If today’s GOP has one unshakable article of faith, it is that taxing the rich retards economic growth; that even the most modest tax increase will dissuade the “makers” from, well, making –hiring, expanding, or working harder.
So–how to explain why the Indiana General Assembly, which is lopsidedly and unequivocally Republican, piles taxes on the state’s rich counties and redistributes that money to the poor ones?
As a friend of mine whose research is focused upon the Indiana economy recently noted, Indiana heavily taxes its “rich” metropolitan counties–Marion County prominently among them–for the benefit of rural counties with dramatically dwindling populations. A study by the Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute found that the 10 counties that make up the Indianapolis metropolitan area were major donors to rural Indiana; residents here paid 33.5 percent, or $4.6 billion, of total state taxes and received 28 percent, or $3.8 billion, back.
I guess a welfare state is in the eye of the beholder. The (rural) home counties of so many state lawmakers couldn’t explain this very un-Republican impulse for redistribution…could it? Surely this deviation from such a core belief–or the “core belief” itself–couldn’t be based upon self-interest.
Ah, irony. Thy name is Indiana.
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