Let me be blunt: If you have a (real) job in Massachusetts, or if you have owned a home for a while, and you vote yes on Question 1, you are out of your mind.
You will be cutting your own throat.
Question 1 is the referendum to impose a graduated income tax on the state, by constitutional amendment.
It’s nothing more than a smash-and-grab by the local welfare-industrial complex. They call it the “millionaires’ tax,” which it will be until the supply of “millionaires” fails, which should take no more than a couple of years. Then it will be imposed on people making $500,000, then $100,000….
Within five years, everyone in Massachusetts will be a millionaire. At least for income tax purposes.
Question 1 would raise the state income tax rate from 5 percent to 9 percent, on incomes of more than $1 million. The problem of course is that the “millionaires” can flee.
Just ask Connecticut. Our neighbors most recently raised taxes on high-income earners in 2015. The next year, the revenue they collected from their 100 top taxpayers dropped by 45 percent.
You don’t think people move to avoid paying taxes? Consider Tyreek Hill, one of the best wide receivers in the NFL. He was thinking of signing with the New York Jets (who play in New Jersey). Then the Miami Dolphins in the no-income-tax state of Florida stepped up and made Tyreek an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“Those state taxes, man,” he said. “I had to make a grown-up decision.”
He saved $2.7 million by signing with the Dolphins. Lotta people around here gonna be making grown-up decisions too.
There are so many reasons to vote against Question 1. Let’s start with the fact that the hacks don’t even need the money. Beacon Hill is awash with cash, mostly funny money printed by Brandon. The state’s rainy-day fund has never been flusher – almost $7 billion stashed.
Next month, the state must return $3 billion to taxpayers (as opposed to Democrats) in over collections. Needless to say, the legislature has been balking at returning the money to the American citizens who actually work, preferring that it be lavished instead on their fellow Democrats, undocumented or otherwise.
Despite their unprecedented recent hauls, they still want to rob you of another billion-plus dollars of your hard-earned money. Look how much they’re spending to stuff their greedy pockets through Question 1.
According to the latest state filings, as of yesterday the welfare-industrial complex had raised $25,112,250.51. The billionaires, on the other hand, had barely half that much cash — $13,700,509.04.
As you’ve surely noticed, the hackerama is spending that cash on mailings and television. Talk about misleading – they keep saying that their ill-gotten gains from Question 1 will be spent on education and infrastructure.
Where the hell is the bunco squad when you need them?
First of all, governments can’t segregate funds that way. The hacks admitted as much in front of the Supreme Judicial Court four years ago. Even the tax-crazed Boston Globe has acknowledged that fact.
Even if you could earmark the money, what does “education” mean in Massachusetts? The teachers’ unions are largely responsible for that $25 million kitty – the same unions that shut down the state’s public schools during the Panic, the result of which were a) winter Caribbean vacations for huge numbers of “educators” to brag about on social media, and b) plunging achievement scores for their students on standardized tests.
Now the unions tell us they need still more money… for the children.
Then there’s the infrastructure. The Reason Foundation puts out a study every year of how much all 50 states are spending on roads and bridges, and their efficiency.
Massachusetts ranks 43rd in bang for the buck, which is actually an improvement. Along with New York and New Jersey, last year Massachusetts “spent more than $250,000 per lane-mile of highway.”
Five states spent less than $30,000 a mile. (Spoiler alert: all those states have Republican governors, real Republicans as opposed to RINOs.)
Maybe the saddest thing about Question 1 is that this will be the sixth time since 1962 the hacks have taken the graduated income tax to the ballot. Every time the electorate has been smart enough to reject it – until now.
The so-called advocates, though, have concluded that the voters have been sufficiently dumbed down that they can no longer realize that the “millionaires’ tax” is just another bait-and-switch, a grift, a flim-flam.
The problem now is that so few people pay attention, to anything. They’re too distracted by their smartphones to realize that their pockets are being picked.
Still, some vestigial realization seems to linger among the sheeple that a con is being worked on them. You can see it in the social media discussions about whether they will really have to pay – like, say, an Abigail Johnson or a Bob Kraft – when they sell that three-decker or suburban ranch house that their family has owned for 30 years.
The welfare-industrial complex says no problem, sellers can just collect their profits in annual payments of, oh, $200,000 or so over five years – as if that’s remotely realistic.
All these theoretical discussions revolve around one thing – how to make sure somebody else gets screwed while you’re getting free stuff. Threads in these Question 1 chat rooms read like the script from an old heist movie – the gang’s getting ready to knock over a bank, or a casino, or an armored car.
But all the characters are suspicious of each other, worried that when it comes time to divvy up the loot, they’re gonna get screwed.
And you know what? They are. Whatever happens, they’re going to end up stuck with the bill.
You want a heist movie? How about Goodfellas? Lufthansa was quite the score, wasn’t it? Then Robert DeNiro started shooting everybody who’d pulled it off – first Stacks the black driver, then Morrie the wig maker, then the guy who bought his wife the pink Cadillac….
First they came for the millionaires….
One last quote, from Benjamin Franklin during the American Revolution:
“We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
We’re not the Founding Fathers, but we are Massachusetts taxpayers. Why could our parents and grandparents figure this scam out and reject it out of hand, but we can’t?
Vote no on Question 1.