The Grand Illusion
Utah state legislators are “renowned” for talking out of both sides of their mouth. One of their proudest achievements is reducing state income taxes for four straight years, by more than a billion dollars. But what they’re not telling constituents and taxpayers is how little those tax cuts really mean… and what they actually cost.
For example, the latest tax cut was estimated to reduce the tax bill of Utah taxpayers by $167 million, which sounds significant, but isn’t. The lowest quintile of taxpayers would only get a $24 tax cut. Upper middleclass taxpayers, those making $200,000, would receive $174. In addition, Utah is one of only eight states to tax Social Security income.
In the meantime, the legislature just mandated a fifteen-million-dollar budget cut for the university (SUU) where my wife works and a hiring freeze, as well as comparable cuts for all state universities. Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, a Republican, recently stated that, in addition to that cut, the Legislature was exploring cuts of around ten percent across all sixteen of the state’s public colleges and universities in 2025.
This might make some sense if enrollment were declining, but Utah is the only state in the union where non-immigrant population is growing, almost certainly because the Mormon faith continues to emphasize large families. In response, SUU’s enrollment grew by 1,000 students this school year (up to nearly 16,000), and total public university enrollment grew by over 8,500 students, one of the largest increases in years.
Yet the legislature is mandating that universities accommodate more students and provide more services with less funding. This is at a time when an increasing percentage of teaching employees are leaving the field because of comparatively low pay and increasing bureaucratic and administrative loads having nothing to do with teaching. One of the unmentioned side effects, also, is that the legislature mandated a 3.5% tuition increase for the 2024-2025 school year, so that students and their parents pay more (roughly $300 per student just this year ) while the state funds a smaller and smaller percentage of the costs of running the universities.
But the politicians continue to trumpet near-meaningless tax cuts.
Why would politicians be blatant hypocrites? Well, it can get them elected president…
This is just another element of the Republicans’ culture war; that is, public education. Since one can’t enlist parental rights for college age kids at a public school, like what’s often done at lower grade levels. Then one must hamstring those damn liberal bastions of education by restricting their funds.
Republican motto: keep them dumb, Christian, and pregnant
The problem isn’t just unwillingness to pay for what may genuinely be needed, but unwillingness to cut where cuts SHOULD happen – “increasing bureaucratic and administrative loads having nothing to do with teaching”, some of which is perhaps fear of liability, but a lot of it is politics.
The problem is also that IMO people expect too many government services, and have the delusion that something is free if they don’t obviously and directly pay for it themselves, but that’s another argument.
I think you may have hit on something there. Many people don’t understand what their taxes fund. People don’t recognize how their tax dollars go further when collectively spent to benefit society as whole.
I do find it odd that a state inhabited primarily by people who think nothing of tithing 10% to the Church consistently wants to reduce taxes.
I think that a lot of people who donate generously to charity (and not fluffy causes either, but those that actually help people) may well think that what they donate to is more efficient than the government – and less inclined to support every ideal except theirs.