I wish that someone would hold the ideologues accountable.

A few years back a group of neoliberal activists, headed up by Bill Sizemore, bankrolled by money from various anti-tax organizations from out of state, persuaded Oregon voters to roll back and limit property taxes.  It took them several runs on the initiative ballot to get it passed but with the amounts of money they had available it was only a matter of time until the drum beat of propaganda got the job done and, finally, it did.  Corporate profits were made safer from taxation and relieved of a little more of the obligation to pay the cost of maintaining the economic infrastruture upon which they depend.

One of the major items in the bill of goods Oregonians were sold was that reducing property taxes was going to reduce prices for consumers.  According to the free market freaks who swell the neoliberal ranks, these property taxes were a part of the cost of goods sold.  A part of the price of everything was property taxes.  The more property tax a business owner had to pay--either directly or through the lease--the more that goods cost to produce or sell.  Therefore higher prices.  Therefore, cut the tax and prices would be reduced.

Ah, but wouldn't the landlords just keep the money?  And if they didn't wouldn't the merchants who lease the property, wouldn't they be tempted to pocket the savings?

Yes, they might be so tempted, said the ideologues, but competition in an unfettered market would prevent them from doing that.  Any landlord who didn't cut rent/lease rates would find themselves unable to find people to rent or lease because those in need would go to the rate cutters.  Therefore, all will be forced by the iron laws of competition to cut their prices.

Just common sense, if you think about it.

It didn't work that way, of course.  No prices were cut.  No rent/lease rates were cut.  The property owners simply pocketed the savings.  That cut throat market competition just wasn't up to the task assigned to it by capitalists and their apologists.  And so the bulk of the tax reform savings went to swell the stock dividends of large corporations, while the homeowners put on their tin beaks and pecked with the rest of the chickens--thinking all the time that they had actually won a victory for themselves rather than realizing how they had been manipulated into shifting even more of the tax burden to themselves under Oregon's flat income tax.

It is bad enough, from my point of view, that the ideologues are not held accountable for the curent budget crisis in Oregon--which has the worst per capita deficiet of any state.  When they cut property taxes they held schools "harmless" by shoving the cost of funding local schools into the general fund budget of the state.  That means income taxes funded schools, as well as all state services previously funded.  Tax rates were not increased to take care of the new demand on the state budget.  As long as the revenue stream was expanding during the super prosperity of the nineties everything was fine.  Once, however, it crashed there was no longer enough for schools and services so the schools started crowding the services out.  It has become so bad that not only are the services being cut so are the schools!!!  (This was, of course, the plan of the neoliberals all along.  The goal was to significantly reduce spending on state services and on schools--expanding the same of corporate earnings that go to dividends and reducing the amount that goes to keeping the economic infrastructure sound).

The worst part of this is that no one seems to have a long enough memory to say "Hey, what happened to the lower prices we were supposed to get?"  The media doesn't ask the question.  No one asks the questions.

There is absolutely no accountability. 

2:57:17 PM