A million, a million there...
Well, here we are at the beginning of the legislative free for all with your and my money, I see that there is a projected $88,000,000 surplus. And the tag line from Prairie Pravda in their editorial " Black ink is back for state, but use the extra sparingly". In other words "SPEND IT! YAHOO!" Don't return it. Don't cut taxes. Spend the overtaxed amount. The writer says that the governor has accomplished this from the budget disaster of 2002-2003 by having more local fees and taxes increase. Well duh, do ya' mean that the local governments need to cover their own expenses? That it's a bad thing that Duluth dollars pay for Duluth programs and government rather than Bloomington dollars going to the port city via St. Paul? And the writer never, ever addresses the real problem that he himself is part of with his tag line. Remember the huge "surpluses" (meaning overtaxation) of the late 90's? And all the warnings from people like Jason Lewis that the legislature needed to return that money and cut taxes, not spend the surplus with extra programs. The reason: sure as the sun rises and sets, that surplus was counted as revenue that would always be there. And when it wasn't, the legislature had all those extra programs that were never, ever going to be cut. The "extra" as the Strib puts it, was used. And when the economy retracted, well, hello billion dollar deficits. The editorial goes on to opine that Minnesota's economic job creation engine is lagging but never,ever states why. Golly, could it be that private citizens have been taxed to the point of no return? That a huge state government is NOT what encourages small business like me to hire and expand? I'm reminded of a number of people I know who purposely have kept their companies small to avoid the stepped regulations of the Feds and state. I used to live across the street from a great guy who had a small manufacturing company. And he was very clear that he would never have more than 14 employees as when he reached 15 there was huge slug of regulations that became applicable. Another friend of mine who had a telecommunications company (had as he sold it) was agonizing over whether or nor to go over 25 employees as he was open to another large group of regulations. The decision was not based on business principles, but government. I know of another company (a high tech company) that has nothing but independent contractors and the only employees are the two owners. They do not want all the headaches of rules, regulations, OSHA, EEOC, potential lawsuits, etc.
And so it goes...
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