Our communities are confronting an economic affliction of great proportion.  Inflation fueled by escalating energy costs distort our economic decisions, penalize thrift, and crush our struggling youth and fixed income elderly alike.

            Idle industries have cast our workers into unemployment.  Those who do work are denied fair compensation for their labor by a tax system that penalizes personal achievement.  President Reagan made these statements over 20 years ago, and they are just as true today.

            As great as our total tax burden is, it has not kept pace with our public spending.  As individuals we can only live beyond our means for a short time by borrowing.  Why then should we think that our state should not be bound by the same limitations? 

We are facing an estimated state deficit of nearly $1.8 billion.  Some will say we simply need to increase taxes, but we have reached and exceeded the public’s tolerance for and ability to pay for more taxes.  Some have suggested increasing taxes on business and industry.  But business does not pay taxes.  Businesses are being taxed, so much so that they are unable to compete on the global market and are being forced to relocate and shift production to plants beyond our borders.  Business must pass its costs, including taxes, on to the consumer.  Only people pay taxes.

For years we have talked of reducing government spending in order to decrease taxes, and at times we have made feeble attempts at it.  There are those that say we cannot reduce taxes until after we have reduced spending.  Well, we can lecture our children about their wasteful spending habits until we are out of breath, or we can change their spending habits by reducing their allowance.

Spending cuts should not be at the expense of the truly needy.  We can continue to meet our responsibility to those who, through no fault of their own, need our help; as well as meet the other legitimate needs of the state.  We cannot continue our wasteful ways at the expense of our workers and economy.  Our goal should be to increase wealth so all will have more, not just to redistribute what we already have.  We must again reward hard work and risk taking by forcing government to live within its means.  For years we have been in denial of our self destructive economic structure, but we no longer have that luxury.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 10th, 2008 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Ohio's Economy, Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.