Good Government Can't Happen

A Commission created to study tax options for California, whose tax structure has weakened the State's economy and revenues even before the recession hit, recommends bold changes that might actually improve things.

Of course, it will never happen, because bad policy is preferred.

Critics also argue that the plan has not been well studied.

Wasn't that what the commission did? Has the proposal been studied better than, oh, I don't know, Federal Health Care bills that won't even have been completely written till the day they are voted into law, and never read by 90% of the "legislators" voting on them? You be the judge.

"The reception will be somewhere between cool and arctic," said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California. "At a time of economic distress, the legislators are going to be very reluctant to embrace big changes in the tax code."

Notice how this is the time to make other radical changes to everything in the country, but not fix the tax code. Tax increases, sure: There's never a better opportunity than now.

Note that this argument would also be used in prosperous times "if it ain't broke" (which it is) "why meddle with it?" and that is also seen as the time to raise taxes ("the rich can afford to pay more, they're doing well in this prosperous economy" is the argument used then).

A generation and a half ago a poor Austrian moved to a prosperous State, and one day he rose to be the prosperous Governor of a poor State, and they're sti, apparently, clueless as to why that happened.