dont want to invest in state bonds, as seen in california who is basiclly writing IOU's to people who's bonds have come due. They sure as hell arent putting their money in realestate,or going into biusness ventures, weather that be opening a private buisness or giving a loan to an entity in the private sector. People would rather take the risk with the stock markets; something that they have control on, obviously no control on what the stocks do, but they can back out whenver they want. This has lead to incredibly high volumes of day trading which is the major result of these big triple didgit gains (and drops) the market(DJIA) has been seeing for the past year since it started to rise again. (

Is prop 100 just purley a 1 cent tax increase for 3 years? (im on my phone atm and will look it up when i get home) or will it, like most other bills have a bunch of extra crap attatched onto it? Also how do they get 1 cent? is it going to be a flat number simply added on to your transation? or will it be proportional to the amount of your current transaction?

Dreker44 made a very good post, in that article by the lady at asu she says that AD can increase from spending in the public sector and you said this is 100% false. I would have to disagree with you there, Mr. Kaynes was a very smart man and many of his theroies have a lot of merrit to them, look at whats happenning now, the goverment gave a boat load of money to different finanical institutions and most of them are spending more and increasing there profits. you mentioned the Government being inneficent with its money in that example where they took 1.2billion and only 840million got back to the public, well if you look at it from a pure money is comming from A going through B and back to A kind of way then yeah they are inneficnet, but is not like they are taking $12 dollars from you and then giving you $8.40 back, they are taking the money in small amounts from everyone and then giving it to institutions that they belive can most benifet from it

I think that it would be great that a 1 cent tax could save thousands of teachers jobs, but just like many others have said whats to stop in in 3 years from becoming a 10 cent tax? Its only 10 cents, no one is going to notice? all this is doing is plugging up another hole in the leaking dam, when the fact is there is still a huge body of water siting behind the dam.

[Shadow]

Put it this way:

If the logic is correct and government is able to boost the economy through increased taxation, then why aren't our tax rates higher?

While I don't disagree that government inference can potentially assist an economy, I firmly believe that TOO MUCH interference and regulation is detrimental to this already-damaged economy.  I'm arguing the point that increasing a tax rate on an already strained economy in a recession, forcing the citizens to cough up more of their money that is harder to come by these days in the state of Arizona (you can thank people like Raul Grijalva for that) is just going to throw off any sort of recovery by several years.  Taking money out of people's pockets and throwing it down the ever-growing black hole that is called "public-education-expenses" will only compound the problem.  Fix the budget before you start asking for more money!

Real world experience has proven that following this popular, Depression-era theory of increasing tax rates will not work.  If this theory were correct, then both North Korea and Cuba would be shining, prosperous examples for the rest of the world.  Where are they today?

I think that it would be great that a 1 cent tax could save thousands of teachers jobs

To what expense?  To the sound of 14,000 private sector jobs lost?  Can you even fathom what the elimination of 14,000 private sector jobs in Arizona would do during a recession?

[Fat_Santa54]

its not 1 cent, its a 1% increase on sales tax, so fountain hills and scottsdales rediculus taxes would be 9.9% and 8.95% respectivly

If you got the idea that i am for it you are wrong, I simply stated how nice it would be if a simple 1 cent (which is how they are selling it, as if one penny will be added onto your reciet) incfrease could save thousnads of jobs with no other public ramifications it would be great, but that wont be the case.

[Kodiak]

Put it this way:
Real world experience has proven that following this popular, Depression-era theory of increasing tax rates will not work.  If this theory were correct, then both North Korea and Cuba would be shining, prosperous examples for the rest of the world.  Where are they today?

 Both are dictatorships, born out of bloody wars, and shoved into the dirt by oppressive leaders and trade embargoes. Better to use the Scandinavian nations as a model for success. Democracies, and close to what you'd call Socialist. They have high taxes, but know how to balance their budgets. They're just as free there as here, and have just as good a life as us.

 If you're going to cut back on government, it wouldn't be prudent to ignore the elephant in the room:




Eventually something will have to go, ideologies aside.

[Shadow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG5pc3QtBog

If you're going to cut back on government, it wouldn't be prudent to ignore the elephant in the room:

You're talking apples and oranges here.  Military and Defense spending is a Federal institution taken mostly from your Federal taxes.  This is a State sales tax specifically for the State of Arizona.  Plus, you are also implying that military and defense spending is a bad thing because it's such a large piece of the pie...

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) did an analysis of the latest Census data which indicates that Arizona’s illegal immigrant population is currently costing the state’s taxpayers about $2.2 billion per year for education, medical care and incarceration. In 2020 that number is estimated to rise to $3.9 billion. Those costs do not include Special English instruction, school nutrition programs, or basic welfare benefits.

And some people wonder why I continue to call for a urgently-secured border?  Why am I so adamantly opposed to government run health care?  It's for reasons like this:



I understand your desire to live in America, it's a land of opportunity.  My ancestors are 17th century immigrants from England and Denmark.  But I'll be damned if you come into my country against the established laws, shoot police officers and civilians and demand free care so that I can pay for it out of my hard-earned dollars and watch my tax rates increase.  I'll be the first to kick your ass.

So back on subject here.  Stop hiking up tax rates and believing in the farce that you can tax yourself back into prosperity.  Fix the damn problem first.  Stop increasing my taxes.