The Times-Standard Three hundred miles to the south, our society rewards the makers of tech trinkets with the greatest fortunes ever amassed in history — largely, infamously untaxed.
Meanwhile, a coalition of government officials here and in Sacramento is asking you to pay a little more to ensure that everyone in the state has access to clean drinking water.
Just ask the residents of Flint.
But why should our leaders be inventing new taxes to ensure the delivery of the most basic of services when there are plenty of old taxes laying around, endlessly abused or ignored outright by a long line of corporations that are by no means in any danger whatsoever of experiencing a moment of thirst?
Let the gloriously untaxed among us pick up the canteen and walk to a well, for once, for the betterment of the society that shelters them from any of the great responsibility that should by all rights and the wisdom of Stan Lee come with the great power they’ve managed to accumulate.
The proposal currently trickling through the halls of power in Sacramento, if adopted, would take effect in July 2020.
It looks to charge most of us 95 cents a month, with heavy business and industry paying $4 to $10 a month.
Additional taxes on fertilizers and dairy products would swell the pool of revenue collected each year to around $140 million.
Color us skeptical.
Proponents of the proposed new tax tell us that 1 million Californians each year go without access to safe drinking water, and that nearly 2 million Californians lack service from a public water system.