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“IN MY judgement, we have more government than we need; probably more government than the people want; and certainly more government than the wage-earners can pay for.”
These words by Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr., contained in his latest report to Virginians on his activities and attitudes in Congress, struck us as being especially pertinent right now, with local governments going through their budget-making and tax-setting procedures. Oh, we know—the usual complaint about Big Government is aimed at Washington and the federal establishment, and there’s no doubt that this is an awesome problem. But few people seem to realize how local government is growing, too, and of how costly it is becoming.
In the first of a new series of governmental finance reports released last week, the Bureau of the Census, U. S. municipalities and townships totalled $37.1 billion in fiscal 1974-75, of which 12.6 billion were county taxes, $21.1 billion municipal taxes, and $3.4 billion township taxes. These staggering figures don’t mean much to the average taxpayer, except when the rate of increase is calculated—the total was an increase of 8.5 per cent over the preceding year and 25.1 per cent over fiscal 1971-72!
INFLATION is a big factor in this increase, of course, but we suspect that the process of self-fulfilling bureaucracies is an even bigger factor, that Local Government may become as big a burden on the American taxpayer as federal Government is already.
In some respects, such as taxes on real estate, the burden is already becoming excessive, especially for such enterprises as farming, which require a large amount of acreage. It is no exaggeration to say that many people are literally being forced out of their own homes by high taxes.
87.7%