Missouri’s poor-boy state government has a lesson to teach Kansas lawmakers — just in case enough of them are in the mood to learn.
The headline over the lead editorial in Sunday’s Kansas City Star summarizes the story: “Missouri by the numbers: A state in trouble.”
Here are the key facts the Star reports: In 1970, Missouri ranked 39th among the states for state and local taxes and fees collected per resident. In 2006, it ranked 47th — just three from the bottom of the 50. In 2007, Missouri’s gross domestic product — the economic output per resident — ranked 36th among the 50, down from a ranking of 18th in 1970.
Missouri’s per capita income — a measure of the economic well-being of its residents — dropped from 25th in 1970 to 35th in 2008.
Conclusion: low tax rates don’t boost the economy.
“Over the last 15 years,” the Star commented, “elected officials have reduced the corporate franchise tax, granted a bushel of tax exemptions and eliminated the general revenue sales tax on food. They have handed out tax credits like Easter candy, depriving the treasury of more than half a billion dollars in 2011.”
As a consequence, the editorial points out, “In the state of denial known as Missouri, school boards contemplate laying off more teachers, families anguish over excessive tuition rates at public universities. Overworked medical professionals struggle to meet the demands of one of the nation’s unhealthiest states.
“Instead of a healthy debate on finding new sources of revenue, lawmakers bicker over which is the lesser evil: to further shortchange the public universities or deprive blind Missourians of health care.
“They act as though prosperity is just one new tax credit or income tax adjustment away. It isn’t.”
KANSAS SEEMS headed down the same destructive path. The budget taking shape in Topeka is full of tax reductions — except for the bottom tier of citizens who will, it could have been predicted, pay more. And it under funds the most important functions the state provides to the people of Kansas.
It is justified on the theory that less equals more; that tax cuts, tax credits and tax exemptions will produce more state revenue.
But there are no examples of tax cuts producing economic growth. The argument is concocted of 10 percent supply-side theory and 90 percent ideology, fueled by billionaires’ bucks, but fact-free. Missouri’s example shows the theory to be 100 percent baloney.
Missouri has been at the low-tax business long enough to be a painful example to its neighbors. If running a state on the lowest possible tax rates produced prosperity, Missouri would be overflowing with milk and honey. Instead, it is so poor it must cheat its students, impoverish the parents of college students, under fund health care for the poor and let its highways go to pot.
Kansas doesn’t have to go down that miserable road.
