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Show By Brian Gray You heard it first in this column... The tax rollback initiative on this year's election ballot will fail. It will fail for one reason: The average voter won't feel comfortable com-fortable voting for it and won't feel comfortable voting against it. Faced with this conflict, Mr. and Mrs. Utah will vote against it, grumble their way into their car and drive home to watch another mindless comedy on their television set. Oh, I know the polls show majority support for the tax rollback. roll-back. A mere mention of taxes sends people into a funk. None of us like to pay taxes especially to educate someone else's children. chil-dren. In addition we all know of a neighbor, a government employee, who extends his day shuffling papers and spends even more time being rude than he does sipping coffee. Of course, he's not the typical government employee but it gives us ammunition whenever we take a pot-shot at the government. But I believe the tax protest will wane the more we start sorting out our wants and needs. Voting for the tax initiative is the equivalent of taking a large brick and clobbering ourselves in the head. Sure, it feels good to take some action. But it sure hurts the following day. The problem, of course, is very simple. We want well-kept roads and highways. ..We want well-stocked libraries... We want police and fire crews to respond at the snap of distress . . . We want drunks off the highways and thieves in jail. . . We want parks and Little League recreation programs. . . We want our children in school and we want them to have a textbook. We want all these things. The problem is that we don't want to pay for them. It's nothing new. Federal employees gripe about the IRS, conveniently snapping at the hand that feeds them. Families with six children moan about high taxes, forgetting that large families are at the core of the dilemma. There's nothing wrong in complaining about taxes. In fact, it's rather healthy, a sign that the American public is not brain-dead, brain-dead, that we're still greedy enough to want a better life for ourselves and our children. There's also nothing wrong in asking that government be more efficient (though there is something some-thing naive in expecting it!) No, there's nothing wrong in hating taxes. What is wrong is slicing government income and then expecting the same services. ser-vices. A fast-food restaurant can lower its prices if it fires everyone but the cook. ..But don't expect your hamburger to be served within three minutes. A school district can similarly cut its costs by decreasing its staff and supplies... But don't expect your child to have a take-home textbook or be able to enroll in a music or art class. And don't expect the school to field a football team. These are not trumped-up scare stories. Parents at one local junior high school are asking that their children have an algebra book. Considering the difficulty many students have in learning mathematics, it's a reasonable request. But the cost of an algebra algeb-ra book for each student is more than 50 percent of the entire textbook budget for that school. At another junior high the teachers are not providing take-home work assignments. The reason: they ran out of paper two months ago. Sure, government at times does silly things. But government also fills the potholes in the roads, operates mail delivery, monitors health concerns and provides emergency protection. These are all part of our wants. Unfortunately, they cost money. Government employees have this rather radical idea. They expect ex-pect to be paid, too. My prediction of defeat for the tax initiative could go awry. More blatant thefts at mental health centers and more self-serving self-serving statements from teachers' unions could further enrage the masses. But, after consideration, I believe Utahns will vote rationally. Even if they do hate themselves in the morning. |