In an article that could have been a press release from the Howard Jarvis Association, the San Jose Mercury News has an article by John Woolfolk arguing that tax proposals are inherently bad “in these times.” While an analysis of the costs and benefits of tax plans would be a welcome product of the traditional media, Woolfolk’s article is instead a hopelessly biased attack on tax plans that rarely mentions the savings the plans would generate.
No wonder California is so hard to govern effectively – with these Republican talking points being passed off as journalism, Californians aren’t being given the full information that they deserve.
Like so many families these days, the Gravelles of San Jose feel squeezed. Their home has lost about $250,000 in market value, their monthly gasoline bill hit $394, they’ve got one son heading to college and another to Catholic high school.
But valley officials are urging them to keep their pocketbook open, with more than a dozen local revenue measures filling the November ballot. The county hospital needs an earthquake retrofit. A long-planned rapid transit extension needs operating funds. Schools and libraries need refurbishing. City budgets are potholed with deficits.
And Andrea Gravelle isn’t sure her family can afford to be so generous this year.
That last sentence gives away the framing used throughout the article – taxes are like charitable giving or Christmas presents – something expendable, to be cut back on when times are tough.
But look at the list of what would be funded. Hospital earthquake retrofits. In the event of a quake Andrea Gravelle’s family is going to need the hospital to be open – without it she’s going to spend a LOT more money otherwise. The hospital tax is a form of insurance. The BART extension might help her save money on gas, and the potholes require higher amounts of maintenance.
NONE of that is mentioned in the article. Woolfolk implicitly agrees with the far-right argument that one never gets anything in return from government. Look at his section on San Jose’s 911 dispatch fee:
So while families like the Gravelles might save $7 a year on city phone taxes if both city measures are approved, the savings could be three times that if the 911 fee were simply allowed to expire.
You mean they might save a whopping $21 if they sat back and watched the city’s emergency dispatch system be destroyed? I dunno about you, but $21 a year to enable police, fire, and paramedics to quickly reach the scene of an emergency sounds like a pretty damn good use of money, don’t you think? But here again, Woolfolk never mentions the value – literal or figurative – of what the taxes purchase.
The same happens when he discusses Prop 1, the high speed rail bond. He even gets the costs wrong as he tries to make minor costs look like budget-busters, in the absence of an explanation of what it will save people:
Critics of the biggest bond measure, $9.5 billion for high-speed rail, argue it will cost the state general fund a total of $20 billion, or $2,000 per average California family over the 30-year life of the bonds. It would require the state to pony up $67 million a year at a time leaders in Sacramento are already struggling to patch a $15 billion shortfall.
Actually, the bonds have a 40 year lifespan, which would make it even less than $2,000 total. But using Woolfolk’s figures that comes out to $66.66 a year, and that’s for a family.
Nowhere does he explain that high speed rail would save at least that much per family per year in travel costs. Airfares are steadily rising as the price of oil rises, and will price out families like the Gravelles if HSR isn’t built. Do the Gravelles go to the occasional Giants game in SF? It would save them both time and money in gas costs and travel times. But none of this makes it into the article either.
The article concludes by quoting San José mayor Chuck Reed as saying the failure of the tax plans would result in “cutting core services.” The article doesn’t report what those cuts might be but I suspect Reed gave Woolfolk some possibilities that somehow didn’t make it into the paper.
The total yearly cost to a family of the San José tax plans, based on the info in this article, is around $400. But the savings produced by the spending the taxes enable are not quantified or even mentioned. Woolfolk has given readers only half the equation, a false accounting that creates a notion that San Joseans are being taxed to death, even though $400 is a small price to pay for quality services.
And it’s the big picture that the article gets so very wrong. It’s no coincidence that in the 30 years since California went on a tax cutting binge that California has experienced a “generation of inequality” as reduced services erode the middle class into nothing. Economic security in America comes from wise government spending – the 20th century proves this. In its absence Californians have seen their wages stagnate and the cost of basic needs soar as they lose protection against catastrophic life events. Smart taxes, used for good purposes, save people money and help them become prosperous and secure.
Ironically the Gravelle family, held up as an example of a family being taxed into oblivion, plans to vote for most of the tax measures. They understand the importance of having a functioning hospital trauma center, for example. Their stance suggests that more Californians understand what I just described – that taxes bring savings – than do the journalists who write in their morning papers.