Column for Dec. 25, 2008

Here in North Carolina, we are taxed and hit with fees quite a bit. I read one time that North Carolina is now comparable with Massachusetts in our total level of taxation. Having grown up in a state neighboring Massachusetts, we used to call them, "Taxachusetts". The state that had "The Boston Tea Party" to protest high taxes is now an example of how to over tax the citizens.

I am glad I do not live in New York. I was just reading an article that the New York state budget has a huge shortfall. Now the governor there and the legislature are pondering numerous tax hikes to make up the difference. Their budget is short by over $15 billion. They are hoping that 88 new taxes and fees (fees are just taxes) will help fill that gap.

Residents of New York will pay taxes and fees on downloads for their iPods, movie tickets, taxi cab rides, soft drinks, beer, wine, cigars, and a host of other things. Their gas tax cap will be repealed. Basically, people are being "nickel and dimed" because of overspending. Most of the nickels and dimes will come from the working class because of the nature of the taxes.

The Democrat governor of New York is proposing cuts in spending, as well as income tax increases. It was spending that got them into the situation they now find themselves. And yet with all the talks of spending cuts, the state budget in New York is still going to increase by at least 1% over prior year.

So what does this have to do with North Carolina? First, we are heading in the same direction. The State of North Carolina is asking for millions of dollars of education funds back from counties in order to balance the state budget. We are going to see the same crisis here soon enough.

Secondly, and I am saying this as someone who migrated here from the Northeast, but many people are looking to duplicate the same mistakes that Yankees have made here. I have heard people refer to me as a Yankee, even recently. I have a French sir name and a French Canadian/Irish heritage. Many of my ancestors are indeed from New England and Quebec. But I was also born further south than most of the people in these parts and I have been a North Carolinian for just about all of my adult life, and half of my entire life. For over two decades now, I have lived and worked here by choice. I have been in Johnston County for more than half my time in North Carolina.

I have had the displeasure of talking with some brash, ignorant Yankees over the years. I understand why they say, "Well, up North, we did it this way." There are many things northerners do well and better than they are done here in the South, but that is another column for another day. Then there are some things they do not do well, at least fiscally.

A year ago, I was talking with a woman who moved to an eastern town here in North Carolina, about an hour's drive to the east and where you will find one of our state universities. She was railing about how the town did not plan for sidewalks and curbs in her brand new subdivision and how trash was collected, amongst other things. She had bragged about how things were done in her tiny New England town in terms of municipal services and decried the fact that she could not leave a refrigerator at curb side for pick up. My answer to this lady was simply that she relocated to North Carolina to get away from the high taxes and real estate prices of her previous locale.

Often, Yankees come to the South for jobs, climate, or other reason. I personally came here for a change. I had several job offers, and I chose the one in Raleigh, since it was in my field of study and chosen career, North Carolina gets less cold and snow, and I was ready for a change in my life as a young buck of 20 years. This loudmouthed woman and her daughter moved here for a job, a change, and according to our conversation, the lower cost of living.

To say that one comes here for the lower cost of living and then complains that there are not services available that one had in a more expensive area of the country is contradictory. Services cost money. Whether those services are health care, welfare, or curbside pick up of household appliances. You can have lower cost or you can have more government services. You can not have both.

If my taxes will be lower and I have to make a trip to the dump once every few years, I prefer to go to the landfill myself, thank you very much. If my taxes will be lower, we do not have so many people suckling off the government teat, and they have to fend for themselves the same way that my family does, then I choose the equality of treatment.

If we do not wake up to this soon in North Carolina, we too are going to pay taxes on cab rides, for downloads to iTunes, and get even more "nickel and dimed" to death, just like New York.