Kinda hard to drown it in the bathtub now, isn’t it?
Posted by: Donna
Edit: I misread the chart on job growth. It’s for the Tucson metro area, not the state. But my point still stands about Republican economic policies. Tax cuts have a way of leading to bigger government. Here is an excellent explanation of why that is: http://www.jonathanrauch.com/jrauch_articles/cut_taxes_grow_gover/index.html
Thanks to a commenter on Tedski’s blog, kralmajales, for this link. http://ebr.eller.arizona.edu/presentations/MidYear_Forecast_Update_2008.pdf
Those un-American anti-business lefties at Eller College of Management (a little joke since the blatant right wing bias in business schools doesn’t seem to be worthy of the kind of hyperventilating people like Doug MacEachern routinely do over the slightest whiff of liberalism in academia) issued a hair-on-fire assessment of the state of Arizona’s economy.
Something my conservative friends might want to take note of is slide 17, which shows that the most job growth in the greater Tucson area is in government. That’s not to say that it’s growing that many jobs, but it’s one of few sectors that isn’t hemhorraging them. How is it that years of Republican control of the Lege have led to that? Yes, the housing slump is a big factor in our situation (and is mostly the fault of conservatives with their love of deregulation), but the woeful state of education and infrastructure aren’t helping matters.
What has the GOP response been? Tax cuts. Tax cuts for everything. They never explain exactly how tax cuts are the panacea. Maybe they cause the people who get them to fart fairy dust over the invisible hand of the economy. That theory is as good as any I’ve heard out of a Goldwater Instituter. It’s become an annoying tic with them at this point. Good economy? Tax cuts. Slow economy? Tax cuts. Impending doom? Tax cuts. The tax cuts we passed didn’t lead to the economic Nirvana we promised? Zounds, that means we need MORE tax cuts! I picture them sitting around at the Institute saying things like “zounds” a lot. They’re good at coming up with spiffy charts that purport to correlate tax cuts with everything positive, from growth to fuzzy kittens. Every time we raise taxes a kitten dies. But they never demonstrate how their crackpot malarkey actually works in the real world, and all of them must have been sleeping in class the day that whole “correlation isn’t causation” thing was discussed.
And I see the campaign signs of the acolytes all over the Valley, promising to lower taxes. It’s an easy soundbite and an even easier strategy to sell. Everyone wants more money in their pocket. But they also want good schools and drive-able roads. Business owners want a solid infrastructure and a workforce that can read basic instructions. Some of them even want college grads, imagine that? Yet they are apparently unwilling to learn from what is happening in Tucson, not to mention at the national level.
I’m going to have to try and peel myself away from my horrified fascination with Sarah Palin to write about the local races in the upcoming weeks. But I’ll end this with a reminder to Arizona conservatives:
THE THING THAT GROWS THE MOST UNDER YOUR POLICIES IS THE GOVERNMENT!!
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Rauch’s article is very compelling and should be required reading for pols of both stripes – especially Dems. The love affair with “tax cuts” as a panacea really must end. We have to vote no on 105 this year, and then move on to repealing the state Constitutional amendment from 1992 that required 2/3 supermajority votes in our legislature to raise or create any new taxes.