Tax Hikers Ready Assault
October 31st, 2007The Las Vegas Sun consistently editorializes for higher taxes and expansion of government.
I spent some time this afternoon with a reporter there, whose editor co-worker had sent him this chart cherry-picked from the Tax Foundation website that ranks Nevada 48th in state government spending per capita.
The editor did not deem it worthy to include this chart, from the same publisher, showing Nevada’s state and local government (adding our cities and counties) spending per capita ranks 31st.
If our state spending per capita ranks 48th, and our state plus local spending per capita ranks 31st, where do you think our city and county spending per capita would rank? 14th highest of 51 states? Unfortunately, this is not included in the Tax Foundation data.
I tried to make a point that there is a great disparity between our state government and city/county (local) government funding and spending. The website nvelite.com is dedicated to highlighting this disparity.
All of these Tax Foundation charts can be found here.
Here is another Tax Foundation study, specifically on federal taxing and spending. It says Nevada ranks near-last in per-capita federal spending, although we are near the top of the list on federal taxes per-capita.
To recap:
- Our state spending per capita is low.
- Our local spending per capita is most likely well above the national average.
- Local government compensation in Clark and Washoe Counties is top rank.
- Combined state and local spending per capita is close to average.
- We pay much more to the feds than they spend on us.
To me, the sensible answer would be to address the mis-allocation of resources in our state rather than raise taxes. I reject the idea that we should raise taxes to compensate for a lack of federal spending in our state, since we’re already paying federal taxes.
October 31st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Well, the reporter believes I have made assumptions and drawn conclusions based on inaccurate information. He may be right!
First, he notes the set of Tax Foundation charts he had did not come from anyone on his newspaper’s editorial staff; rather it came from a fellow journalist who specializes in helping all reporters with gathering information from the Internet.
However, I do stand by my belief that the state spending per capita chart alone does a poor job helping us understand Nevada’s tax structure. Cities and Counties are a very big part of that equation, and they cannot be ignored.
Let me be clear: I do not think, and did not mean to suggest, that reporters at the Sun necessarily share the bias of the editors. This is not the case at the Review Journal either, in my experience.
One substantive issue that he brought up is our status as an extreme “donor” state with the federal government - that we pay in much more than we receive back in the form of federal spending in Nevada. That’s a topic worthy of a whole new post, which I will try to make my next post.
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Can we mention that we get about (maybe) $500 in value out of that $7,215 spent every year? That’s the lamest part.
I had to laugh the other day when a reporter stated “some government programs YOU count on may be cutting back”. Somehow I don’t think that the crackheads and homeless were tuning in to find out what was happening in the news.
I shudder to imagine what kind of Utopia someone remotely fiscally responsible could create with $5,000 per year.