House of Eratosthenes

A triumphant Gov. Pat Quinn congratulated fellow Democrats early today after the Illinois Senate and House sent him a major income tax increase without a single Republican vote in favor.

Quinn smiled and shook hands on the floor of the Senate around 1:30 a.m. after the Senate voted 30-29 for the bill, which would raise the personal income tax-rate by 67 percent and the business income tax rate by 46 percent.

The House passed the bill hours earlier Tuesday night — likewise without a vote to spare and with nary a Republican in support.
:
Republicans, powerless to stop the Democratic agreement, were left to blame the majority party for lacking the guts to make tough budget choices.

“So here we are in the very end of this lame duck session on a late night putting more burden on the hardworking people of this state,” said Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon. “Here’s an investment tip, put a lot of money into moving vans.”

“You may think your stabilizing this budget but you’re not,” said Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine. “You’re bankrupting our state with this bill.”

So I have this former colleague over at the Hello Kitty of Blogging who’s a moderate, but more thoughtful of a moderate than most. His big deal is the deficit. He thinks it’s unconscionable for both the democrats and the Republicans to continue to embiggen it; the former through wasteful spending and the latter through tax cuts. He wants tax increases, but not for their own sake. He thinks the further expansion of the deficit is the one metric in the equation that threatens to explode out of control.

His point of view, I think I get. What I do not get — where the democrats agree with him — is the exuberance. The smiles, the handshakes, the congratulations. The high-fiving; the “yipee” factor. My former co-worker might like what they did here…I’m qualifying that with a “maybe”…but I’m certain he wouldn’t be grinning about it. The headline of this story, plus the first two or three paragraphs, all seem to be heralding some kind of ticker tape parade or at least a champagne and scrambled-egg breakfast. Yay, private enterprise just became less profitable in Illinois. Yay, less prosperity less freedom. Hip hip, hooray. All right! Way ta go! We’re really gonna have fun now!

You know what, I think they ought to go ahead and do that. Mark the date and have an annual parade so we can see what they’re all about.

Myself, I disagree about what is the one metric threatening to spiral out of control. I think it is a composite; I think it is public debt, in proportion to GDP, plus a bunch of other things.

The deficit? No. If you’ve got a carefully jotted-down income statement showing me I’m going to take home $25,000 less than I’ll be spending in 2011, I’m not one bit worried. I’ll just churn through that puppy and drop everything on the expense-side of that sheet that I don’t have to have, until it comes out right. Sure it’s a lot tougher for legislators to do that with their pet projects, but that doesn’t mean the financial concepts are any different.

Once you get into that BOHICA Cycle though, that’s where the trolley really comes off the tracks. It’s happening in the United States, in Illinois, New York, California — every single place democrats have been in charge long enough to leave their mark.

Why? The story linked up top says the new tax increase, the “hooray, we’re bilking people more” tax increase, is gonna raise $6.5 billion. It won’t, of course. That number is produced by simple addition and multiplication, and presumes people will maintain consistent earning and spending habits as the tax consequences are in a state of flux. That they won’t change any of the decisions under their control, as the employers that sign their paychecks see less of a profit coming in, and new, artificial expenses are built into the products and services they bring to market.

It is our “free” press that is most at fault for this problem. When the $6.5 billion target is missed, they won’t talk about it. Not in terms of how it should be discussed — “last year, legislators used fourth-grade math to figure out how much extra revenue they’d get from the tax increase, and they turned out to be wrong.” In all my years of reading newspapers, I’ve never seen a statement printed that way, although I have seen it happen time after time. No, they’ll wait until the new deficit is broken down, agency by agency, until it percolates down to the level of social programs…they’ll print up a story about some “vital” assistance being “cut.” Then they’ll find some sad sack who doesn’t know how he’s going to pay his heating bill or get his hangnail treated, and stick him on Page B-1 like they always do.

But hey, that’s all next year. In the meantime — congratulations to the democrats of Illinois for getting that tax increase they wanted. You must be so pleased and proud. Hooray! Hey, are fireworks out of the question?

Did you listen to Moonbeam’s inauguration speech? Whenever I hear the term “shared sacrifice” I reach for the Vaseline. There’s a tax increase proposal in the works. I am a lot more mobile today than I was three months ago. I love southern California, but I’m not going to pay for this nonsense if I don’t have to.
- Jason | 01/12/2011 @ 07:29
Get ready for” legal” attempts to forbid businesses from leaving these states.

I’d bet it’s happened before.
- philmon | 01/12/2011 @ 09:22
In liberal-land, nobody is ever responsible for anything. That’s why conservatives always lose the PR battle — we believe that actions have consequences. And because actions do have consequences, we’re left to say “I told you so” and make the hard choices. Unlovely traits, both, but we’re stuck with them until the culture collectively grows up enough to quit buying big fish stories.
- Severian | 01/12/2011 @ 14:04
Liberal Land. Do you have to put yourself through some sort of forier transform to get there?

🙂
- philmon | 01/12/2011 @ 14:08
sorry, fourier. Let’s spell our math straight.
- philmon | 01/12/2011 @ 14:09
Phil,

no, to get to Liberal-Land you just have to take away reason and accountability. For instance, I was a liberal in college. I was also a borderline alcoholic. You do the math.
- Severian | 01/12/2011 @ 15:02
The circular-arrows diagram above represents the precise point I’ve been making to my somewhat-liberal girlfriend and to my very liberal co-workers for the past week or two. Interestingly, both groups are finally starting to consider that I might actually make a valid point.

The problem is that the people in state governments who make these sorts of decisions….don’t get it. I’ve been saying it for years, long before the current recession started a cascade effect of financial problems for governments. The Left simply refuses to grasp that businesses aren’t going to just “sit there and take it” while state government picks their pockets and/or makes it prohibitively expensive to do business.

You’d think they’d look at redder states like Texas and notice that things seem to be going fine down there…and conclude that maybe Texas knows something that California, New York, and Illinois don’t. Do they? Nope! They just figure they need to do it ten times harder.

Governor Moonbeam here in California is all about making hard choices and difficult sacrifices, so he says. Fine. Maybe he could start by explaining to his supporters that punishing business isn’t having the desired effect on the state budget. In Commie-fornia, that might be the most difficult thing of all.
- cylarz | 01/14/2011 @ 01:43

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Congratulations to democrats for Higher TaxesWednesday, January 12th, 2011

Congratulations to democrats for Higher Taxes
Wednesday, January 12th, 2011