GOP zealots, enthralled by a fictitious fantasy of tax cuts and free-market nonsense, turned Kansas upside down.
By
Marcel Harmon
It’s safe to say that if Kansas’s Gov. Sam Brownback or any of the state’s
ultraconservative legislators had been in fictional astronaut Mark Watney’s
place (“
The
Martian“), they would have never survived the 543
sols
that Watney spent stranded on Mars before being rescued. It’s doubtful they
would have even made it back to the Hab in the first place after inadvertently
being left for dead in the middle of the fateful sandstorm that drove the crew
to abandon their mission. Survival depended on logically assessing the situation
at hand and subsequently deciding on a course of action based on empirical
evidence, sound scientific, engineering and even economic principles, and best
practices.
These aren’t key strengths of Brownback or ultraconservative
legislators.
And in this case they would have essentially been responsible for creating
the sandstorm that forced the astronaut team to flee Mars to begin with. Kansas
is experiencing a massive “lack of revenue” storm created by the
income
tax cuts of 2012 and 2013, seriously jeopardizing the state’s future and
quality of life for Kansans across the state. Everything from transportation
infrastructure to public education are struggling to stay upright in the
gale-force winds of the income tax cuts. Some Kansans are fleeing the state as
if having been given the order to abandon the mission, though most fight to
survive in this increasingly hostile environment.
For Kansas, a better protagonist would be the
Kansas
Center for Economic Growth (KCEG), a nonpartisan organization with a much
better grasp of economics and the use of empirical evidence to guide their
policy recommendations. Executive director Annie McKay, senior fellow Duane
Goossen and others at the KCEG are far better prepared to “
science
the shit out of this,” rescuing themselves and the rest of us from the
desolation of the Kansas economic landscape being wrought by the “lack of
revenue” storm.
In their recent report, “
Kansas
Public Education: The Foundation for Economic Growth,” the KCEG effectively
demonstrates a) the short- and long-term benefits of a strong public education
system (everything from reduced public healthcare costs to the attraction and
retention of workers/businesses), b) that K-12 education is an economic driver
in Kansas with a significant return on investment and c) that K-12 public
education is currently underfunded (and under threat) in the state of
Kansas.
To address this, KCEG makes the following two policy recommendations to
provide better support for Kansas public education and subsequently provide
broader economic prosperity across the state:
- Repeal the unaffordable income tax changes to generate revenue and invest in
schools.
- Replace the inadequate block grant with an equitable school funding formula
that accounts for what it actually costs to educate and prepare students for
life after high school.
KCEG’s report and policy recommendations are based on solid economic and
education third-party research, their own data analyses (conducted by qualified
individuals in an objective manner) and conversations with business, community
and school leaders from across the state. Contrast this with the ideological
zealotry of the Brownback administration, their ultraconservative legislative
allies and organizations like the
Kansas
Policy Institute (KPI), who’ve been standing firm on the tax cuts,
regardless of what the short- and long-term impacts on public services and
Kansans will be.
Of course if one assumes the goal is to significantly reduce the role and
size of state government, and to correspondingly increase a) the burden on the
individual (subscribing to the
myth
of the self-made “man”) as well as b) privatization, particularly for public
education which composes the majority of the state’s budget, then the tax cuts
are working. Unfortunately, they’ll eventually turn Kansas’s economy into a
something resembling the desolate Martian landscape.
KCEG’s report partially demonstrates from one economic perspective why such a
view of the world, when actualized into public policy, doesn’t work, except for
those at the top of the financial food chain. KCEG rightly points out that the
tax revenues devoted to state-provided services, such as transportation
infrastructure, public education and healthcare, to name a few, are in actuality
investments in some very “powerful economic development tools” available to
Kansas (and other states).
Looking just at public education, according to KCEG’s analysis, “[e]ach
dollar invested in public schools reaps a $2.62 return…” that benefits all
Kansans in terms of the quality of our workforce, the earning (and spending)
power of graduates, reduced healthcare costs, reduced crime control costs and
reduced welfare costs. The return on investment we
all receive from the
taxes that generate these much-needed revenues, regardless of whether one
receives a direct or indirect benefit (i.e., people without children or who were
home-schooled also benefit from a well-educated citizenry) doesn’t fit the
ultraconservative narrative of a free market utopia with little government
involvement and individuals solely responsible for their successes and
misfortunes.
And the wealthy do typically gain more than everyone else under such a system
– they keep more of their wealth with reduced taxes and are able to supplement
with their own resources any reduction in government services, such as sending
their kids to private schools. They often benefit from the increased
privatization that occurs if they are financially involved in the private
entities who provide the services. Those investments relative to business growth
are also focused on their own interests, and therefore the greater economic
benefits are more localized and smaller relative to the benefits and services
that were displaced through shrinking government. Trickle-down is an apt term –
it typically is just a trickle (if that) relative to the population at
large.
Research in other disciplines strongly support this as well. Continuing with
the theme of wanting to “science the shit out of this,” let’s take a look at
what research from the intersection of biology, behavior, economics and the
social sciences have to say (see “
Evolution:
This View of Life” as well as the
Journal
of Economic Behavior & Organization Special Issue on Evolution as a General
Theoretical Framework for Economics and Public Policy for a jumping-off
point into this research).
Free market principals and associated economic models are built in part
around the view of humans as
Homo economicus, making “rational”
decisions based on a narrow, relatively short-term cost/benefit analysis and
pursuing their self-interests relentlessly at the near exclusion of all other
factors. While it’s true such “selfish” behavior (selfish relative to other
individuals or the groups one is a part of) exists and manifests under a variety
of conditions, it by no means fully defines human behavior.
Our evolutionary history has also designed us to be extremely social
creatures who love to congregate. In contrast to selfish behavior, “pro-social”
actions benefit the larger, encompassing groups one is a part of (sometimes at
the expense of the individual or smaller group). Selfish behaviors tend to be
locally advantageous, particularly for the individual or smaller group
conducting the behavior, and more relevant in the short term, while pro-social
behaviors tend to be globally advantageous to the larger encompassing group and
society, and more relevant in the long term.
Pro-social behaviors also tend to enhance cooperation among group members.
And our social/cultural norms act as a kind of “glue,” binding together
unrelated individuals within larger groups and providing a measure of uniformity
in their behavior. From an evolutionary perspective, cooperation and a measure
of uniformity are hallmarks of successful groups.
And so individual decisions often are made to conform with social/cultural
norms and rules of interaction, typically benefiting the larger group as much as
or more than the individual. There also is the potential for such decisions and
actions to be a detriment to the individual relative to other group members.
Paying taxes benefits the larger group structures themselves – the institutions
of the state and subsequent services provided; it also benefits individual
citizens to varying degrees relative to the “services” provided by the state. It
may benefit the individual paying the taxes directly and immediately or it may
be an indirect benefit in that group longevity, stability and prosperity are all
contributed to by payment of taxes.
Individuals (and businesses) who avoid paying their fair share of taxes
(selfish behavior relative to the larger group), either illegally or through
legal loopholes, put themselves at an advantage compared to their fellow group
members who pro-socially pay their fair share. And wealthier individuals (and
businesses) who support drastically reducing or eliminating taxes also put
themselves at a benefit relative to their fellow citizens who depend to varying
degrees on state services. Such actions in effect shift the level of selection
from the larger group down to the level of individuals and smaller groups
(including communities and businesses), creating more intragroup competition and
decreasing group uniformity and cooperation.
Our pro-social and selfish natures, and their differing manifestations
relative to the dominant level of selection, developed over the course of our
evolutionary history spent as hunter-gatherers living in more egalitarian
groups. Social/cultural mechanisms and processes, such as transparency of
behavior, public shaming, gossiping and ostracizing evolved to minimize selfish
behaviors and maximize pro-social behaviors in groups that are smaller and less
complex than the ones we live in today.
Those same social/cultural mechanisms and processes can be effective in
modern society. However, the much greater number of individuals and subgroups,
often competing and cooperating on different levels at the same time and often
hierarchically nested within each other, require additional social mechanisms to
help maintain the level of selection primarily at the larger group level. Formal
laws, regulations and governing structures, including those requiring taxes be
paid to adequately fund services provided by the state, are examples of such
mechanisms. A few years ago,
David
Sloan Wilson, Elinor Ostrom and Michael E. Cox provided a more detailed
overview of the application of these mechanisms in modern society.
This was a simplified discussion of the literature, but it summarizes some of
the limitations of
Homo economicus as the only important aspect of
human behavior to consider in economic models as well as the fallacy of a free
market utopia where individual freedoms and responsibility reign supreme. It
also ends in the same place as the conclusions of KCEG’s
report: public
services, including a strong, equitable public education system, benefit us all
and therefore require adequate and fair taxation as a source of revenue.
Despite all of the evidence against the governor and ultraconservative
legislators clinging to a free market utopia, despite being
put
on a credit watch by Standard and Poor’s, despite many
previous
ultraconservative legislative allies now jumping ship as the fall elections
approach, the governor is standing by the tax cuts. And he continues to receive
support (and likely pressure) from the
Kansas
Policy Institute, the
American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and other similar groups as they persist
in whipping up a sandstorm of misinformation and spin.
As David Sloan Wilson, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Biology and
Anthropology at Binghamton University, has previously
stated,
“[Ideological] zealots are famously immune to experience, scientific evidence,
logic and common sense… Perverse [policies] with ruinous consequences make sense
to the economic true believer. If they fail, then the solution is to practice
them even more assiduously. The only solution to this problem is to break the
spell by changing the story to one that is more in tune with reality.”
And that’s what I’ve tried to do here (as well as KCEG and others elsewhere),
but I’ve little hope it will break the free market spell holding sway over the
governor. Nor should Kansans be fooled by those ultraconservative legislators
now calling for some degree of tax cut repeal. A term-limited governor who
continuously threatens to veto any legislation repealing or reducing the tax
cuts serves as great cover for those ultraconservative legislators with the same
goals, who are also seeking re-election.
Ultimately, the real hero in this story will be Kansas voters if they
recognize what it takes to “science the shit out of this” and use their voting
power to change the legislative landscape this fall.
Mitt Romney, of all
people, is claiming that Donald Trump has disqualified himself from the
presidency by refusing to release his tax returns.
