Teachers Tax, Part Two
FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED MAY 14, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Euphemized as 'progressive socialism'
Kenneth Lange, executive director of the Nevada State Education Association, brought NSEA president Elaine Lancaster and two retainers to the Review-Journal offices May 8 to present the union's new tax proposal. Like Goldilocks in the fairy tale, the union folks expressed the opinion that a new 4 percent business profits tax rate will be "just right."
"We figure that at 4 percent, the economic theory is that Macy's or United Airlines won't raise their prices on services to people in Nevada based on a 4 percent business tax," Mr. Lange explained.
But by adding this levy to the state's nine-year-old Business Tax (which penalizes Nevada's small businesses for each new employee they hire) wouldn't we risk eventually breaking the camel's back?
"That's what we heard when they proposed the Business Activity Tax," responded Al Bellister, the union's director of research. "But businesses continued to expand and prosper in this state after that tax was enacted; none of the Chamber's predictions of gloom and doom came true."
It was hard not to be reminded of Hank Rearden's meeting with Wesley Mouch and the rest of the "Steel Unification" gang in Ayn Rand's classic novel of the collapse of the nanny state, "Atlas Shrugged":
"Then Lawson said softly, half in reproach, half in scorn, 'Well, after all, you businessmen have kept predicting disasters for years, you've cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us that we'll perish -- but we haven't.' ..."
But even assuming for the moment that a "mere 4 percent tax on business income" won't grow into a new and expansive tyranny, is there any reason to believe more money will solve the problem?
In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Missouri vs. Jenkins, in which a single federal judge in 1985 had taken control of the school district in Kansas City, Mo., mandating a local school tax increase and forcing the schools to spend an extra $1.5 billion on state-of-the-art school greenhouses, athletic arenas, radio and TV studios, a planetarium, and computers in every classroom.
The result? As summarized by the Separation of School & State Alliance: "No measurable improvement in academic achievement, a fallen attendance rate, and a dropout rate that remains at 60 percent for high-school students."
At least the U.S. Supreme Court came to the rescue of Kansas City taxpayers, eventually. Nevada's new Teacher Tax, on the other hand, would never sunset no matter how badly the schools should fail.
"I've always said, 'Don't just throw money at the problem,' " answered NSEA President Elaine Lancaster on Monday. Instead, "The answer is to give us as much money as we think we need to solve the problem, and then if we fail, take it from there."
And what does Ms. Lancaster mean by "take it from there"? If all the new spending fails, we finally close the failed government school in question?
"No, you wouldn't do that," she responded.
Ah. So when she says, "then you take it from there," Ms. Lancaster means that in the result of failure (remember, this is after the union has been given "all the money we think we need to solve the problem,") all the teachers and administrators in the failed school in question would be dismissed -- never allowed to work in the system again?
"No, we wouldn't do that," Ms. Lancaster responded.
Ms. Lancaster was clearly getting a bit testy, on several occasion muttering things under her breath as the more diplomatic Mr. Lange answered our questions, jerking her head and staring at a point high up on the wall as she added her sotto voce comments.
But I considered it important enough to keep seeking an answer: what did Ms. Lancaster mean by "and then if we fail, take it from there"?
"You might bring in some people from the state to discover what's going wrong," she snapped, rolling her eyes up and away from me.
Ah. So, "Then if we fail, you take it from there," simply means "you keep on giving us more money, no matter what"?
"Well, you can put those words in there if you want," Ms. Lancaster huffed, "but that's not what I said."
Ms. Lancaster declined to comment on the uselessness of the billion dollars spent in Kansas City, explaining she was unfamiliar with that case. But she did prove willing to respond to editor Thomas Mitchell's question on the way state tax moneys are divided among school districts -- redistributing funds into poorer neighborhoods from areas where people earn more and tend to buy nicer homes.
After all, in a capitalist system, what is the great incentive for folks to complete their own educations, get married, work hard, save, and invest? Isn't it that such behavior is rewarded by the ability to buy their children better things -- including a better education? Is it really wise to completely eliminate this link between parental behavior and the ability to provide for one's children? Should it really be "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need?" Mr. Mitchell asked.
"Well, it may be politically incorrect to say it," replied Ms. Lancaster of the teachers union. "But yes, it's the duty of those who have, to take care of those who do not."
Actually, of course, it's perfectly politically correct to advance this theory in America today. All that's politically incorrect is to give the belief its proper name.
Only today, after half a century, are "mainstream" economists beginning to acknowledge that Ludwig von Mises and F.W. Hayek were right, in mighty books like "Human Action" and "The Road to Serfdom," when they demonstrated there can be no stable "mixed system" between capitalism and its opposite, anymore than one can safely drink from a glass of water which is "only half sewage." Once a nation starts down the road to collectivism, has any bureaucrat ever said, "No, please don't give us any more money or power. Clearly this is a task government just can't accomplish"?
Of course not.
Euphemize it as "progressive socialism" all you want, the doctrine union president Elaine Lancaster embraced in our offices on May 8 is that of Karl Marx.
Growing from this rotten root, it should come as no surprise that today's "public schools" dope up a fifth of their students to treat the disease of "boyhood," while indulging the absurd "leveling" theory that -- instead of expelling the troublemakers and allowing brighter students to move ahead unencumbered -- every standard should be dumbed down, even the laziest and least adept students receiving A's and B's for "a good effort" until willful and illiterate young loonies are finally awarded their surgeon's scalpel or their pilot's wings, since any other course of action might "damage the children's self-esteem."
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers" is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
