You Get What You Pay for Nevada

First, I want to thank you for your comment on my blog. It’s always nice when somebody appreciates what you’re doing. Also, thanks for posting this entry – it really got me thinking and inspired me to dig into the numbers.

As you probably gathered, like many Nevadans, I’m libertarian-minded, which, of course, is a polite way of saying that I’m mildly allergic to taxes. Consequently, I approach most requests for additional taxes (or, as some in the state like to call it, “increased revenue”) skeptically. However, you’re absolutely right – by every single conceivable measure, Nevada has fared historically poorly against the rest of the United States in just about every area. We have higher than average high school dropout rates, our suicide rate is through the roof, our college education rates are poor… the list goes on like this. Meanwhile, what government services we have are almost always underfunded or mismanaged. Like you, I’m looking for possible solutions to these problems.

One example that concerns me, especially when I started to dig into our numbers, is our much-maligned neighbor to the west. California has one of the highest state tax rates in the nation, yet they are, at best, in the middle of the pack in most of the measures you cited above. Of course, much of California’s tax revenue is spent on servicing an astounding debt load instead of on providing services to its citizens, which certainly doesn’t help their cause. Even so, there’s a reason they got into debt in the first place – their leaders decided that their state government could do a lot more than it really could, or perhaps should, do.

The trouble with government is that, while many like to pretend it’s a scalpel, it more often behaves as something of a cudgel, or perhaps a hammer. It’s inefficient by design – every action that a democratically elected government takes has to take into account the views and opinions of every citizen that cares about that action, even those citizens who actively oppose not only that action, but also the goals that the action are meant to meet. A great example of this would be the Tahoe-Pyramid corridor that’s frequently discussed in our area, and how it must take into account the views of Hidden Valley residents that want everything to remain there as it was in the 1970s. Consequently, you either end up with some really nasty compromises, shady backroom deals, or the money just gets frittered away while nothing gets done (Example: 395 freeway to Carson City, and how it took 40 to go from planning to construction). For many of us, the problem isn’t the money – it’s how we suspect the money will be spent, given the inherent inefficiencies of the system.

So, what do we do? Personally, instead of seeing a bunch of poorly funded government programs, I’d rather see our government have fewer but better funded programs, which would let us keep our advantageous tax rates while still providing some basic services that people have come to expect from their state government. Being libertarian-minded, one of the first places I’d start is by revamping the criminal code so that our prison system is less crowded, freeing up funds for programs that actually do some good for everyone. I’d focus funds away from subsidizing our tourism industry, which creates largely low-paying jobs with poor or nonexistent benefits, via free advertising and instead either redirect them towards providing basic services or, alternatively, encouraging higher paying skilled jobs to come to Nevada.

That said, ultimately, it’s a matter of priorities. We have a choice – we can either have low taxes or we can have lots of top-notch government services. We can’t have both – there is, as they say, no free lunch. One of the nice things about this country is that there’s room for both viewpoints. If you want to live in a state with solid, well funded government services, New Jersey and much of New England is apparently the place to live. If you want to live somewhere with low taxes while still enjoying an urban environment, Nevada’s not half bad. Many of the people that moved here came here choosing the latter, which is why we’re where we’re at today.