The death of Saipan

The CNMI looters are back at it again. In the midst of our worst economic recession ever, they want to do the worst thing imaginable: They want to raise taxes across the board. They want to do this in order to keep the government functioning, because–unlike private businesses–the government dares not reform its wastrel ways.
Hence the looting by excessive taxation.

We are told that taxes must be raised in order to improve our infrastructure–whatever that happens to mean, because “infrastructure” is never completely defined.

Do we need more paved roads? Do we need more telephone poles? Do we need more public basketball courts? How might building more classrooms help our economy? By practicing Keynesian economics? By the age-old tradition of priming the pump? Does the voting public fully realize that as much as 75 percent of government funds already goes toward government salaries instead of infrastructure maintenance and development?

The government reportedly wants to raise taxes in order to boost our economy through enhanced government spending. If this premise is true, we must ask ourselves: Is government spending vastly superior to private sector spending?

Government spending is certainly much more wasteful, but is wasteful spending the key to creating enduring prosperity and revitalizing this troubled economy? Can we really spend ourselves into wealth instead of bankruptcy?

It doesn’t take an economist to tell us that the CNMI is headed for certain financial ruin. Common sense is all we need; tragically, many of our local politicians are utterly devoid of any semblance of common sense. They have absolutely no respect for freedom, limited government, market forces, and sacred private property rights.
They feel as though they can step in and take whatever they want, regardless of the dire consequences of their nefarious decisions.

Why should any investor in his right mind invest in the Commonwealth? To pay more taxes? To benefit from a weakening economy? To deal with still more cumbersome and irrational government regulations? To face the continuing threat of a federal takeover?

And when these private enterprises have finally left in droves, who will pay for the government’s taxes then? The local government workers–who get their incomes from the private businesses that have fled? The federal government–at the price of federalization and permanently lost local self-government?

The CNMI’s politicians have already blighted the CNMI with an estate tax. Now they are seriously contemplating property taxes, sales taxes, reduced rebates, and the like.

Under such conditions, why should any educated indigenous resident stay home? They might as well reside in the United States (or Guam) and subject themselves to American sales, property and estate taxes–to the tyranny of the IRS–since Saipan, our home, will no longer be free.