taking the tax out of taxachusetts

Saw a bumper sticker in Cambridge the other day (next to a Ron Paul sticker!) encouraging people to vote Yes in November to ban income taxes in Massachusetts. Finding this more than a bit incredulous, I had to check out the website to see if it was a joke or if it was some radical-fringe thing that was far too good of an idea to ever take hold among the masses. And, to my surprise, there really is an initiative afloat to ban state income tax. And, yes, it got enough signatures to be put to a state-wide vote in November.

I find it amazing that, in a state like this, such an initiative could gain so much ground. I suppose I'm going to have to stop using Taxachusetts as the butt of my liberal jokes because there are apparently a lot of right-thinking people somewhere in this state. It would seem to be a safe assumption that such a thing would be voted down in a landslide, but according to the website, the polls are about even (46% opposed to the initiative, 45% in favor). Granted, some of those people may be the "Great, I'll just stop paying state income taxes and still get all my goodies!" types whose "positions" are in no way the result of any logical thought process, but in this rare case their lack of intelligence could actually benefit the whole of the population.

Maybe this is the result of too much too fast by the state government. You know what they say about a frog in hot water...perhaps the state went so crazy with income taxes that enough people woke up and started taking some real action to halt the madness. Or, less likely but possible still, maybe there's starting to be a shift in popular opinion away from massive, bureaucracy-laden programs that fail with near-absolute reliability.

Either way, the fact is that a ban on state income tax would radically change my opinion of this state and put it on the short list of places I'd be willing to consider settling down in. Of course, I'd have to wait and see how the government went about stealing money with the ban in place. One thing we all know is no government will just roll over and allow its funding to shrink without trying some new and creative ways to keep the gravy train flowing.