Friday, March 30, 2018

Tax And Spend, And Spend Even More

Over at Bayou Renaissance Man, Peter posts about the record revenues government is taking in.

As the economy improves under Trump, more taxes follow even at lower rates as economic activity picks up.

The increase in taxes collected, however, still can't keep up with the increase in spending and past spending at the federal, state and local levels for which the debt is coming due.

For example, in Michigan for the past twenty years roads have been underfunded and ignored, and the bills are coming due.

In Michigan in 2015 there was an increase of 20% more for vehicle registrations and 7.3 cents per gallon more in state gas taxes under the promise that it would be to fund road repair.

In reality, not so much.

Even with that tax increase, currently only 19% of roads in the Metro area are considered to be in good condition.

Why? Well part of the money was immediately diverted from road funding for other projects, and a goodly sum of it has been going not to repair roads but to pay down the over a billion dollars in debt for road repair done by bond sales in the Engler and Granholm eras, more than eight years ago, for which the repairs that were done back then are now in need of repairs themselves.

The solution being proffered to fix the situation? Of course, it's to increase taxes for road funding even more. They promise to use it all to fix the roads this time, and of course you can believe them this time.

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