Kevin's Weblog

We’ve got two props on the ballot involving taxes. 63 hits $1M+ earners with an extra 1% to pay for mental health care, and 67 adds additional fees on telephone services to pay for EMS services.

63 is designed to be popular (or populist) with it’s sock-the-ultrarich approach. The won’t-hurt-me argument almost won me over, but on further thought I come down against this. The first point is that CA income taxes are already extremely progressive and high. The rates ramp up quite quickly and those with more than $50K or so of taxable income see a 9.3% marginal rate. When I consider this and ask myself if I think that the tax structure ought to be more or less progressive than it is, I find that my answer is less. Beyond this argument, there is also the fact that many rich people already arrange to “live” in states with lower taxes. I suspect that the opponents are correct that this sort of vindictive taxation will just make that phenomenon worse.

I have some reservations about 67, primarily because of the slightly dishonest way that it piggybacks on the 911 service fee, and because I’m generally opposed to the way that the state has choosen to tightly couple specific revenue sources to specific expenses. However, I do think that it is critically important to keep emergency rooms open. While it is true that a substantial amount of this money would go to private hospitals, the fact is that they are required by law to provide emergency services to all individuals even if it is unprofitable. It’s completely reasonable in my might to provide subsidies to encourage companies to actually do this, rather than closing their emergency rooms completely.

Holy crap! The Economist just endorsed Kerry. Granted, this is probably the right way for them to go given their biases and values (responsible fiscal and international policies, and lack of government intervention on social issues), but it comes as rather a surprise given how down Lexington has been on Kerry and Edwards.