Best Song Lyrics (Part XX)

I admit it, I'm a fan of acoustic music.  It doesn't matter if it's original acoustic music (think Norah Jones), or MOST modified acoustic versions of older songs.  (There are major exceptions, for instance, nobody needs to hear an acoustic version of Hey Ya! by OutKast, but I've heard it on the SiriusXM CoffeeHouse channel more than once.)

Earlier this month, one of my favorite acoustic musicians, Jack Johnson, was the musical guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.  Colbert was obviously a huge fan, singing a duet with Johnson on his song Sleep Through The Static, and also posting a separate impromptu rehearsal excerpt on the web.

A former champion surfer who still lives in Hawaii, Johnson has been a full-time singer-songwriter for about 15 years.  I've been listening to him on and off for about 10 years.  In my opinion, Johnson is best known for the songs Better Together and Upside Down, but as an acoustic guitarist outside of mainstream popular music, most people would not be able to identify even those tracks.

You get a definite Hawaiian vibe from his music, but he's also great with lyrics, much of them espousing progressive causes.  Let's go back to a verse and chorus from Sleep Through The Static, a 2008 song which uses smart lyrics to spite the reasoning behind the 2003 U.S invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent never-ending war:

Trouble travels fast
When you're specially designed for crash testing
Or wearing wool sunglasses in the afternoon
Come on and tell us what you're trying to prove

'Cause it's a battle when you dabble in war
You store it up, unleash it, then you piece it together
Whether the storm drain running rampant just stamp it
And send it to somebody who's pretending to care

Just cash in your blanks for little toy tanks
Learn how to use them, then abuse them and choose them
Over conversations relationships are overrated
I hated everyone said the sun

And so I will cook all your books
You're too good looking and mistooken
You could watch it instead
From the comfort of your burning beds
Or you can sleep through the static

Who needs sleep when we've got love?
Who needs keys when we've got clubs?
Who needs please when we've got guns?
Who needs peace when we've gone above
But beyond where we should have gone?
We went beyond where we should have gone

The LOST Loss

I’m a big believer in behavioral science / economics, which is essentially the idea that people are motivated in all facets of life by potential gains or losses, and their calculation of the underlying risk in achieving / suffering those gains and losses.  The gains and losses are often related to money, but can also be based on things like religion, politics, or relationships.

Unfortunately, many times humans do not properly calculate the underlying risk, leading to bad decisions / behavior.   I thought about this again this week, when the residents of my county were asked to vote in favor of voluntarily and regressively taxing themselves via a sales tax increase.

The local option sales tax (LOST) has been around for a while in Iowa, as a way for county localities to raise additional tax revenue by tacking on another 1% to the statewide sales tax.  When it was first introduced around 15 years ago, the idea was to allow counties to use the money solely for school infrastructure improvements over a 10-years taxing period.  As with most new tax ideas, I've hated it from the beginning.

Over several years, every county in Iowa passed a LOST, increasing the total sales tax from 5% to 6%.  And as a result, we have the nicest school infrastructure in the United States.  For real.  I’ve been to most other states, and their school building suck compared to Iowa.  (Of course, there’s absolutely no evidence that nicer bricks and mortar mean smarter kids, but that’s another story.)

But then something happened that was only predictable to those of us with common sense:   The LOST never went away.  In fact, after the school districts mismanaged their budgeted improvements to the tune of millions of dollars, the state decided to simply make the statewide sales tax 6%, and allow another, new LOST for counties to use as they wish.

97 Iowa counties have piled on to this regrettable legislation, leaving only two that have not voted for a new LOST that increased sales taxes from 6% to 7%.  (Note:  That isn't a 1% increase, that’s a 19% increase, a math computation the LOST supporters don’t want anyone to know about.)  My county is one of the remaining two, and this week, after an affluent neighboring suburb passed a LOST a few months ago, my county decided to have another vote.

Which brings me back to behavioral economics.  Why would anyone vote to tax themselves, especially with no explicit guarantee that local government would spend the money on non-essential services?  Yet, it happens quite often – as I mentioned, it recently happened in 97 out of 99 other instances in Iowa.   It’s usually backed with nothing more than a promise that the sales tax it would help to offset some other tax burden (this time it was property taxes) or that it would not be permanent (see above).

My answer is, it’s another matter of not properly calculating the risk.  Many people don’t recognize the cumulative impact of a regressive tax.  They think of it in terms of ‘just an extra penny on the dollar’ rather than a whopping 19% increase on every Average Joe that will probably cost hundreds of dollars a year, and many thousands of dollars over many years.

As in past LOST votes, I voted no, and I’m pleased to day this time it failed (barely).  I’m not against paying for essential government services, but I’m totally against voting to tax myself for undisclosed services I may not need, to be administered by government bureaucrats that haven’t been truthful, and who aren’t good stewards to begin with.

In other words, I’m for properly assessing risk and behaving appropriately.