Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”
— “Gordon Gekko,” Wall Street, as quoted in imdb.com
Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock
If “greed is good,” as the fictional financier Gordon Gekko famously preached in 1987, then it follows taxes are good, in complementary ways. If greed in theory takes care of financing the private sector, then taxes fund services common to all. A private property owners association could fund security and tennis court repair and sewage — and plenty do — but very quickly an all-things-to-all-members POA becomes expensive and inefficient. A POA leaves to government the things it can do best: law enforcement, fire protection and public education, while the POA busies itself with clubhouse upkeep and clothesline bans.
Essentially all countries tax their citizens, but in democracies, taxation is participatory. Through elected officials, you can change taxes. In the marketing agreement that is “Livin’ in the U.S.A.,” taxes comprise the single consistent payment for the luxuries of freedom. (If a military draft is resumed, that would be an occasional fee for freedom.)
Which brings us to the suddenly strong movement to add Arkansas to those states with sanctioned lotteries. Arkansas, if this amendment to the state constitution is passed in the November 2008 general election, like the others would use profits from a state lottery to supplement the public coffer, in our case for college scholarships. The problem is, state lotteries counter democracy.
The point man for this is Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, acting on his main campaign promise from fall 2006. Halter’s stated reason is to keep lottery money in the state. Arkies presumably travel to buy tickets in the five of our six border states with legal lotteries. He also wants more money in the state treasury, especially if it comes in voluntarily.
Opponents include religious-based groups and people concerned with the state encouraging gambling addiction and fostering a waste of money among the poor hoping for a break. Lotto supporters say scientific studies are not conclusive about either an increase in wager compulsion or false hopes among the income disadvantaged.
What’s extraordinary in this go-round — a state lottery proposal comes up between two and five times a decade — is the number of sensible types who have switched and now support it.
My arguments opposing state lotteries always have mirrored those of the Christian right, not to mention mental health professionals. Now, there’s a menage a trois.
But we just might lose this one. Arkansas is so poor any money is good, proponents say, especially when so many voters demand ever-lower taxes without quite agreeing to fewer services.
There is a sound, patriotic argument left to play:
Government-sponsored lotteries are anti-democratic.
Britain imposing the Stamp Act on her colonies led to the picaresque symbolic revolt of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 with its cry of “No Taxation Without Representation.”
The restriction in Halter’s referendum seems sensible: lottery revenues go only to 1) operating the drawing and 2) post-secondary scholarships. What if some extra cash needs to go to Head Start preschool programs or health care? This amendment prevents the Legislature from reappropriating any part of it. We are tying our own hands. (The counter would be state money that would fund scholarships now can go to, say, law enforcement, but isn’t the state’s pot smaller when there’s a lottery on the side?)
Mainly, though, a lottery to fund any statewide service removes some equality and fairness from a free society. Arkansas needs more young people to attend college. Additional grants help students themselves, and this helps all Arkies by encouraging better-educated people to stay in the state, as well as higher levels of commerce and their attendant jobs.
Taxes come in two forms: Income and expense. We know income tax, but expense tax means the other kinds: Sales tax and property tax are based on what we spend, the latter being the worth of homes and cars. There’s an embarrassing number of loopholes in all taxes, but by and large all of us pay.
And all of us reap: We have pothole repair, germ-free water, animal shelters and lending libraries. Even those services we don’t need are used by people whom we do need in our lives.
If all of us benefit, all of us should pay. The bigger earners and the bigger spenders generally pay more. That defines taxes in our free-market economic system. That the smaller earners and the smaller spenders tend to use more of the public services is what makes us a controlled democracy, a republic. This is our scratch-each-other’s-back pact. Some communities’ reluctance to pay — as shown in some school districts that face collapse when voters refuse higher taxes for additional buildings and college-prep classes — should cause us to feel the burn directly, which will motivate moves toward the ol’ Higher Good.
We shouldn’t be able to hide behind the skirts of Lady Luck and just cross our fingers.
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