To fund currently unfunded pension liabilities? To hire more city employees at above-market rates? To build new parks and roads? To fund public transportation?
The money will be used for what it always is - some of it will be good and some of it won't be very good. Once it's in the pot, it gets stirred around and all sorts of people and projects get a full bowl. That's not what's interesting about this story - taxes get raised all the time by all sorts of authorities. What's interesting is that the tax is full of perverse incentives and may very well lead to lower, not higher tax receipts.
> The money will be used for what it always is - some of it will be good and some of it won't be very good. Once it's in the pot, it gets stirred around and all sorts of people and projects get a full bowl. That's not what's interesting about this story - taxes get raised all the time by all sorts of authorities.
Why is this not interesting to you? Just because it's the status quo of how things are done doesn't make it less of an issue to me. Maybe if we knew what pot of taxes were used for what causes, we could reason about their worthiness better. Just raising taxes for the sake of raising taxes seems like a meaningless and potentially regressive goal otherwise.
> What's interesting is that the tax is full of perverse incentives and may very well lead to lower, not higher tax receipts.
To fund currently unfunded pension liabilities? To hire more city employees at above-market rates? To build new parks and roads? To fund public transportation?
The money will be used for what it always is - some of it will be good and some of it won't be very good. Once it's in the pot, it gets stirred around and all sorts of people and projects get a full bowl. That's not what's interesting about this story - taxes get raised all the time by all sorts of authorities. What's interesting is that the tax is full of perverse incentives and may very well lead to lower, not higher tax receipts.