Without blogs, you’d probably never know that Tennessee has a surplus
Bill Hobbs has been all over Tennessee’s surplus. Funny how a year or so ago, our budget was all doom and gloom. His posts are here, here, here and here. The last one actually talks about an article in a TN paper that mentions the otherwise unmentionable surplus. Is local media reading HobbsOnline? Yup.
September 15th, 2003 at 6:02 pm
Yes, but notice that people have to die and poor people have to pay more sales tax to make the surplus, while business taxes are down almost as much as the other taxes are up (yay for me!).
September 15th, 2003 at 8:01 pm
You know, I’m not ideologically opposed to value-add taxes such as Tennessee’s sales tax, but I’d prefer to see food, clothing, and shelter exempted from the sales tax. That is, the necessities of life ought to be exempted.
The problem becomes one of logistics, especially with clothing. Are shoes a necessity? Yes. Are $120 Nike shoes a necessity? Err, not necessarily.
With food it’s a little easier. Groceries shouldn’t be taxable, but McDonald’s absolutely should be.
For shelter, you’re paying property taxes (directly or indirectly), so I see no reason why you should pay sales taxes also. (I don’t think you do, actually.)
What you’re left with, then, are luxury and sin taxes, and I have no objection to either, other than my gut feeling that value-add taxes discourage spending, and discouraging spending seems bad for the economy.