Tennesseans for Fair Taxation recently had their annual convention and declare to all of us that-surprise-they may be the only folks in the State willing to publicly favor an income tax-except for the Democrats that they mention:
 

TFT Board Chair Dick Williams says those elected to office this November will be faced with a dire state budget forecast. "We've already seen college tuition rise because of lack of funding, along with state employee layoffs and drastic program cuts. But this is not the worst of it -- many programs and jobs were saved this year because of federal stimulus funds and the use of non-recurring funds. These options will not be available to our next governor in preparing the budget. We must look to new revenue options if Tennessee is ever going to catch up with the rest of the nation in key quality-of-life issues."

Two-thirds of Tennesseans would receive a tax cut and $1 billion in additional revenue would be raised under a bill introduced by Rep. Johnnie Turner and Sen. Reginald Tate. The Tax Cut and Job Creation Act would eliminate the tax on food, reduce the general sales tax, and introduce a tax on personal income with generous exemptions and higher rates for the wealthy. "This bill does not ask wealthier Tennesseans to pay more in taxes, it simply asks them to pay what lower income residents are already paying in taxes," Wright says. "Tax modernization is vital to our state's economic recovery and viability in the future."

"Tax modernization" is Left-wing code for a graduated progressive income tax, and according to the logic that some of these people are using, Tennessee needs to institute this Marxist tax (and that is precisely what it is, essentially a Marxist notion) because so many other States are doing it and because the federal government is doing it-and it is going to solve all of our budgetary woes, it will be a glorious panacea and a fiscal Utopia.

What the advocates of an income tax in Tennessee really believe in is the idea that it is bad to be wealthy, because most people are, of course, not wealthy enough to cover any State's budgetary needs and there are simply not enough truly wealthy people to fund even a portion of the State budget through an income tax. The only way to solve that problem, of course, is to expand the definition of what equates to wealth and who pays income tax to the point that every soul who earns enough to take care of themselves and their family will pay the tax and pay handsomely in what would amount to State-sponsored salary, wage, and commission theft.

What the TFT members are not admitting is that reality tells us a different story. California is not only the largest economy in the Union, but one of the largest on the face of the earth, and California is also one of the country's most heavily-taxed States with a very progressive income tax. Yet California finds herself in what may be the worst fiscal crisis in her long history, a problem that the income tax didn't prevent and cannot solve. Around the country, States which not only have income taxes but have had that tax system for decades find themselves in drastically worse financial shape than Tennessee, a State with no regular income tax.

The federal income taxes we pay don't seem to have solved the federal government's fiscal problems, indeed the national debt has increased exponentially since 1913 when the income tax was added to the Constitution. What's more, as federal tax revenues have increased, so has federal spending, which is now so high that no amount of taxes can reasonably pay for the federal government's leviathan. The income tax didn't solve the federal government's financial woes, but it seems to have further contributed to them because the government has come to rely too heavily upon it.

As bad as Tennessee's current fiscal situation is, the reality is that we are not nearly in the shape that many of our neighbors are in whose residents not only pay higher taxes, but pay plenty of income tax. If we as a State are willing to embrace austerity, not only will we survive this Depression, but we may emerge from it stronger than when we came in.