Letter: Question 1 has more to do with envy than need – Ipswich Local News | CPT PPP Coverage

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There are two main declarations in the flood of TV ads promoting the so-called “millionaire’s tax” that are both misleading and dead wrong.

One is that the rich will finally pay their “fair share.” Which is, of course, a matter of opinion. But according to one of the ads, “they (the rich) pay less while we pay more.” Which is supposedly a factual statement.

Not true. A flat tax, (which Massachusetts so far still has) means everybody pays the same percentage on their taxable income. If you made more money you pay more in taxes.

Indeed, the “fair share” people undermined their own argument when news broke recently that Massachusetts taxpayers collectively would be getting a refund of nearly $3 billion on the 2021 taxes they paid because the amount collected last year had exceeded a threshold set by an obscure 1986 law that most legislators, including the leadership, had forgotten existed.

As soon as word came out that the refund would be about 13% of what people had paid, the “fair share” people started complaining that the rich would be getting a bigger refund than the rest of us.

They’re certainly correct, but that would be because the rich paid more – the opposite of what the ads are telling you.

Second, those ads declare that all of the money raised is constitutionally guaranteed to go to education (you know – “for the children!”) and transportation.

One ad claims “politicians can’t spend it on anything else,” and accuses opponents who say there is no guarantee of how the money will be spent of lying.

Also not true. If the opponents are lying, then so is Secretary of State Bill Galvin. His voter’s guide says the use of that money will be “subject to appropriation by the state Legislature,” which means politicians can tell you anything about how they intend to spend it, but once it’s in their hands they can spend it any way they want.

The tiny Republican minority proposed one piece of legislation that would guarantee that the new money would have to be added to money already being spent on education and transportation, and another that would require the money to be put into a separate fund so its use could be tracked.

The Democratic majority rejected both. So, no accountability and no transparency. What could go wrong?

But hey, who cares about accountability and transparency when you have a chance to stick it to millionaires? This referendum is being pitched not on need (the state is awash in money) but envy.

The problem, in the view of its supporters, isn’t so much that the rich aren’t paying their fair share. It’s that the rich have more left over than the rest of us after they’ve paid their taxes.

And it illustrates a sad but accurate aphorism about the perverted urge to punish success: A poor or middle-class conservative sees a rich guy driving by in a luxury car and says, “Someday I’m going to have a car like that.”

A poor or middle-class liberal sees the same thing and says, “Someday we’re going to take that car away from him.”

Taylor Armerding
Ipswich