The high cost of low taxes | Roger S. Smith

Occasionally, I am “gobsmacked” by paid conservative pundits. For example, Kendall Cotton of the Frontier Institute (Missoulian, April 11) concludes that spending by governments and local school districts is “the root cause of taxation.” Limits on local/state/school spending can lower property (indeed, all) taxes and reduce the role of government. Not profound, and not desirable.

As said by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. a century ago, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.” With inadequate public support for education, healthcare, childcare, homecare, food, shelter, and a fair justice system, we are getting what we pay for.

I was further “flummoxed” by the Frontier Institute’s wish to obstruct passage of local government and school district levies if the tax on property is to increase by more than 2% in a year. In such a case, they wish to require approval of the levy by a majority of registered voters — rather than by a majority of those voting. Local election “voter turnout” is often under 50% and, even with 100% approval by those voting, a levy could fail. Go think! Right-leaning think tanks may be clever, but not necessarily supportive of normal democratic processes when not serving their interests. (Were a majority of registered voters required to choose our president, Donald Trump would have needed an additional 10 million votes in November 2024.)

In 2001, Grover Norquist, perhaps the most prominent U.S. advocate for low taxes, said: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in a bathtub.” Unfortunately, he has been quite successful. Tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product in the U.S. is small relative to that in other advanced countries. A result is that we are lagging in measures of health and education while our incarceration rate (with two million currently locked up) far exceeds that in other countries.

The answer is not to limit what governments and schools can do for all Americans. The answer, to paraphrase President Lincoln, is to enable government to do for its people that which they cannot do, or do so well, for themselves. Government has important work to do; work that requires a Montana state sales tax as well as increased state and federal tax rates on higher incomes.