An interactive visualization of tax collections by state governments.
Note: this visualization has been updated. Click here for the most recent version.
Each year the United States Census Bureau collects data from the states regarding tax collections in various categories. I present this data starting in 1993, in an interactive visualization.
The values are for tax collections by the state only, not local governmental entities like cities, counties, townships, improvement districts, cemetery districts, library districts, drainage districts, watershed districts, and school districts.
Of particular interest is the “State Total” tab. Here you can select a number of states and compare their tax burdens. (Probably three or four states at a time is the practical limit.)
The effect of a proposed bill to end transfer of Kansas sales tax revenue to the highway fund is distorted by promoters of taxation and spending.
The bill is SB 463. The bill’s fiscal note tells how this bill, if passed, would affect the highway fund: “Beginning in FY 2018, the percentage of state sales tax and compensating use tax distributed to the [State Highway Fund] would be eliminated.” The fiscal note goes on to estimate that the highway fund would receive $553.4 million less sales tax revenue than it would otherwise in fiscal year 2018. (This bill proposed changes to other funds, but here I consider only highways.)
In an email to supporters, Economic Lifelines wrote: “SB 463 would redirect 35% of T-WORKS funding beginning in July of 2017. Passage of this legislation would be a devastating blow to the future of the T-WORKS program.” (Economics Lifelines is a group that lobbies for more spending on highways. Its members are primarily local chambers of commerce, labor unions, construction equipment dealers, and construction material suppliers. In other words, those who benefit from more highway spending, without regard to whether it is needed and wise.)
Former Kansas budget director Duane Goossen was more emphatic, writing: “Watch out! A very dangerous financial bill just surfaced in the Senate Ways and Means Committee, but it was promoted with language that hid the ultimate purpose and effect. Senate Bill 463 permanently transfers more than $500 million annually from the highway fund to the general fund.”1
Goossen has it backwards, however. The proposed bill would transfer nothing from the highway fund to the general fund. It would, however, stop transfers from the general fund to the highway fund.
There’s a difference, and it’s important. The highway fund has no claim on sales tax revenue other than what the legislature decides to send it. That amount has changed over the years. Kansas law specifies how much sales tax revenue is transferred to the highway fund. Here are some recent rates of transfer and dates they became effective:2
July 1, 2010: 11.427%
July 1, 2011: 11.26%
July 1, 2012: 11.233%
July 1, 2013: 17.073%
July 1, 2015: 16.226%
July 1, 2016 and thereafter: 16.154%
(If SB 463 passes as it stands now, on July 1, 2017 the rate would become 0 percent.)
Transfers from Sales Tax to KDOT. Click for larger.Nearby is a chart showing how many sales tax dollars were transferred to the highway fund. In 2006 the transfer was $98.914 million, and by 2015 it had grown to $511.586 million, an increase of 417 percent. Inflation rose by 18 percent over the same period.3
(It’s important to note that in some years money has been transferred from the highway fund back to the general fund. Worse, in some years KDOT has borrowed money for the highway fund, but it was transferred to the general fund.4)
You’d think that Goossen, a former state budget director, would understand the difference between stopping a flow of funds versus reversing the flow. He claims the latter, and it isn’t surprising to see this mistake. A few sentences in the article let us know Goossen’s ideology, which is that Kansans should be taxed more so that government can continue to spend: “This maneuver does not fix the problem caused by unaffordable income tax cuts, it just makes highways and children pay for it.” First, tax cuts are never unaffordable. It is government that is unaffordable. Tax cuts let people keep more of what is rightly theirs. That is, unless you believe that government has a legitimate claim to your income and assets, as Goossen does. Second, he complains that “recurring revenue does not begin to cover expenses.” That is true. But the proper remedy is to reform and cut spending. Goossen prefers raising taxes.
Economic Lifelines makes the same mistake. We can understand — but not condone — this organization’s motive. It exists for the sole purpose of drumming up support for spending that benefits its members. If its director, who wrote the email cited above, said that Kansas is spending enough or too much on highways, he undoubtedly would be fired.
But what is Duane Goossen’s motivation for twisting the meaning of a bill? That’s a mystery.
KDOT spending on major road programs. Click for larger version.To top it off, spending on highways has increased — notwithstanding the transfers from the highway fund — when we look at actual spending on roads. KDOT’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report shows spending in the categories “Preservation” and “Expansion and Enhancement” has grown rapidly over the past five years. Spending in the category “Maintenance” has been level, while spending on “Modernization” has declined. For these four categories — which represent the major share of KDOT spending on roads — spending in fiscal 2015 totaled $932,666 million, up from a low of $698,770 in fiscal 2010.
An interactive visualization of per-capita spending in the states, by fund.
Is your state a big spender? Or is it frugal with your tax money? To see how your state compares with others in spending, use the interactive visualization below. The figures presented are per-person, and not adjusted for inflation.
The example appearing below shows general fund spending for Kansas and some surrounding states.
From Michael Smith, Chair of Department of Social Sciences at Emporia State University: “Video is now available for the debated hosted by Murad Gündüz Jalilov on behalf of Up to Us and the Public Administration Club: Should the U.S. implement austerity measures due to the size of the national debt? Featuring Dr. Max Skidmore of UMKC and Mr. Bob Weeks of wichitaliberty.org.”
View below, or click here to view at YouTube. The video was recorded in a challenging acoustical environment. An audio recording that I captured and processed for clarity is available at Debate: The National Debt.
On the map of metropolitan areas, blue means faster growth, and orange means slowest. You can see that Wichita has the economic growth of a typical rust belt city. (Click charts for larger versions.)
The table showing changes in indicators over the past decade shows Wichita almost always below the middle.
The charts of trends over time shows Wichita falling behind the nation, then catching up in 2007 and 2008, but falling behind since then. As time goes on, the gap between the nation and Wichita widens, not narrows.
The response of Wichita political, bureaucratic, and civic leaders is, by any measure, new paint on an old barn, or just keeping pace with other cities. The Greater Wichita Partnership is just a new name for the same old collection of institutions and people who have been responsible for the dismal performance shown in Brooking’s Metro Monitor. In fact, if you visit greaterwichitapartnership.org and click on “Economic Development” you’re taken to the same old page for Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition, although with a new logo. Same old barn; new paint.
While we have to hope that the Wichita State University Innovation Campus works as advertised, we also must realize that dozens and dozens of major and minor universities across the country already have similar initiatives up and running.
In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Foreign trade is an important issue in this year’s presidential campaign. Heritage Foundation economist and Senior Policy Analyst Bryan Riley explains concepts that voters can use in making an informed decision. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 111, broadcast February 28, 2016.
Kansas City Star editorialist Steve Rose visits with Kansas State Senator Jim Denning.
It’s helpful for Kansans to have commentary and factual injection accompany a Steve Rose editorial in the Kansas City Star. In this case let’s look at a column based on his interview with Kansas State Senator Jim Denning.
Steve Rose: “The numbers can be sliced and diced to make a positive or negative picture, but it is undeniable that Kansas government itself is virtually bankrupt, and Brownback’s tax policies are responsible.”
A government can balance a budget by taxing more or spending less. We see the clear preference of Rose here: There is not enough taxation. We now have an efficiency study that shows some ways to save money. The question is why didn’t the legislature commission this study in 2012, the year in which it cut taxes?
“[State Sen. Jim Denning of Overland Park] Denning said: ‘The governor rolled the dice on the most aggressive tax cut policy in history, and things just did not turn out the way he expected.’”
It’s a shame to see Republicans — or anyone, for that matter — referring to tax cuts as “rolling the dice.” Cutting taxes simply means that people are allowed to keep more of what is rightfully theirs in the first place — which is a good thing. There is legitimate concern that the 2012 tax cuts were distributed in an unfair or unwise way. The way to fix that is to cut taxes for those who didn’t receive the purportedly unfair cuts.
As far as the results of the tax cuts, the governor should not have bragged as he did. The ability of government to manage the economy is limited, especially at the state level. Consider the Obama stimulus. The nation’s unemployment rate was always above the rate the administration predicted if there were no stimulus. See Brownback and Obama stimulus plans.
Further, what is the role of taxation in Kansas? Is it taxation or government spending that is purportedly good for the Kansas economy? Is it to support spending? If so, the tax cuts have not have an effect on spending. While some programs have been trimmed, overall state spending continues on a largely upward trend (for all funds spending) or remains mostly flat (for general fund spending). See Spending and taxing in Kansas.
Denning: “If we would have closed the [LLC] loophole, we would have brought in an additional $200 million, and the governor would have been a hero.”
Kansas General Fund spending, showing large deficits of revenue compared to spending in 2014 and 2015.The LLC loophole Denning refers to is the zero income tax on pass-through business income. Eliminating it and recapturing the $200 million would not have balanced the Kansas budget. In fiscal years 2014 and 2015 the state spent $340 million and $308 million more than it took in as revenue. Spending restraint is necessary.
Denning: “The Legislature has controlled spending to the lowest levels on record. … Our constituents wanted us to reduce spending, and we did.”
There are useful lessons we can learn from the criticism of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, including how easy it is to ignore inconvenient lessons of history.
It’s been three years since the tax cuts in Kansas took effect; tax cuts said by Governor Brownback to be a “shot in the arm” for the Kansas economy. Opponents of the governor and the tax cuts take great delight in reporting the generally anemic growth of the Kansas economy since then. Month after month, the tax cuts are condemned by Kansas newspaper editorial writers and the governor’s detractors.
I don’t think it’s a particularly strong form of argument to defend someone by showing how someone else is equally as bad — or worse. Similarly, criticizing someone for their fixation on A while they ignore the equally bad B: We need to know why they ignore B. Have they forgotten B? Do they not have time to write about B? Or do they ignore B because the fact of B is inconvenient to their ideology or their criticism of A? But I see that not everyone shares these ideals, and even so, perhaps we can learn something.
Many people remember that President Barack Obama promised that the unemployment rate would not top eight percent if the stimulus was passed. In January 2009 two Obama administration officials, including Christina Romer (who would become chair of the Council of Economic Advisers) wrote a paper estimating what the national unemployment rate would be with, and without, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, commonly known as the stimulus. That plan passed.
The Romer paper included a graph of projected unemployment rates. The nearby chart from e21 took the Romer chart and added
actual unemployment rates. (The accompanying article is Revisiting unemployment projections. That chart and article were created in 2011. I’ve updated the chart to show the actual unemployment rate since then, as black dots. The data shows that the actual unemployment rate was above the Obama administration projections — with or without the stimulus plan — for the entire period of projections.
The purpose of this is not to defend Brownback by showing how Obama is even worse. (Disclosure: Although I am a Republican, I didn’t vote for Brownback for governor.) Instead, we ought to take away two lessons: First, let’s learn to place an appropriately low value on the promises and boasts made by politicians. Then, let’s recognize the weak power government has to manage the economy for positive effect. Indeed, the lesson of the Obama stimulus is that it made the unemployment rate worse than if there had been no stimulus — at least according to the administration projections.
And, there is one more lesson to learn about our state’s newspaper reporters and editorial writers, but I think you’ve discovered that already.
How does the population in Kansas compare to the nation and other states?
One of the most-often repeated themes in Kansas is that we are a rural state. Therefore, comparisons of Kansas to other states must be tempered and adjusted by this. It seems to be common knowledge.
Rural populations of the states. Click for larger version.There may be several ways to measure the “ruralness” of a state. One way is the percent of the state’s people that live in rural areas. The U.S. Census Bureau has these statistics. In the chart made from these statistics, Kansas is right in the middle of the states. 25.80 percent of Kansans live in rural areas.
That’s not too far from the country as a whole. For the entire United States, 80.7 percent of the population lives in an urban setting, according to the 2010 census. For Kansas, the figure is 74.2 percent.
Over time, Kansas is becoming more of an urban state, just as are most states and the country as a whole.
Do these numbers mean anything? It’s common for Kansas politicians to emphasize — even exaggerate — whatever connections they may have to a family farm. It’s part of a nostalgic and romanticized view of Kansas, the Kansas of Home on the Range. We are the “Wheat State” and “Breadbasket of the World,” and “One Kansas farmer feeds 128 people (plus you).”
So while Kansas is in the middle in the ranking of percent of population living in rural areas, our state’s politicians continue to play the “rural card.”
Voters and policymakers should keep this in mind, although politicians may not.
Click here to view and use an interactive visualization of states and urban population.
Percent urban population by state, with Kansas emphasized. Click for larger.
