John Locke Foundation’s Joe Coletti co-wrote a piece with John Hendrickson, policy analyst with Iowans for Tax Relief, on recommendations for a stronger spending limitation and lower tax rates in Iowa. Looking to North Carolina, we can see the dramatic difference between higher spending per person and flat/lower spending per person.
For example, new programs to combat the opioid crisis should mean an end to less important programs, not new spending. Iowa cannot borrow or print money like the federal government, which means higher spending translates more directly into higher taxes. Iowans should look to North Carolina to see what is right. North Carolina is demonstrating that lower tax rates and controlling the growth of spending not only leads to economic growth, but also funding the priorities of state government.
Coletti and Hendrickson point out that like Dave Ramsey’s lesson, “you can’t out-earn your own stupidity”, no state can out-tax bad budgets. They recommend Iowa’s 99 percent spending limitations to be strengthened by a state constitutional spending limitation amendment. This advice has been recognized for centuries.
Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 18th century French philosopher whose ideas led to modern liberalism and progressivism, recognized that it is more important to slow spending than to increase revenues. “If one examines how the needs of a state grow,” he explained, “this will often be found to happen in about the same way as it does for private individuals, less by true necessity than by an expansion of frivolous desires, and often expenses are increased solely to provide a pretext for increasing revenue.”
Lower tax rates and controlling the growth of government spending would mean more opportunity and economic growth for Iowans. Read the rest of their piece here.
