Who Doesn't Need A Tax Cut?

There's a good collection of letters to the editor today in The State.com, illustrating South Carolina's school choice debate. Most notable to me was a letter by Bill Heitsman, who serves on the board of the South Carolina Education Association and opposes school choice.

Choice proponents decry the lack of competition in public schools and demand market accountability. After more than 25 years of attempting to teach economics at the high school level, I can state that markets and competition are extremely powerful forces. However, markets often reward those who are popular, powerful or incompetent but good at propaganda and persuasion.

I also must mention the failure of legislators to pass the Put Parents in Charge Act. What The State and the legislators who read the act determined was that the bill was little more than a gift package of smoke, mirrors and tax cuts for people who don’t need it.

Markets reward producers who are able to sell goods and services to consumers willing to purchase them, and consumers are likewise rewarded by being provided with a good or service they need. It hardly matters whether someone approves or disapproves of someone else's reasons for purchasing a particular product. Perhaps Mr. Heitsman would understand this if he actually taught economics as opposed to "attempting" to teach it.

Certainly an atheist may not approve of parents who decided to send their child to a Catholic school, but it's nevertheless irrelevant to this debate - as is the Catholic family's impression of the atheist. Citizens who are compelled through taxation to foot the bill for government schooling should at the very least have the ability to choose the school they believe best meets the needs of their children.

Mr. Heitsman further demonstrates his economic ignorance - not to mention overall dearth of common sense - when giving the impression that he (or any individual) could possible know how important tax cuts are to anyone else.

Quick story: My county tax bill just arrived a couple weeks ago, and my property taxes have doubled since last year. Calvert County (Maryland) imposes property taxes based on assessed land values (as opposed to collecting taxes based on the purchase price of the land), which means that the county arbitrarily engages in despotic revenue-grabbing every year based on what you could sell your house for even if you haven't sold it yet. My wife and I were lucky enough to buy one of the last remaining waterfront lots in the area four years ago. Waterfront lots are commonly appraised at higher value than non-waterfront, but because the county controls via environmental regulations the number of waterfront lots available to potential consumers, the value of waterfront property is artificially increased. Anyone care to guess whether the county has a vested interest in regulating the supply of waterfront lots when commissioners know their tax policy enables them to generate inflated revenue?

This is an issue I have to take up with my county commissioners, but the point remains that neither Mr. Heitsman nor anyone else has any clue as to what my financial situation looks like, how fairly I'm taxed by my state and county, or how important these issues are to me. And in the end, we really can't fault our politicians for overstepping their bounds and abusing their authority, whether with regard to schooling or anything else, when simpletons all around us defend indefensible policy in the first place.