Recently Tom Wolf was inaugurated as the Governor of my home state of Pennsylvania. He ran on a fairly typical Democratic platform, one that I considered a welcome change from the four years of Tom Corbett's mismanagement. In those four years he managed to cut spending on everything from schools to infrastructure and used a large number of one-time revenue sources to fund the budget, all the while not raising taxes.
Now Wolf comes into office, declares that the emperor is naked, and as usual the anti-tax crowd is doing their level-best to kill him. Here's the thing: taxes simply have to go up. It's easy for me to say, as mine are minimal, befitting my status as one of the working poor, but that doesn't change the essential reality. Within 10 miles of me exist two bridges that are structurally deficient to the point that they have been closed permanently, no longer safe even to walk over. Schools are screaming for money, teachers are spending money out of their own pockets to supplement their classroom supplies. And all the while, the economy is heating up, real estate values are increasing, the stock market is consistently gaining, the price of gasoline is down... people have more money in their pockets. This is a good thing.
That said, when you cut to the bone in order to cover bills during a crisis, you have to eventually restore funding to that which you have cut. An analogy: you have a great job, everything is going well, your house is in good order. Then, through no fault of your own, you are told that you have to take a monster pay cut. You get rid of cable, you change your cell phone plan to the cheapest one you can find, you sell your car and get a cheaper used one, you stop buying steak and eat more chicken, you do everything you can to pay, even dipping into your savings. Then your roof springs a leak, but you don't have the money to fix it so you defer maintenance on it. It continues to deteriorate until the price of repair doubles.
Then it gets better. Everything starts going your way. After a few years you are no longer in the hamburger class, you're back to steak. But the roof still leaks. And now, having put it off for so long, you have to pay for it. Would you, under those circumstances, continue to defer repairs, or would you fix it? Now it costs a lot more, but it is clearly a wise investment.
Of course you would fix it. And that, friends, is what we have here. Nobody likes to pay taxes, least of all me. They consume a disproportionate amount of my income relative to my boss, my uncle, my mother... hell, pretty much anybody. Nevertheless, they are a necessary evil. You like roads? They cost money. You want your kids to do well in school and become educated so that they can grow up to make a good living themselves? Money. As they say in economics, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Yet that's what some people want. They want low taxes in perpetuity under the misguided assumption that an increase isn't necessary. Of course, those same people want raises and cost of living adjustments, the income equivalent of raising taxes, but never would they contemplate any increase in their personal outlays to pay for things that, in the long term, benefit them. They yell and scream, they use things like the Calfornia Proposition system (e.g., Proposition 13) to ensure that the nefarious forces of the state dares not take even one cent more than they feel they deserve, and then they sit contented while the world falls down around them.
Tom Wolf may very well be the first person ever elected to office by telling the truth. Because of his willingness to do the things that need to be done, he may end up being a one-term Governor. Good on him. At some point we need to recognize that everything has a cost and we all have to chip in to pay for it.
His plans have already met resistance, of course. The Republicans will pass a tax increase over their dead bodies. They have other plans, mostly based in the Reagan-era idea of "starving the beast". They refuse out of political principle to initiate a healthcare exchange, instead dropping millions on "Healthy PA", which is the same thing as Obamacare only without the federal contribution because God forbid they subscribe to anything that President Obama had a hand in creating. Wolf will fix that, maybe, but again, money. Everything has to be paid for.
Everybody hates taxes. In a sense they amount to legalized theft. But everybody should recognize that they are a necessary evil, and in the end we are all in this together. If we want something we have to be able to pay for it, and we live this every day. It's time our government did the same.
