{"id":9806,"date":"2009-08-09T03:31:53","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T03:31:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-08-09T03:31:53","modified_gmt":"2009-08-09T03:31:53","slug":"uncle-milton-prop-13-and-the-least-bad-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/08\/09\/uncle-milton-prop-13-and-the-least-bad-taxes\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncle Milton, Prop 13, and the “least bad” taxes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Matthews has an outstanding column up at Fox & Hounds<\/a>. It seeks to isolate the question of property taxes, and whether Prop 13 is the best resolution. And to address this question, Matthews pulls out the ol’ WWMFD question – What would Milton Friedman Do?<\/p>\n

Matthews has an interesting position from which to comment, primarily because he conducted an interview with “Uncle Milton” in 2004, just two years before his death. He has some pretty choice quotes from that interview on the question of Prop 13:<\/p>\n

When the subject turned to Prop 13, which he had strongly supported in 1978, Friedman said he thought the measure had proven to be “a mixed bag.” He did not regret his vote for Prop 13 because it had sent a tax-cutting message that was important for that time.
\n
*  *  *
\n
But as a matter of current policy, he said, Prop 13 was problematic. “It’s a bad tax measure because the property tax is the least bad tax there is,” he said. “Think of the original and indestructible properties of the soil. The least dangerous and harmful tax is a tax on something of which there is an inelastic supply.” He argued that protecting Prop 13 was far less important than cutting other taxes, particularly on the income and sales we need more of. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See, the thing with the Republican Party today is not they are principled conservatives ideologically opposed to progressive goals.  That sort of logical consistency would block much good progressive legislation, but it wouldn’t have lead us to the free-fall in which we currently find ourselves. Protecting Prop 13 no longer has anything to do with conservative goals or low-tax policy, but it has everything to do with a mindset.  From Matthews:<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s conventional wisdom that raising property taxes is politically impossible in California. But why is that true? It’s true because California’s conservatives and Republicans have become a party of no. If a proposal increases taxes in any way, they’re against it. In doing so, they ignore the teachings of an economist that they claim to revere.<\/p>\n

For more than a generation, conservatives have protected the “least bad tax” to the exclusion of all else. So even as income and sales and all kinds of taxes – with their negative effects on the economy – grow (they’re up again this year), the Prop 13 tax limits remain sacred. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Principled conservatism is frustrating, but you can predict principled conservatives. You can work with principled conservatives.  However, you can’t work with a Zombie Death Cult, hell bent only on their own bizarre politics while entirely ignoring good policy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Matthews has an outstanding column up at Fox & Hounds<\/a>. It seeks to isolate the question of property taxes, and whether Prop 13 is the best resolution. And to address this question, Matthews pulls out the ol’ WWMFD question – What would Milton Friedman Do?<\/p>\n

Matthews has an interesting position from which to comment, primarily because he conducted an interview with “Uncle Milton” in 2004, just two years before his death. He has some pretty choice quotes from that interview on the question of Prop 13:<\/p>\n

When the subject turned to Prop 13, which he had strongly supported in 1978, Friedman said he thought the measure had proven to be “a mixed bag.” He did not regret his vote for Prop 13 because it had sent a tax-cutting message that was important for that time.
\n
*  *  *
\n
But as a matter of current policy, he said, Prop 13 was problematic. “It’s a bad tax measure because the property tax is the least bad tax there is,” he said. “Think of the original and indestructible properties of the soil. The least dangerous and harmful tax is a tax on something of which there is an inelastic supply.” He argued that protecting Prop 13 was far less important than cutting other taxes, particularly on the income and sales we need more of. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See, the thing with the Republican Party today is not they are principled conservatives ideologically opposed to progressive goals.  That sort of logical consistency would block much good progressive legislation, but it wouldn’t have lead us to the free-fall in which we currently find ourselves. Protecting Prop 13 no longer has anything to do with conservative goals or low-tax policy, but it has everything to do with a mindset.  From Matthews:<\/p>\n

Yes, it’s conventional wisdom that raising property taxes is politically impossible in California. But why is that true? It’s true because California’s conservatives and Republicans have become a party of no. If a proposal increases taxes in any way, they’re against it. In doing so, they ignore the teachings of an economist that they claim to revere.<\/p>\n

For more than a generation, conservatives have protected the “least bad tax” to the exclusion of all else. So even as income and sales and all kinds of taxes – with their negative effects on the economy – grow (they’re up again this year), the Prop 13 tax limits remain sacred. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Principled conservatism is frustrating, but you can predict principled conservatives. You can work with principled conservatives.  However, you can’t work with a Zombie Death Cult, hell bent only on their own bizarre politics while entirely ignoring good policy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[668,7704,60],"class_list":["post-9806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-668","tag-7704","tag-60"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2ya","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}