The A-Team View of Taxes

As a kid growing up, I used to love watching the A-Team every week. Each week the A-Team would find someone in trouble, usually due to a violent gang of bullies, but the A-Team would be able to out-think and out-fight the bad guys.

Amazingly, though the A-Team fights typically included hundreds of rounds of machine gun fire, a few explosions, a good fist-fight (with someone being thrown through a table or a plate glass window), and at least one car being flipped over during a chase, no one was ever killed or seriously wounded (except in one episode where Murdock got shot, and Mr. T had to give him a blood transfusion).

As ridiculous as this premise seems, it is exactly the view Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell holds in regards to taxes. No matter how much the state takes from residents, no one will be harmed.

Lately, he’s applied this thinking to his proposed increase in motorists fees and tax on big oil companies – but he’s also referred to the ease with which taxpayers could eat his income tax increase, or any of his dozens of tax proposals.

However, you can’t take more money out of the pockets of Pennsylvanians and expect there to be no effect. People may not “lose their homes,” but they will reduce spending elsewhere, with real economic consequences.