Mark Peterson: Up to each one to fix the mess in state government

Many Kansas voters feel misled by the current crop of politicians. Instead of executing pledges to end “ineffective programs” and eliminating services they believe to be inappropriate for government to do, conservative politicians made a mess.

Previous tax cuts have failed to stimulate the economy. Unable to identify or agree on programmatic changes, the 2015 Legislature made $50 million in euphemistic “efficiency cuts” and enacted about $400 million in consumption and other tax increases.

This uncoordinated yo-yo approach to the state’s fiscal matters drives voters crazy. Then there are the universal convictions that however it works, “the system” doesn’t work properly or fairly.

It’s probably safe to say that Kansans are pretty sure they are personally paying too much for government and others are not paying anything. There’s a familiar adage attributed to former Louisiana Sen. Russell Long: “Don’t tax you and don’t tax me, tax that fella behind the tree.”

In general, no one except infants and those in the custody of the state avoids paying taxes. Some unlucky Kansans with incomes below the average actually pay proportionately more in state and local taxes than those with above-average incomes. People at the low end of the economic ladder consume and, therefore, pay tax on all of their incomes, while individuals with higher incomes do not have to consume everything, leaving some income and wealth to shelter from taxation, especially if they happen to be certain business owners.

Average Americans each pay about 30 cents of every dollar they make in a working lifetime to government for the public goods and services they receive. It is fairly simple to quantify and demonstrate that over our lifetimes we are likely to receive greater aggregate value in those public goods and services than we actually pay. This is one reason why the national government runs deficits.

Ed Flentje and Joe Aistrup, in their excellent 2010 book “Kansas Politics and Government: The Clash of Political Cultures,” noted the Kansas public’s strong admiration of and attachment to an individualistic culture that highly values freedom from the dictates of government. Truth told, this is little more than frontier romanticism.

The maintenance of international and national markets; the provision of transportation infrastructure; the provision or subsidization of health care for the poor, the disabled, veterans and the elderly; the public funding of K-12 and higher education; the provision of sanitation, recreation and public safety – these and a myriad of other public goods all have considerable collective support. Paying excessively for such things is unwise, but denying the need for them and believing bombastic arguments against them is foolish, if not delusional.

A lot of Kansans believe there was a surplus of bad policymaking on display during the 2015 legislative session. It’s up to them to decide if they want to endure more of it in the future.

So far they seem to be waiting for “that fella behind the tree” to take the initiative. Perhaps it needs to be that fella in the mirror.

This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Mark Peterson: Up to each one to fix the mess in state government."