Taxachusetts wrongly named? - Tax burden per US state

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by JohnT


That's the best you can do?

Earliest reference to the word "Taxachusetts" that I can quickly dig up is from 1978 (before Reagan was Pres, btw): An article in Land and Liberty by Edith S. Capon.

As I said above, by 1977 the term was commonly used throughout New Hampshire. Your source may not have included William Loeb's editorials. Sadly I can't recall the name of his newspaper.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by TCO


Did you get some TJ weed or something? Look at the article:

High tax:
Maine 13.00% - BLUE
New York 12.00% -BLUE
Hawaii 11.50% - BLUE
Rhode Island 11.40% - BLUE
Wisconsin 11.40% - BLUE

Bottom 5 tax heavy states:

Alaska 6.40% -RED
New Hampshire 7.40% -BLUE
Delaware 8.00% - BLUE
Tennessee 8.30% - RED
Alabama 8.70% - RED

I took top five top mean the best states (meaning lowest taxes) while the bottom five (meaning highest taxes). Now that I look again it seems I had it backwards.

[Patroklos]

I think it works more like one party is out to exempt the the poor from social responsiblility while forcing the better off to carry the poor on their backs.

This creates more problems than it solves. I don't think it actually solves any.

[gunkulator]

A Granite Stater (from New Hampshire) here to explain how we ended up with the 2nd lowest tax burden - and in the Northeast to boot! NH probably has the most unusual state government.

All terms of office (house, senate, gov) are 2 years and the turnover can be dizzying. The NH state house has 400 members which makes it the world's second largest elected body, after the US House. I live in a town of 6000 people and I personally know both of my representatives.

The legislature only meets a couple months out of the year and budgets are only done every two years. For their troubles, our legislators are paid the whopping sum of $100 per year so pretty much all of them have another job. Getting 400 people to agree on anything is next to impossible so relatively few laws are passed. Currently, the governor is a Democrat while the legislature is mostly Republican and that only slows the gears further.

The governor's office is weakened not just by the short 2 year term, but also with an elected Executive Council. The Council has veto power over appointments and other facets of executive operations. There is no Lt. Gov.

NH has a constitutional prohibition against unfunded mandates. That means the state is not allowed to mandate ANYTHING unless it provides the funds to pay for it. NH has neither a state income tax nor a state sales tax so there just aren't a lot of funds to go making new laws with.

The vast majority of taxes raised in NH are local property taxes. Except for a handful of cities, NH towns are run via Town Meeting, i.e. direct democracy. Once a year, the citizens gather to debate anything and everything regarding town business. Votes are made and the tax rate for the year is known then and there. A group of Selectmen are elected as executives to collect and spend the money but they are unable to raise additional revenue. Only the whole town voting has that power.

Most towns have their share of old curmudgeons with nothing better to do than to scrutinize every single line item on the budget. They all show up at the Town Meeting and biatch and moan about every freakin' pencil that the town buys. Waste, fraud, abuse, cronyism, nepotism and the like are much harder to hide on the local level.

Now the bad news: There are large disparities between rich towns and poor towns. Since most money comes from local sources, poor towns have to make do with less. Also, property taxes are very high which makes it difficult for people on a fixed income to keep their homes. They are the source from which most of the old curmudgeons come from. Also, we have our share of Libertarians, Free Staters and other extreme groups who feel that even our limited state government is still too much government. I guess that's what you get when the state motto is "Live Free or Die".

[Odin]

Man, New Hampshire is f*cked up.

[Imran Siddiqui]

New Hampshire . Wow... that's a very interesting way to run the government. I love the large legislature size and law against unfunded mandates.

main difference is one party is inclined to help wealthy people and the other party is inclined to help common citizens.

The sad thing is you actually believe this (if I was being catty, I guess I could have said I didn't know which party was which, though knowing your political persuasion, I could guess, though Ned could say exactly the same thing and mean something entirely different).

[Berzerker]

NH

Western states often have to support a lot of road miles per capita for instance, while suffering from lower utilization rates for schools etc.

The Feds own much of the west so these states get more in federal handouts too. I'm surprised New Mexico has lower rates than Arizona, Wyoming and Idaho, all of which have reputations for being "conservative". Maybe Gary Johnson, a more libertarianesque guv, was able to get lowered rates when he was in office.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by gunkulator
The NH state house has 400 members which makes it the world's second largest elected body

House of Commons, UK

Lok Sabha, India

[Starchild]

Didn't Outbreak teach us anything? World = continental USA

[KrazyHorse]

Both of those are also larger than the US House of Representatives, BTW

[gunkulator]

. My bad. Meant to say nation instead of world. I was reading a news article on the World Champion Boston RedSox at the time - you know, the team that won the World Series.

[KrazyHorse]

AFAIK, unless there's a similarly silly-sized regional government somewhere else, NH makes it to number 6, though

[KrazyHorse]

Maybe 9. Forgot about Japan, Italy and Poland

UK House of Commons seems to be the top, though, at 659 members.

[KrazyHorse]

I give up. Completely forgot about Russia and South America.

[Colon™]

The European Parliament has over 700 members.