A Taxing Lesson
Even as we watch other cities and various states (including North Carolina) reduce their budgets, paring the size of government, Mecklenburg County continues its course of taxing the people more in order to pay the county bureaucrats more. There are, of course, reasons for this, none good.
The primary reason is that Jennifer Roberts associates with those who see no problem with higher taxes because a few thousand more to them is not noticeable in their checkbooks; so they tell her, we don’t care if taxes go higher. These are Obama’s very rich. The next reason is that representatives such as Vilma Leake and George Dunlap use government payrolls to pay for votes at the election booth. Dumont Clarke does the same thing, but a more indirectly.
Another reason is that public employees, led by people such as the much less than honorable Harry Jones, have demanded pay scales on the level of the private sector. That would be fine except the benefits of the public sector far exceed those of the private sector. And now, because of their continued advocacy, they are often paid more than those in the private sector along with having much better benefits. They want, demand, and get raises when those in the private sector, those paying for the public sector jobs, are taking pay cuts (by paying more in taxes). They get raises for doing exactly what, one may ask.
Then there is Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. Having established a bloated budget, a wasteful budget, with as many or more ‘support’ personnel as there are teachers, they have their own advocacy group that continually cries, “It’s for the children.” What they mean is: They want higher taxes on you to pay for their personnel projects. Public schools are a necessity, yet the reasons we’re told they should get more money are continually proved wrong. They have been getting more money for various projects and special programs for years and nothing has changed. If anything results have gone downhill. They have told us all for years, “Spend money on children and schools, or spend it on jails.” One would think after all the money we’ve spent, the jails would be empty; but they’re not. Well why not? The advocacy groups will tell you: they need even more money.
There are other advocacy groups. There is one for every imaginable program where someone thinks they can get government to give them your money for their cause. Mental health advocates come to mind. And thus taxes increase and the private sector becomes poorer while those who work for government become richer.
Not to forget the Chamber of Commerce. That is a generic term for its board of directors, which likes government to keep getting larger because they receive benefits from government’s borrowing and spending. They pretend they are for a good business climate, but what they are really for are expenditures that directly enhance their own businesses (see light rail, NASCAR, CMS building program, convention center and downtown arena, to name a well known few). Go back a few years to City Fair, you newcomers won’t know of this one. The beneficiaries are those who own the land next to these projects, or get to build them. They are not “for the people.” And so the Chamber supports them.
And so Mecklenburg, as it has for years, runs along playing catch-up to other areas of the nation. When they have established new paradigms of government, where government once again serves the people and not the people government, Mecklenburg will be going broke. With many of those whose taxes are going to be higher unable to afford them, next year, and for years after, Mecklenburg will have many more on the delinquent rolls. Unable to afford their taxes they will move to smaller, less expensive homes in the next county or state, and the tax base of Mecklenburg will stay the same or shrink, while government payrolls continue their growth.
Unfortunately those who benefit from government in Mecklenburg now outnumber those who don’t. We have met the enemy and he is the self-serving voter. Alexis de Tocqueville warned us of him in the 1830’s. He would have been described as a naysayer.
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