Delete comment from: Elements Of Power
First, I didn't make the comparison between 1992 catalog sales and 2008 internet sales to illustrate a growth in intrastate economic activity. Volokh did. I'm pointing out the growth rate in that kind of personal economic activity was lower than growth in personal economic activity overall, so it is NOT supplanting traditional sales tax revenue sources overall, and I suggest that the revenues from internet sales actually stimulate other local activity but since it cannot be directly counted, the positive effect is ignored. I used to own a web design business; 98% of my Customers were small business owners who spent most of their income locally.
The lines I drew are called 'trendlines' for a reason. They're actually calculated, except for ease, format, and presentation purposes I chose to draw them.
My second point is that because an economic activity exists, does not mean a state or locality SHOULD or MUST tax it in lieu making themselves more efficient, and that the suppressing the sense of entitlement by governments (such as manifests itself in annexation practices - don't get me started) to this impulse should always be the first priority. My youngest brother is very high up in a major metropolitan city government and is a past state city management and ICMA poohbah. I've seen the effect of 'where you sit is where you stand' up close and personal. It affects even the most libertarian at heart. The impulse in a 'poor' city to find more sources for revenues in lieu of being fiscally responsible is too easy to follow, and the path to fiscal responsibility is harder. That the public is too stupid to elect people who will place responsible policies in place is at least partly the responsibility of the politicians and bureaucrats who have in places been all too happy to be irresponsible in the past hoping the consequences never catch up with them. The mechanism that prevents people from overspending and generates consequences for those who don't too often doesn't apply to government.
If you read my stuff regularly, you would also know that I know much of state and local government activity is done on the gov't teat. (http://elementsofpower.blogspot.com/2014/10/there-is-no-military-industrial-complex.html) As someone living in a state paying more federal taxes that it receives in federal benefits, I do not believe I should be subsidizing Utopian fantasies or inefficiencies elsewhere.
Mar 5, 2015, 10:25:40 AM
Posted to There's Legal Analysis, and then there's REAL Analysis