Tax cuts are not the answer
If I didn’t know any better, Garin Hovannisian’s
column (“Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts more
efficient,” Jan. 8) might have convinced me that, prior to
the arrival of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state of California had
been operating as a utopian socialist republic rather than a state
with many of the country’s worst public school systems, an
atrocious transportation network, a welfare system under which
absolutely nobody involved is faring well, millions of citizens
lacking adequate healthcare coverage, millions more living below
the poverty line, a grossly under-funded state park system,
countless imperiled environments, and two rapidly deteriorating
public university systems under which students are regularly being
asked to pay substantially more for substantially less.Â
Contrary to Schwarzenegger’s battle cry, California does
have a tax crisis. The effects of Proposition 13 have long placed a
stranglehold on the state’s tax base. As a result, we are
disproportionately dependent upon wildly fluctuating sales tax
revenues.
If we wish to have a decent society and enjoy a satisfactory
quality of life, we will have to pay for it, and that payment has
to be through taxes. Minute tax savings will in no way
compensate for programs being cut.
Mike Greenfield Fourth-year, environmental
studies