Abandon Hope in Pennsylvania

According to Dante, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” is the sign at the entrance to hell. I’m thinking we ought to put that sign up in place of all the “Welcome to Pennsylvania” signs that ring our border.

The latest example of socialism gone wild is Dominic Pileggi’s plan to levy a tax on natural gas extraction to reduce the property tax burden of seniors. This is naked special-interest political pandering with zero economic sense.

When government abandons “user pays” policies, then it is necessarily engaged in welfare. Since welfare involves the taking from one person in order to give to another, it is a strict violation of government’s first and foremost responsibility—protection of people’s property. Apparently, good government is not a priority for Mr. Pileggi and the Republicans who put him in leadership.

Additionally, Pileggi is attempting to transfer wealth from the natural gas industry to Pennsylvania seniors. But as any student in any economics class could tell you, the economic incidence of a tax (those who actually pay the tax) may be quite different from the legal tax incidence. In other words, to the extent the gas industry can pass on this tax to consumers (and it surely can), then we all end up, even seniors, paying for another patch of an already overly complicated tax regime.

With government leaders like Pileggi, economic vibrancy is never going to return to Pennsylvania.