Proration and the ability to think rationally

This Politically Dissident column originally appeared in The Exponent (University of Alabama in Huntsville), Vol. 33, No. 23 (March 7, 2002). Digitized issue: UAH LOUIS archive. Reproduced here courtesy of that archive.

This column is a reprint of one that originally appeared on March 1, 2001.

The only real cut so far in the state budget proration is a slash in people’s most valuable asset: the ability to think rationally.

The proration crisis prompted school boards to threaten to take away extracurricular activities. Few people seem to understand that football and band are largely funded by booster clubs consisting of parents and alumni. Cutting athletics and band is a disgusting, cynical ploy on the part of politicians to beat parents into begging for tax increases. Why should everyone have to pay for these programs? It’s already done the right way: cheerleaders and band members buy or raise money for their own uniforms; parents of football players volunteer to sell tickets, collect parking fees, and work in concession stands to pay for their kids to play.

When you visit the voting booth, recite one simple rule: keep the politicians’ dirty hands off people’s money. Fob James didn’t do much to help Alabama as governor, but one of his best moves was placing the state’s oil and gas trust funds beyond the greedy reach of our state legislature. At least two out of three Alabama voters forgot or never learned this rule because we foolishly allowed the state government to raid these trust funds and spend unrealized gains. I wish my checking account worked the same way. “Tax” is a dirty word, so politicians use euphemisms such as “traffic fine” or “lottery.” Let me state that I have no moral objection to a lottery; I enjoy gambling. However, it represents an extreme conflict of interest for state government to spend money promoting a lottery, a form of gambling with one of the lowest expected values over time. In other words, you could pump everything you own into a lottery, and in the end you’d be overwhelmingly likely to be left with nothing. If the state wants lotteries, it should allow for competing lotteries taxed at special rates instead of a state-sanctioned monopoly. A state lottery would be a government agency after all, so keep in mind that at least half of all revenues would go to overhead and administrative costs. Competition would exert downward pressure on these overheads and upward pressure on the payouts and expected values.

Inevitable in this debate is that someone will mention that Alabamians “don’t want to pay higher property taxes,” despite the fact that we have the lowest property taxes of any state in the nation. That’s what logicians call the argumentum ad populum fallacy; in other words, a popular idea isn’t necessarily a good idea. If it’s a good idea to raise property taxes because they’re low, then it’s also a good idea to raise tuition at UAH because it’s low.

Even if you rent an apartment or a house, be certain that your landlord is passing on property taxes to you. If low tax revenue is the source of education’s problems, then why are there pockets of excellence in Alabama like Grissom or Bob Jones or the Alabama School of Math and Science? If securing a tax increase is hard, then securing a tax cut is next to impossible. As Americans, we were taxed at the highest percentage of gross domestic product since World War II, yet people fought President Bush until the last vote on his proposed tax cut.

The right to property, like the right to keep and bear arms, predates the Constitution. Every time we vote for a tax increase, we’re forfeiting our property rights. Ben Franklin wrote, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”