Anyone who says something can’t be done shouldn’t interfere with someone doing it. ~ Chinese Proverb
“It will be $1399 plus tax, every penny on the dollar,” said an employee at Orchard Supply Hardware. I handed him my Visa card. One beautiful Saturday morning, after my wife and I left the store in Monterey, the world suddenly looked rosy. I felt deeply free. That’s because I paid $1.01 in taxes instead of the $1.04 I would have paid if the tax rate had been 7.75% instead of 7.25%. The word for what I felt was eudamonia, a word I remember from studying Aristotle in college about happiness. I felt love for my fellow Monterey County residents, at least 38% of them. I felt that in the rush of politicians trying to take away our freedoms, I and my allies had slowed down and taken the ruthless, well-funded behemoth by surprise. In the process, I discovered how even fairly poorly organized small groups that are willing to make moral arguments, take offense, and not back down when attacked can beat much larger groups that think they are morally superior and don’t. tea. Why do I get so excited about paying ridiculous taxes instead of paying even more ridiculous taxes? Am I off my rocker because I believe taxes should be close to zero? That may be true, but I don’t think so. Let me explain.
Four days ago, on Tuesday, December 2, 2003, votes were counted for the all-mail election. The question on the ballot: Should the sales tax rate be increased from 7.25% to 7.75% to fund Natividad Hospital, a government-run and mismanaged (but, I repeat) hospital? Of course, that wasn’t a voting term. Government officials who put a sales tax proposal on the ballot will never try to sway voters. no. Instead, the “county attorney’s impartial analysis” stated that the tax would “prevent life-threatening declines in Natividad Medical Center’s health care delivery system.” There is no bias there. Just the truth, ma’am.
The following is the introductory three paragraphs of an article I wrote in January 2004 titled “”.Not only can you fight reluctant activists or city hall, you might actually win.”
This is one of the articles I promised to publish in response to Janet Bufton’s piece titled “Another Kind of Romance in Politics.” EconlogDecember 12, 2024. She pointed out that in a democracy it is important to strive for change and not just give up. At least that’s what I got from her post. This is one of my stories about spending a lot of time fighting tax increases.
Another excerpt:
This was new territory for both the pro-tax and anti-tax sides. The anti-tax side had to ask itself: How should we use the $4,000 and time we voluntarily donated by November? The pro-tax side had to ask itself: How are we supposed to spend the $450,000 raised from our members with no say in how the money is spent, billboards, constant scare ads on TV, mass jailbreaks. Voting phone bank. And some on the pro-tax side seem to be asking themselves, “How much time should I spend every night stealing signs from the anti-tax side?” Nearly 1,000 “No on Q” signs were stolen during the campaign, a fact we’ve mentioned often in talk radio interviews.
I took up this fight reluctantly. It’s not because I like taxes, it’s because I have a life just like you. I have a wife whom I love deeply, and a daughter who will soon be entering college. I am working on an academic paper and the second edition of The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. And I have a certain amount of time a week that I like to play around with, like watching TV, surfing the web, or walking around the neighborhood. Were you willing to dedicate five hours a week to thinking about this issue, writing letters, and talking to people?
And we listen to the stories of the ‘silent minority’.
When I first joined the campaign, I wondered what kind of response I would get from my colleagues at the Naval Postgraduate School and people in the community in general. In the past, when I’ve published articles in Fortune or the Wall Street Journal, many of my colleagues have generally commented favorably. But local politics are different for two reasons. First, a much higher percentage of my colleagues and neighbors read or listen to local media than they read Fortune or the Wall Street Journal. Second, local issues tend to generate more passion. I think it’s because people feel more in control of local issues and feel hopeless about their ability to control national issues. I am somewhat known for having coached young girls’ basketball for 10 years in my hometown of Pacific Grove. This started when my daughter started in third grade and continued long after she joined because I enjoyed it so much. But other than that, I’m somewhat anonymous in my community. I wondered if people’s attitude toward me would change then.
I’m happy to report that they did. I first discovered it at a co-worker’s Naval School retirement party. I went up to say hello to a senior economist colleague whom I had always liked and respected as an economist. But I hadn’t spoken to him at length in more than a decade, partly because he was in a different department. “I want to thank you for all you do for our taxpayers. “You are performing a real public service,” he said.
We’ve had a much more positive response from the community overall. In my daily life, I have met people who spontaneously tell me that they like what I do and that they are grateful for it. After the campaign ended, many people volunteered that they and their spouses had voted “no.” A woman whose daughter went to the same high school as mine wrote me a thank you note, and when I called her to check on the letter, we talked for 30 minutes. When I called my neighbor about a completely unrelated issue, she told me that she had voted against it, had been an employee at Natividad for 20 years, and that the company was running so badly that there was no hope for her. So, one of the most positive unintended consequences was that I felt like a part of the community and a respected community leader.
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