The foundational principle of the public library is that we all chip in a little bit (through local taxes) to gain access to a free resource beyond our individual budgets. The public library proves that sharing is the wisest of all investments. But the Tea Party view is different. On the Northern Kentucky Tea Party blog, Legate Damar asks, “Why should my neighbors be able to rent non-educational DVDs and video games at a cost to the tax payer when I rent mine at Redbox? Redbox charges a $1.27 per movie including taxes which I think is a steal.” First of all, no one rents anything from the library. They borrow it from their community. Second, the economic case for going to the library rather than Redbox is incontestable. Assuming I borrow just one DVD a week, I’ll save some $70 a year, as much or more than my household pays in taxes for the entire library. Revealingly, the Tea Party’s vigilance over the dollar we spend for public services doesn’t seem to extend to the dollar we spend for private services, even when they are supplied by regulated monopolies. In Kentucky the rates of cable companies, the phone companies, the electric utilities are all subject to government oversight. But when Kentucky utilities recently proposed to increase utility bills ten times more than any proposed library tax the Tea Party was MIA. According to the FCC cable companies raised their prices at twice the rate of inflation from 1995 to 2010, boosting the average household’s bill by an astonishing $400 a year. The Tea Party circulated no petitions. Its members filed no lawsuits. But when a library raised taxes by $1 a year the tea party’s pitchforks appeared, the Declaration of Independence is waved, the founding fathers invoked, an American-as-apple-pie institution forcefully attacked.
Posted on: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 21:49:44 +0000
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