Philadelphia freedom

It's amazing hearing the stuff coming out of Philly these days.

After years of wage and business taxes, ballooning social services, a fleeing middle class and a shrinking population, Philadelphia politicans are finally looking around the ruin they have made of a once-beautiful city and coming to their senses.

Philly's problem is obvious to anyone. A quick drive along City Line avenue is all the proof anyone would need to vindicate Reagan:

On the low tax, county side of the street are the high rise office complexes, teeming with well paid workers driving nice cars.

On the high tax, Philly side are where the office workers go to eat: fast food restaurants, staffed by workers who ride the bus to work.

It's apartheid, Pennsylvania style.

Hell, it's so obvious even the Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board has noticed, and it is siding against the tax-a-holic Mayor Street: Tax Reform Win one for the city:

Council's robust tax-reform plan would be a strong step toward making the city's taxes-for-services bargain far more competitive, which would help Philadelphia capitalize on its still-impressive economic potential as a center of culture, education, health care, biotechnology and financial services.

The program to phase out the business privilege tax - supported by Street and Council - would take aim at a levy that is almost diabolical in the way it discourages young entrepreneurs.

The mayor declines to believe econometric studies that suggest the tax cuts could encourage development and build the city's job base, in time generating tax revenues to replace those initially forsaken by the tax cuts.

No, there are no guarantees when it comes to such 'supply-side' effects. But ample evidence exists that they would occur in a situation such as Philadelphia's.

Jim McGreevey is going in the ooposite direction in New Jersey.

I don't have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, but a coworker has been nice enough to leave his copy on our lunch table at work, so I get to read it (it is really the finest newspaper in the country).

The McGreevey article was headlined: "On Less Reason To Live In New Jersey."

(Hmmmm. My list of reasons to live in New Jersey was already pretty short. My goodness, I left New Jersey as soon as I could.)

It went on to describe McGreevey's tax hikes and how they were destroying New Jersey's competitive advantage over New York. High taxes are bad for business and growth? Such things used to be considered revolutionary thoughts.

Now this knowledge so abundant that it can even be found inside the heads of Philly's socialist City Council. It must of gotten there by osmosis.


- posted by total @ 6/24/2004 05:41:00 AM .