California's Losing Proposition

...Almost nobody likes the bureaucrat: At least in the United States, it is a tradition dating from the age of the spoils system to look upon the government employee, if not as a parasite, then as a beneficiary of the public purse who is likely to give little in return for his salary and is always tempted to lord it over the ordinary citizen...

...Undoubtedly, there has been too much experimentation in schools, and some of it, besides the additional expense involved, has done little good or even actual harm...

...Our middle class has borne a heavy burden in order to raise the standard of living of the less fortunate on the low rungs of the economic ladder...

...Although more than half of this tax is paid by business enterprises holding urban or rural land, the battle centered around the problem of the home owner: His burden was indeed becoming unbearable, because with the constant rise in property values the person who lived in a house, without any intention of selling it, had to pay ever increasing taxes—even if the tax rate remained the same...

...it was not merely material strength that enabled this had to be overcome, this appeal has on the whole been successful...

...it will be as fatal to the position of the United States in the world as it will be to the inner coherence of our nation...

...But the ability of the United States to hold its own against world Communism does not depend on physical armament alone...

...It is to the immense credit of the American people that despite the many impediments and hesitations that destruction of the welfare state may push us back to the time of Herbert Hoover...

...A still more important local activity is, of course, education...

...Since the Roosevelt revolution of the 1930s, the United States has been a welfare state...

...The fundamental issues must be raised...

...It would be wrong, however, to rely on such a spontaneous reversal to turn things around...

...The curtailment of school budgets will lead to a great deterioration of the educational system and, to a large extent, destroy the hopes for a better society...

...If we now dismantle our welfare institutions we will tear apart our nation and make credible the hostile propaganda that pictures the United States as a country in which the poor are oppressed and the rich dominate public life...

...then the state would have had to raise some other tax, preferably the income tax, and use the increased yield to indemnify local communities, as far as necessary for the loss of revenue...

...In effect, but not necessarily in the intention of the majority of voters...

...would be eliminated or cut back...

...that the burden has caused grumbling is only human...

...The proper remedy would have been to lower the tax rate as assessed values increased...

...whether the funds will run out during the school year and force a premature closing is another matter...

...in other areas, primarily involving certain types of communal work, it is in the vanguard...

...It also requires a two-thirds majority in each house of the State Legislature and in local governing bodies for any increase in state or local taxes, thus making it almost impossible to raise compensatory funds...

...In some areas, notably the field of health care, it continues to lag behind similar socially advanced countries...

...in particular, the consequences for the schools cannot be known for at least several weeks...

...No doubt a large segment of the supporters of California's Proposition 13, and of corresponding drives in other states, consists of conservatives —of the same people who are the first to suspect that in disarmament negotiations the United States is making too great concessions to the Soviet Union...

...Only in this way can the spreading of the antitax hysteria—which has not merely caused groups in other states to demand an emulation of the California example, but also has produced the suggestion that a National Convention be called to limit Federal tax revenue by constitutional amendment—be halted before it leads to a national catastrophe...

...Will not the heirs of the New Deal tradition man the ramparts...

...These are the underlying elements in the "tax revolt" that began in California with the Howard Jarvis-Paul Gann constitutional initiative, and that the two authors are currently trying to spread over the nation...

...Many of the voters who put in their ballot for the initiative will be unpleasantly surprised at the loss of communal services resulting from the loss of revenue...

...The initiative that has become state law reduces the tax rate in an unreasonably drastic manner—limiting it to 1 per cent of assessed valuation—not much more than one third of what it now amounts to on the average in California counties—and rolls back assessments to those of 1975-6, while at the same time forbidding any annual increase in assessed values in excess of 2 per cent...

...In some instances this made it impossible to keep the property...

...Yet this does not alter the fact that the schools needed more money to do their job properly, particularly to take better care of children from disadvantaged homes...

...but that today, when the task is not nearly finished, the grumbling has here and there developed into a decision to abandon social responsibility is a tragedy...

...If something like that should happen, there may well be a backlash on the backlash: People who were weary of taxes and consequently took away the revenue may become weary of the reduced services and restore the revenue, partly or wholly...

...This will be a boon to our antagonists and a deep discouragement to our friends...

...In most states of the Union, but perhaps in California more than in others, local communities, especially the large cities, have been financing a great many welfare measures, such as child-care centers, visiting-nurse services, special facilities and programs for the elderly, and inexpensive vacation camps...

...it must be pointed out with all possible force what is basically wrong with the decision of the California voters...

...There will be a rude awakening...

...In effect, therefore, the California measure is an onslaught against the idea that the United States should become a country where the public power feels responsible for removing inequities of its economic and social system...

...Instead, the idea was cultivated that city and county administrations were so terribly overstaffed as to make it possible to maintain approximately the same level of services if just those who were not doing any useful work were thrown out...

...But the authors of Proposition 13 carefully avoided spelling out exactly what Carl Landauer, a veteran contributor, is professor of economics, emeritus, at the University of California...

...To be sure, there were in many minds vague ideas about curtailing social programs benefiting only cheaters and lazybones, created by unworldly do-gooders or power-hungry bureaucrats anxious to expand their jurisdiction, and these moods played a role in the success of the initiative...

...There has been some talk that the schools will not be opened in the fall for lack of funds, but this is not credible...

...Those engaged in the sordid business of using the tax-weariness of the middle class for the country to win two world wars, but also being united within itself and with other nations in a spirit of freedom and human progress...

...That the results have not reached the level of original expectations is mostly due to the inherent difficulties of the task...

...But there is one essential difference between the situation existing elsewhere and the political foundation of American welfare policy: Whereas in many nations of the world those who need help constitute the great majority of the population, and thus their self-interest could be mobilized in support of welfare measures, in the United States the truly needy have long been a minority, so an extensive welfare policy became politically possible only through an appeal to the conscience of the majority...

...The immediate target of the initiative was the California property tax, the principal source of revenue for counties, cities and school districts...

...It is not yet clear what must cease to be offered...