Bloomberg.com: “President Barack Obama said on the campaign trail in October 2008 that he wanted to ‘spread the wealth around.’ With Obama on the verge of signing sweeping health-care overhaul legislation, he’s about to do just that.”
Arizona Republic: “With the city in the middle of a budget crisis, Sgt. Trent Crump acknowledges it’s probably a bad time for the Phoenix Police Department to break in a new $4.15 million surveillance plane. Crump said he understands the plane likely will raise eyebrows among residents, because Phoenix also is eliminating jobs and cutting employees’ pay.”
For its fiscal year 2009/2010, the City of Mesa, Arizona, expects to spend $408.6 million and collect $245 million in revenue, which is a deficit of $164.6 million. Mesa’s left hand announced that all 3,400 employees would take a 2 percent pay cut just after Mesa’s right hand gave 1,600 employees a 5 percent pay increase that cost the insolvent city $2,500,000 it does not have.
Wall St. Journal: “Income tax rates go up, rich taxpayers vanish. . . . after passing a millionaire surtax nearly one-third of Maryland’s millionaires had gone missing, thus contributing to a decline in state revenues. The politicians in Annapolis had said they’d collect $106 million by raising its income tax rate on millionaire households . . . the state comptroller’s office now has the final tax return data for 2008, the first year that the higher tax rates applied. The number of millionaire tax returns fell sharply to 5,529 from 7,898 in 2007, a 30% tumble. The taxes paid by rich filers fell by 22%, and instead of their payments increasing by $106 million, they fell by some $257 million.”
This is more proof that politicians are totally disconnected from reality. The stupid Maryland legislators who voted to increase the tax on the rich were incapable of understanding the laws of economics. There’s only one thing the stupid Maryland legislators can do now and that is pass more tax increases that will further decrease tax collections. Maryland could also pass an “Amazon” tax to further reduce state income tax revenue. See “Amazon Tax Signals Business Unfriendliness & Will Worsen Short-Term Budget Problems.”
Update: See The Tax Policy Blog’s post called “Maryland Lawmaker Proposes Making Millionaires’ Tax Permanent.” Delegate Jolene Ivey (D) introduced a bill in the Maryland legislature that would make the temporary millionaire’s tax permanent. The idiot said “”Programs that help children, the elderly, the poor, the environment, education, the arts, the unemployed—everything’s on the chopping block. Millionaires should continue to share in the pain.” When you practice the religion of tax and spend like Ms. Ivey, you have faith that increasing taxes is good, but that faith prevents a true believer from facing the reality now proven in Maryland that the millionaires tax decreased revenue by $257 million in its first year. Once again, we have proof that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
USA Today has a story entitled “Federal Employees Paid More than Public Employees” that sheds more light on the upside down facts of life that the people of the United States pay taxes so that federal government workers can be on the gravy train. The story says:
“Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. . . . Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 . . . . These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.”