Silver State Libertarian Leanings

At least, according to Dave Aiazzi. I don’t know if anyone else heard him tear into me on Bill Manders yesterday, but according to Mr. Aiazzi, the reason I am upset about him wanting to raise taxes is because I dont’ understand them. By the way Dave, the sales tax in Washoe County is 7.375%. Two folks that so intimately understand taxes, Cashell and Aiazzi, had no idea what the sales tax is in Washoe county. It wasn’t until the end of the third hour of Manders that a caller gave them the correct amount.

On a side note, Mr. Aiazzi also said he would have liked to have had this debate with me, but he wasn’t given the opportunity. Somebody should get in touch with the city council’s IT department, cause apparently no one ever showed Dave how to use his “reply” button on his email. Nor did he bother to come down from his elitist throne ask one of the dozens of news outlets who got my press release for my phone number. It was on there. In fact, Bill Manders read my press release outloud. That may have been a great opportunity to have asked for my contact information. Anyway, moving along.

As much as I hate to admit it, Mr. Aiazzi is right about taxes. I don’t understand them. I do, however, understand math. My mistake was thinking that since they both use numbers and mathmatical functions, they would be the same. Here’s an example.

All of the figures I am using for this example come from this RGJ article written back in 2002. It’s a little old, but it was the best info I could come up with.

When we talk about police levels, we talk about them as officers per 1000 residents. We are currently at about 1.8 officers per 1000 residents. We would like to be at about 2.5 per 1000, which is where we were 15 years ago. So let’s do some quick math.

Let’s say for a second, 15 years ago we had 1000 residents. The real number is obviously much higher, but let’s use 1000 to make the math easy. So we had 1000 residents and their 7.375% sales tax (which was actually lower then, but what the heck) paid for 2.5 cops. Now, over the next couple of years, that number doubled to 2000 residents. Mathimatically, the 7.375% sales tax that those extra 1000 residents paid should have paid for an extra 2.5 cops. This is where Mr. Aiazzi becomes correct; I don’t understand.

Because according to Mr. Aiazzi, we now need to increase taxes becuase even though 7.375% of the first 1000 paid for 2.5, 7.375% of the second 1000 is not enough to pay for an additional 2.5, and so we have to raise taxes. Makes perfect sense, right?