Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Clarification for Darbo and the Show Me Institute

Clarification for Darbo and the Show Me Institute

Compatriot Darbo and I were recently talking about the privilege of working in the city, wherein I get to contribute a percentage of my income to the city's varied featherbedding commissions, initiatives, and giveaways to developers. Darbo thought the payout was .5%, but I maintained it was 1%. I didn't have a pay stub immediately handy to offer irrefutable proof, so we tabled the discussion.

Today's column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by David Nicklaus proves us both right:

Unable to think of a better way of raising $130 million a year, St. Louis leaders have treated the earnings tax as a necessary evil. They listen sympathetically to businesspeople's complaints, and then they draw up another annual budget that depends critically on collecting 1 percent of each worker's earnings and 0.5 percent of each employer's payroll.

So Darbo was thinking like an employer, and I was thinking like an employee. Typical.

Nicklaus is talking about some new study that would replace the earnings tax with a tax on land to replace the property tax:

Haslag's study recommends phasing out the earnings tax, and phasing in the land tax, over 10 years.

His model suggests a 10 percent tax on land value, in addition to the current 1.44 percent tax on land and buildings, but Haslag says a lower rate might produce enough revenue to replace the earnings tax.

Over time, Haslag says, the new tax regime would do wonders for the city's economy. The number of jobs in the city would double, and wages and property values would rise.

Wow, coming up with these ideas while on the public dime (the author is a professor at a state university). That's like a whole other sort of featherbedding, but I digress.

Maybe the concept makes sense in the ethereal world of his projections versus the city's projections, but it would never work in the real world, nor will it get implemented. Because face it, it shifts the tax burden from the poor proles who go to work every day and onto the landed barons for whom the city continues to suspend tax obligations and cosign loans.

No, the city of St. Louis will continue to fatten its coffers with the money from the powerless and redistribute it to the powerful. Except for its vigorish, necessary to keep the commissions and development initiatives going and to keep landowners and developers happy.

Of course, I'm just fermenting sour grapes here because I'm one of those faceless workers who comes in from the suburbs, gets a small portion of my fleece snipped, and goes home to a functional municipal government and public school system with actual attending students. Someone who has had the opportunity, or at least the offer, or maybe just the thought offered to buy land in the city, but who vowed to never do so, so I'm out of the running for a good city government rub down.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:34 PM