In Kansas, lower income tax rates are needed to ensure that Kansas has a bright economic future. Failing to reform income tax rates will mean that Kansas will continue to under-perform other states.
Why should we care about reducing tax rates? We must remember that taxation is not a voluntary activity. Although it is not fashionable to say this in public, ultimately taxes are collected by coercion or its threat. While those who are (supposedly) enlightened will argue that taxes are like dues paid to belong to a club, or maybe the price we pay to have a civilized society, these arguments are easily dispatched. What, for example, if I don’t want to belong the the “club”? Big government — supported by high taxes — destroys civil society, if by that we mean a society based on liberty and voluntary participation and cooperation. The choice is stark, as explained in the mission statement of the Cato Institute: “In civil society individuals make choices about their lives while in a political society someone else makes or attempts to greatly influence those choices.”
We also need to recognized the relative productivity of the public and private sectors of the economy. We find over and over that the private sector is more efficient at delivering goods and services than is the government, or public, sector. There are a number of reasons for this.
First, government spending is filtered through the lens of special interest groups that fight to obtain every dollar they can. This “mining for dollars” is the prime reason why so much effort is spent lobbying government, both at the national, state, and local level. Almost every spending program exhibits the qualities of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. There is a group, usually relatively small, that will benefit mightily from a spending program. The costs, however, are spread across the entire state, so the cost to each person is small. Sometimes this argument is made explicit, as when advocates for Kansas arts spending said the cost was only $0.29 per person, per year.
This leads to an imbalance of interest and effort. The small group receiving the concentrated benefit of the spending is highly motivated to press its case and seek victory, while the average citizen sees the 29 cents — if he sees anything at all — and comes to the rational conclusion that it’s easier to pay than fight.
Repeat this scenario many times, however, and soon the cost to the individual is substantial. This cost, remember, is to pay for spending that benefits special interest groups, and often provides little benefit to society at large. See the video Public Choice: Why Politicians Don’t Cut Spending for more. In the video, Benjamin Powell concludes: “This is the logic of politics, and this is why we end up with more spending than the average voter wants.”
Second: Government doesn’t have the same profit motive that the private sector has. While most people want government to do some things that the private sector might not do on its own, such as caring for the sick and disabled, there a difference between government paying for a service and government providing the service. In government, spending programs are usually looked on as jobs programs. Politicians crow over how many jobs the program creates, and the more jobs, the better. In the private sector, however, different motivations come into play. There, efficiency is valued and rewarded by profit.
Some do not recognize the beneficial effect of the profit motive, using arguments that say private for-profit companies can’t provide adequate care for disabled people. They argue that these companies will short-change patients on their care so that they can earn more profit. This, however, misunderstands how profits are earned, which is by providing a good or service which is valued by the customer, and doing that efficiently enough that something is left over after costs are paid. In competitive markets — and we must see that these exist — customers can switch to other suppliers if they don’t get what they want or contracted for. This benefits customers, which in this case, is the state in purchasing services for its citizens.
There’s also no reason to think that government bureaucrats are immune from the profit motive. Bureaucrats benefit through expansion of the budgets and power spheres. Most seek to expand both.
Results from other states
While we can’t perform controlled experiments regarding states and income tax rates, we can look at what has happened in the states. There, the results are striking. Analysis in the current edition of Rich States, Poor States: ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index shows that low taxes are conducive to economic growth: “When it comes to growing gross state product (GSP), the [states with no personal income tax] have, on average, outperformed those states with the highest rates by 39.2 percent over the past decade. They have also outperformed the U.S. average by 25.6 percent. Additionally, not even one state in the high tax rate group performed as well as the average no personal income tax state.”
Besides this, low tax rates are good for government budgets, too, finds the authors of Rich States, Poor States: “You may be surprised to learn that the growth premium of the no personal income tax states also benefits the public treasury. The average growth of all state and local tax revenues over the past decade was 51 percent. Interestingly enough, the no personal income tax states saw their state revenue grow 81.7 percent faster than that of the nine highest personal income tax states. Clearly, private sector growth matters a great deal for government revenues. Leaders of states with the highest rates ought to reconsider: If the rates don’t result in more money (relative to the no personal income tax states), then why are they so high?”
Kansas compared to other states
In the Rich States, Poor States analysis, Kansas does not perform well. Rich States, Poor States evaluates state economies two ways. The “Economic Outlook Ranking” is a forecast looking forward. It is based on factors that are under control of the states. The “Economic Performance Ranking” is a backward-looking rating that measures state performance, again using variables under control of each state.
For Economic Performance Ranking, Kansas is ranked 39 among the states, near the bottom in terms of positive performance. In the 2010 edition, Kansas was ranked 40th, and in 2010, 34th. Kansas is not making progress in this ranking of state performance.
In the forward-looking Economic Outlook Ranking, Kansas ranks 26th. Again, Kansas is not making progress, compared to other states. In annual rankings since 2008 Kansas has been ranked 29, 24, 25, 27, and now 26.
Recently the Tax Foundation released a report that examines the tax costs on business in the states and in selected cities in each state. The news for Kansas is worse than merely bad, as our state couldn’t have performed much worse: Kansas ranks 47th among the states for tax costs for mature business firms, and 48th for new firms. The report is Location Matters: A Comparative Analysis of State Tax Costs on Business.
The most startling fact, and one that should be a wake-up call to anyone who cares about the future of Kansas, is the uncovering by Kansas Policy Institute that not long ago, Kansas was the only state to have a loss in private sector jobs over a year-long period.
All the spending on schools, highways, and other government programs that are supposed to spur our economy to greatness lead to this: last place. The only state with private-sector job loss. We couldn’t have done worse.
Kansas will do better by leaving more of its citizens’ resources in the private sector, under their own control. Cutting taxes — and then government spending — is the way to generate prosperity in Kansas for all of its citizens.