The official blog of the Libertarian Party
May 16, 2005
Detroit has a big appetite for new taxes
By Matthew Dailey
When it comes to implementing new taxes, the city of Detroit has an insatiable appetite. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has proposed a 2 percent fast-food tax that would apply to any food sold at fast-food restaurants. The state of Michigan already has a 6 percent sales tax on restaurant meals. The city of Detroit has long been criticized of being a place of high taxes that drives away residents.
When Mayor Kilpatrick announced the fast food tax proposal, he did not come up with a formal definition of what constituted fast-food. According to USA Today, Kilpatrick's administration is still figuring out how to define "fast food."
But no matter how fast food is defined, the definition will be decided on a subjective basis by bureaucrats. McDonalds and Burger King will obviously be taxed, but what about those restaurants that fall in a grey area? Would Au Bon Pain or Krispy Kreme Donuts be taxed? They serve pastries and donuts respectively, and could be considered "breakfast fast-food."
Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams stated the city did not want to place a meals tax on all restaurants. In the last three years, 22 new establishments have opened downtown and he did not want to hurt this new development, according to the Associated Press.
He said he thinks it's OK to tax fast food restaurants because that particular market is "pretty mature." So this new tax will discriminate against an as-yet-undefined group of restaurants and their customers.
What the Mayor has not learned is that a cash-strapped city should not to create new taxes but rather should cut spending. According to the AP, the city "has five major revenue streams: state revenue sharing, an income tax, property taxes, a tax on its three casinos and a utility tax."
The city needs to curb its appetite for taxpayer's money.
If Detroit is looking to generate new economic development it should not be coming up with new ways to tax their residents. Instead it should look for new ways to eliminate or reduce existing taxes to attract residents and businesses.
[Matthew Dailey is an employee of the National Libertarian Party in Washington DC. He recently received his Master's degree in public policy from George Washington University, and has been active in the Massachusetts Libertarian Party for several years.]
Posted by at May 16, 2005 01:03 PM
Reader Comments:
I know the Michigan LP is pretty active. I wonder if they'll now increase their activity within Michigan's largest city? Seems to me the time is right.
I hope our state party runs someone good against him.
Detroit's problems go so deep, you could never even know where to start. I have touched on it in my blog here:
http://homepage.mac.com/wrenbeck/blogwavestudio/LH20050427084048/index.html
"Hizzoner Can't stop stealing your money"
But that is so much the tip of the iceburg. Just this year, the scams go so deep it is just unbelievable. The best case scenario at this point would be receivership.
-The Detroit water department spends approx $130,000.00 a year on bottled water for it's employees. They buy Absopure, which is (you guessed it... Detroit city water)
-There is the whole SUV debacle
http://www.freep.com/news/locway/kilp-bar120e_20050120.htm
It goes on and on and on and on. Parties at the mansion, a 21 man man armed squadren of bodyguards, hundreds of thousands of dollars in "unaccounted" spending.
This is just the mayor. The entire Detroit government is just as bad.
IMHO, it is just plain stupidity of the voters. I would not usually blame the voters for this type of abuse, but they love it, they want it and they would never vote for anyone who won't give it to them. A Libertarian will not win in Detroit, because he might be honest. With all of the crazy crookedness going on, these are people's responses
referring to hizzoner's tens of thousands of dollar spending spree while out of town "It's an embarrassment. Why go harass him when he's there to represent our city? Washington, that's where everybody puts their faces on to represent us, and I just feel it makes our city look bad," said Detroiter Stephanie Johnson, 25, She said she thought it was unnecessary and improper to have reporters trailing Kilpatrick in Washington, D.C., because he was there trying to boost the city.
Delisle Doty, 20, doesn't care whether Kilpatrick or his family ever rode in the Navigator or, for that matter, whether any of the other allegations about his supposed wild life are true. She said she likes him because, as a young person, he relates to her, and "as long as he can do his job as mayor, I couldn't care less about his personal life." "With all that's wrong with the world, why worry about a $25,000 lease on a Navigator? I don't see why it's really that important. Every little thing gets blown up." (did you catch the part where buying a 57,000 SUV for his family with government money is his "private life"?)
They just don't get it. They want the rest of the state to cover these debts because we abuse the city and make it a bad place to live by not living (or visiting) it ever. A Detroiter living and working in the city pays more in city income tax than state income tax. It has been a mass exodus from D-town for 40 years, more that 55% of the population has left. Soon enough, they will all be gone and we can start over. It is beyond salvation at this point
I'm sorry, but I have trouble believing that the entire city of Detroit is insane. My suspicion is that the wrong "buttons" are being pressed with the wrong people.
They're used to a "liberal" orientation, so you have to emphasize liberal issues that we agree with. These are mainly social issues....the left-hand side of the Nolan chart.
However, even with that, there must be some urban dwellers in Detroit interested in the economic issues without emphasizing handouts. I would think that a coalition could be put together using this two-pronged approach.
if we were back in the Coleman Young days, I would say crooked polls. Who knows today. What people need and what they vote for are not usually the same thing. The suburbanites in the area (like me) routinely just shake our head at that town. I am confident there are some well-intended minds in the city, but not enough to make a difference.
Sounds like you have a heck of a mess there. But I think Detroit is just ahead of its time. In another 50 years, Detroit won't look so terribly bad. I live in DeLand Florida and as you might be aware we just got through a very bad hurricane season last year. The government spent a ton of money cleaning up after it. I was pretty lucky, I only had a few trees down and minor damage to my roof and fence. Of course, we went without power for many days, but that I could fix - I bought a generator. I did most of the clean-up myself. I repaired my roof and fence, I cut up and cleared out my downed trees. The only thing that the county provided for me was the service of picking up the cut-up trees and hauling them off. I own a truck, I could have done that myself! I had already done the hard part. I also helped out the older lady that lives next to me. To my surprise, I did get $500 from FEMA towards my generator. I figured that was King George's way of telling Florida "don't forget me at the poles". Guess he learned the lesson from his old man's screw-up. But my whole point is this, the county did almost nothing for me. I had no flooding, I'm privately insured, I provided almost of all the man power required to repair or remove any damage and debris from my property. And most of my neighbors did the same - and helped those that couldn't. People were letting other people hook up to their generators, bringing water supplies back for their neighbors. People were actually reaching out and helping other people. Many times, people they hardly even knew. Did the county need to spend all that money, and if they did, where's the accountablility for it. My brother-in-law has a friend that is in the landscaping business. He stopped all work on landscaping and did nothing but hurricane clean-up because the government was just throwing money at them. He was making thousands of dollars a day cleaning up the trees that people had already cut-up and hauled to the side of the street. He made over a hundred thousand dollars in about three months. I figure he would have got about $500 for the amount of debris I carried to the street, based on what he was getting a trailer load. If someone would have told me that they were going to charge me $500 to remove that, I would have told them they were crazy. But that's where we get to the root of the problem. Government is never going to spend my money as wisely as I would. I wouldn't have paid anyone more than $100 to haul that garbage off. I'd have done it myself if need be. But the government doesn't care how poorly they spend your money. Heck, when done right their reckless spending can make a lot of good things happen for politicians. After all, it's good to be the king! Drinks on the house! Vote for Bush!
Well the problem is, they're buying votes with my money and yours. And paying a pretty hefty price for them. (I never knew I was as generous as I apparently am.) Not even a year has gone by and our County Council has decided that they need some more of my money. "We need to protect our environment and water resources" they say. Well, last time I looked, my septic tank was doing what it's supposed to, my water pump is pumping water just fine - I'm perfectly content with my environment. What changed all of a sudden? Could it be that they wasted the money they already took from me? Boy, I would be shocked. How could they have managed to do that? I can think of one way. Looks like I ended up paying someone $500 to haul off my garbage after all. And it will probably be a lot more than that. It's going to add up to about another $50 a year. If I live here more than 10 years, I'll have paid more than $500. I kind of like it here, hurricanes and all, so I'll probably end up paying ten times what I would have if the government hadn't taken care of it for me. But that's typical of most government programs. We don't get what we pay for. And the more aspects of our lives we allow politicians to intrude in, the worse our lives will become. Detroit is just giving us a glimpse into the future. The national debt stands at 7.76 trillion dollars today. It's increasing at the rate of 1.68 billion dollars a day. Who's going to pay this money? The disgracful answer is not you or I, all we're doing is paying the interest. We're carrying the balance over to future generations. But the big problem is, the debt grows. The government will always spend more than it takes in. The national debt has been raised nearly 80 times over the last 40 years. That means congress approves a new "debt ceiling" almost twice a year. The last one we saw was back in November 2004. At that point the government needed to increase the debt by another $800 billion. Almost another trillion dollars! Most Americans didn't even blink. Meanwhile, we're in an arms race with ourselves and have declared the new mission of the United States of America is to rid tyrrany in the world . Am I watching an episode of Super Friends as they battle the Legion of Doom from the Hall of Justice? Or is that actually the President of the United States declaring war on all the bad governments of the world? It's hard to make a distinction any more. We're up to our eyeballs in debt and we've decided to take on the eternal battle of good versus evil. They don't call it the eternal battle for nothing!! We'll all go broke. How about we set our sights a little lower. At least until we have commercial space travel. That way at least some of us will have a chance of getting off this rock before the government screws this whole planet up. I can see Australia being a penal colony for all the War on Drugs prisoners, Greenland can be a penal colony for the War on Terror prisoners, and maybe that little island of Madagascar can work for the prisoners of Regime Change. We don't need a big island for them because there won't be too many of them left when we get done with them. What is the definition of "Baathification" anyway? I can't find it in my dictionary. I guess we'll just have to wait to see what that word ends up meaning. Perhaps it will go something like this...."The act of forcibly removing from power virtually all of a political party, representative of a significant portion of the population, resulting in the almost immediate alienation of the wealthiest, best educated, most talented people of a nation - not to mention the most heavily armed. The usual result of this action is bloody civil war drawn out by a prolonged and costly stay by the invading army."
But some of us will just have to wait for Webster to tell us that.
A big part if that 1.6 billion dollars a day is our massive war machine. If I was the rest of the world, I would be getting awfully nervous. Nations that amass huge armies aren't generally looked upon favorably by the rest of the world. Luckily for everyone, they tend not to last long, either - even if they say they'll last a thousand years or more. If you pour most of your resources into something, you have to get something for it. What do you get with massive armies? A lot of bloodshed, that's what. And during times of war, as our country bleeds, we're always told that we have to make sacrifices, support the troops and all. Give up some freedoms, and give up a little more money, too. After all, "freedom isn't free". We need more government because politicians tell us we do. The reason they didn't protect us last time was because they didn't have all the tools they needed. If they could have searched people's houses without warrants before, none of this would have happened. If the government could have incarcerate people without telling anyone about it, none of this would have happened. If we were all carrying National ID's, none of this would have happened. Most of the country has bought into the idea of big government. It's hard not to when you're told from the very beginning by government workers, in their government schools, that government is the answer to everything. Every high school graduate in Moscow could have told you how evil America is and how lucky they were to have such a strong government as theirs protecting them from us. But man, did they pay for their protection! Good thing we don't allow our government to do those types of things to our children. The Soviet government shouldn't have been worrying about America, it should have been worrying about it's people and the health of the country. War machines seldom pay off, even when you use them to their best effect. And politicians don't use anything to its best effect. Wonder how much those new "bunker buster" nukes are going to cost? Believe it or not, I think the National Debt Clock is spinning even faster ....
Detroit's got nothing on Washington. The Federal Government is where most of your money will eventually go. The States are nothing but lines on a map of this country anymore. Poor U.S.S.R. they spent all that money on weapons and never even got to fire one of those expensive nukes. Do you think our politicians will make the same mistake?
Boy, all this from high taxes in Detroit. I need a life. Maybe I'll turn on the TV and see what's on Survivor. That will make things better. Thumbs up or thumps down, fellow Romans?
"I'm sorry, but I have trouble believing that the entire city of Detroit is insane. My suspicion is that the wrong "buttons" are being pressed with the wrong people.
They're used to a "liberal" orientation, so you have to emphasize liberal issues that we agree with. These are mainly social issues....the left-hand side of the Nolan chart.
However, even with that, there must be some urban dwellers in Detroit interested in the economic issues without emphasizing handouts. I would think that a coalition could be put together using this two-pronged approach." ~ Libertarian TV
It is a great idea, in theory, but it won't work. Why? Because the denizens of Detroit are really authoritarians trapped in a bicameral system.
Why do you think that the state ban on gay marriages went with a hefty majority, but the state still went Kerry.
They still care more about the economic side of things, but given the choice, they would take the bottom left of the nolan chart.
We need to re-educate the public about the truth about big government. Besides, this country was founded on the idea of small government.
It truly is striking that the suburbanite libertarians of Michigan, judging by their comments on this blog, have apparently given up on Detroit. That's a shame.
I find very few people willing to put any more effort into Detroit, not just libertarians. The Oakland County Executive has made it clear that he too is sick of seeing resources go there to be wasted.
For what it would take to get a small change in Detroit, other towns such as Dearborn, Livonia and Canton (who together has about 50% of Detroit's population) can be successfully changed on a larger scale.
Detroit would be like going to Moscow in the 1960's and trying spread the word of capitalism. The other towns are far more receptive to the message.
Why don't the citizens of Detroit utilize their right to impeach Kilpatrick?
What about ...
The spa visits.
The hotel room for his family babysitter.
The posh suite at the Luxor casino he and his family shared in Las Vegas.
The $850 steakhouse dinner.
The $836 charged to the city's credit card for his sister's stay in New Orleans.
The $3,837 he spent on chauffeured sedans over four days.
The $11,644 he dropped on Super Bowl hotel rooms.
this man is totally corrupt
You missed the $57,000.00 Navigator for his wife
The suite at Comerica Park
1.5 million to "security"
The fact that the mayor of Detroit is currupt is overshadowed that when the press exposes the corruption, the citizens get upset and protest the press' intrusion into city business and claim that they are just out to make Detroit look bad,
I still have trouble believing that what you all are saying about Detroit is true. I think your generalizations may apply to some Detroiters, but certainly not to all of them.
Nevertheless, I'm willing to assume you're right for the sake of discussion. So let's assume it is true. Perhaps what is needed is a little reverse psychology.
Perhaps libertarians should be urging Detroiters to institute a 100% tax on all incomes, sales, property and everything else in Detroit. All paychecks of Detroit residents should be turned over intact to City Hall. All businesses should turn all of their revenues over to city hall. Then, since city hall is doing such a wonder job in their view, everyone in Detroit will benefit from the wonderful utopia this new policy creates.
Let's see what their reaction is to that approach.
As a member of the LP of Michigan's Executive Committee, any Michigan resident who is interested in this issue is invited to email the chair, chair@lpmich.org.
Today's press conference was so bad it was nearly hilarious. if it was not such a serious matter, it would be funny.
You see, according to the mayor he is equal to the jews in Nazi germany, and the press is Adolf Hitler. Hitler (the media) is telling lies about the jews (the mayor) in an effort to get rid of him because he is a Black man (every mayor of Detroit since the late 60's has been black, and every person running for mayor in '06 to date - is black).
The only answer - the solution to these crazy lies the media makes up about the mayor? Ignore the news, the papers and the radio. It is all lies designed to bring down the mayor.
I don't believe ALL of Detroit's citizen's like this guy, he does have a huge following though and if I were to bet, I would bet on his winning re-election.
He probably has far less than 50% of the vote, but that is all he needs. He only needs to win the primary.
Sounds to me like an opportunity in the making. There is obvious almost no Libertarian presence in the city. So the LP winning this year's mayoral election is out of the question regardless of how much support the mayor has.
What should be happening instead is that the LP should be recruiting inside Detroit with the aim of creating a political organization in that city. An election year is the best time to try to identify those who are turned off by the current mayor and willing to consider an alternative. Clearly, they're already doing so if a majority are looking at other candidates within the Democratic party.
Gov. Sanford strikes me as being mildly libertarian. However, his tort reform package really misses the boat, in my opinion. Instead of going to the heart of the tort issues he raises, he simply cops out and puts a cap on damages. That has one very bad long-term effect. It reduces the incentive for the wealthy to honor the rights of others.
Here's one of the key points of his tort reform argument:
"Joint and Several Liability: Rules of joint and several liability allow plaintiffs� lawyers to seek payment from the defendant with the �deepest pockets.� Currently, businesses are threatened by lawsuits despite minimal association with incidents. In Columbia, a realtor was sued after a woman fell down in a house they were hired to sell � even though they didn�t own, build or design the house. In Spartanburg, a parent sued a local booster club after her son fell at a high school football game. A local hardware store was also sued, just because they had purchased an ad from the club. "
It's a great issue to raise. Too bad he doesn't solve it. His solution? Limit damages to $350,000 on non-monetary suits. How exactly does that stop frivolous lawsuits? It doesn't. It just cops out of the issue.
A much more libertarian solution would be to dive into the tort laws and rewrite them to make it plain that having only minimal association with incidents only leads to minimal liability. Even more importantly, he should rewrite the laws to make it clear what the victim's rights are. Instead his policy lightly lets off rights violators who are primary to the issue in order to protect those who are marginal to the issue. That's not justice.
On healthcare, he proposes merging together the state's Department of Health Services merger and Department of Rehabilitative Services in order to save $26 million the first year. Every libertarian applauds that. But that seems to be the limit of his healthcare reform package. That won't do anything to reduce the cost of health care in South Carolina, given that the main causes of the health care price-rise spiral aren't addressed.
On the whole, I'm glad he's advocating stuff that we libertarians can applaud. I just wish he'd go a lot farther.
Gov. Sanford strikes me as being mildly libertarian. However, his tort reform package really misses the boat, in my opinion. Instead of going to the heart of the tort issues he raises, he simply cops out and puts a cap on damages. That has one very bad long-term effect. It reduces the incentive for the wealthy to honor the rights of others.
Here's one of the key points of his tort reform argument:
"Joint and Several Liability: Rules of joint and several liability allow plaintiffs lawyers to seek payment from the defendant with the deepest pockets. Currently, businesses are threatened by lawsuits despite minimal association with incidents. In Columbia, a realtor was sued after a woman fell down in a house they were hired to sell � even though they didn't own, build or design the house. In Spartanburg, a parent sued a local booster club after her son fell at a high school football game. A local hardware store was also sued, just because they had purchased an ad from the club."
It's a great issue to raise. Too bad he doesn't solve it. His solution? Limit damages to $350,000 on non-monetary suits. How exactly does that stop frivolous lawsuits? It doesn't. It just cops out of the issue.
A much more libertarian solution would be to dive into the tort laws and rewrite them to make it plain that having only minimal association with incidents only leads to minimal liability. Even more importantly, he should rewrite the laws to make it clear what the victim's rights are. Instead his policy lightly lets off rights violators who are primary to the issue in order to protect those who are marginal to the issue. That's not justice.
On healthcare, he proposes merging together the state's Department of Health Services merger and Department of Rehabilitative Services in order to save $26 million the first year. Every libertarian applauds that. But that seems to be the limit of his healthcare reform package. That won't do anything to reduce the cost of health care in South Carolina, given that the main causes of the health care price-rise spiral aren't addressed.
On the whole, I'm glad he's advocating stuff that we libertarians can applaud. I just wish he'd go a lot farther.
Sorry...I posted twice by accident, trying to fix errors in the way the board transfigures some ASCII characters.
*swears under breath* And that is on the otherside of my state. Makes me wish I lived over there just to stir the political pot; get the sheep thinking.
Did someone just compare the trials and tribulations of a coddled mayor with the plight of the victims of Nazi Germany? Fantastic. Feel free to automatically negate your point by making ridiculous analogies.....
The mayor himself said that. That is when you know he is full of BS.
There is a certain USENet addage that applys to this...
Stonesean
The mayor's father did that in a press conference with the mayor, not one of us. You are correct, It automatically negates his point. I was pretty ticket over it. He did come out and acknowledge that it may have not been the best analogy.
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I know the Michigan LP is pretty active. I wonder if they'll now increase their activity within Michigan's largest city? Seems to me the time is right.
Posted by: Libertarian TV at May 16, 2005 02:29 PM