Ken

WE'VE BEEN LOOKING at the three tax-related Propositions on the upcoming California ballot: 21, 24, and 26, in light of The Liberty Scale.

In the previous post, I gave Prop. 21 a rating of +5, and outlined two important points about Proposition 24:

1. Money spent on government services provides not only the services, but jobs and benefits for small businesses as well, and
2. money spent on tax breaks for businesses (unless very carefully targeted) ends up discouraging job creation where the tax itself would have created jobs.

As regards Proposition 24, this means that the current tax benefits to corporations will

I'M PUTTING THESE THREE propositions together because they all involve taxes, but in different ways.

Proposition 21 would simply add an $18 annual surcharge to vehicle licenses to provide revenue which would be put in a State Parks and Wildlife Conservation Trust Fund, and designated for the purpose of maintaining and improving our state parks.

It should raise over $500 million annually for this purpose, and would free up about $130 million which now comes out of the state budget for the general fund, thus helping our state budget problems.

The tax is mildly regressive, and that's a point against it, but most people who can afford a car can also afford a mere $18 per year.

On the plus side:

THE KEY POINT TO grasp here is that we are often misled into believing that our elected representatives are, by nature, our enemies.

If that is so, then the entire experiment in democracy which this country is built upon is a mistake.

The Liberty Scale is designed to correct this notion, by pointing to the real enemy—big wealth and power.

Democracy is threatened whenever the person with wealth and power has extra influence, which is always unless we are vigilant.

Anything that makes our elected representatives more immune to moneyed interests makes them more likely to be on our side.

So, the pros and cons:

THERE ARE TWO propositions on the upcoming ballot in California which have to do with how redistricting is done—Prop. 20 and Prop. 27.

Proposition 20:

Proposition 27:

Before you can understand either of them, you need to remember something of the history behind them.

Every ten years the state has to redraw the boundary lines to make sure that our elected representatives each represent roughly the same number of people.

LAST TIME I pointed out how modern culture as a whole teaches us to think of ourselves as fundamentally untrustworthy.

From childhood we get the message that there is something wrong with us, that we must be constantly reined in lest we run amok.

After all, what would happen if everyone just did whatever felt good?

Wouldn't it be chaos?

Don't we need a set of moral rules to follow slavishly, if we are going to be safe from ourselves?

This way of thinking is not only extremely authoritarian, but it forces a kind of inner authoritarianism on each of us.

That evangelical organization I mentioned earlier passed out a pamphlet which contained the "spiritual law" that all humans were sinful by nature.

At the end of the pamphlet were two diagrams, two circles with a drawing of a throne at the center of each, and various smaller circles in the space around the throne: