{"id":52529,"date":"2020-04-15T13:42:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-15T18:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52529"},"modified":"2020-04-15T13:42:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-15T18:42:04","slug":"far-worse-to-come-covid-19-collapse-of-state-and-local-governments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=52529","title":{"rendered":"Far worse to come: COVID-19 collapse of state and local governments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"page-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/finance\/491503-far-worse-to-come-covid-19-collapse-of-state-and-local-governments\">Far worse to come: COVID-19 collapse of state and local governments<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Another sudden and unexpected factor will transform this year\u2019s elections. Many states, cities and counties are about to, suddenly, run out of money. Wages won\u2019t be paid. Services won\u2019t be delivered. Institutions will shut down abruptly. Many state colleges may fold. And yet most state and local political and administrative leaders just sit and watch. Voters will not be pleased.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Millions of American workers filed for&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/business\/2020\/04\/06\/unemployment-benefits-coronavirus\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">unemployment insurance<\/a>&nbsp;during the past two weeks. That is a record and represents a collapse of our local economies. Across the country, in every state, county and city, businesses have been shut down, and many will not return after the coronavirus crisis is over. Tens of millions have lost jobs, homes, savings and retirement incomes that will never return. Owners of rental property will go under when their loan payments come due and renters can\u2019t pay. Across the country, state and local economies are being badly damaged \u2014&nbsp;many of them permanently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The result is that state and local tax revenues will plummet. States and localities will burn through any reserves they\u2019ve maintained like wildfire. Since most of our politicians and government managers have been raised during a decade of expanding economies, their first instinct will be to wait and then panic and then raise taxes to cover shortfalls \u2014 perhaps a special \u201ccoronavirus surtax.\u201d Taxpayers across the country have tolerated various forms of high state and local taxes; the politicians would naturally ask, \u201cWhy should now be any different?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it is different. The resulting increased tax burden would be a disaster. Businesses that were barely hanging on would go under. Workers and homeowners who were barely surviving would go under. State and local tax bases would collapse even faster. There would be social unrest, possibly requiring\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/judiciary\/491155-can-the-president-declare-martial-law-in-response-to-coronavirus\" target=\"_blank\">martial law<\/a>. People would migrate from high-tax states toward new jobs, accelerating a downward spiral. These large migrations would make the 2020 census results nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Far worse to come: COVID-19 collapse of state and local governments Another sudden and unexpected factor will transform this year\u2019s elections. Many states, cities and counties are about to, suddenly, run out of money. Wages won\u2019t be paid. Services won\u2019t be delivered. Institutions will shut down abruptly. Many state colleges may fold. And yet most [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7],"tags":[28817,29011,379,12137,29414,855],"class_list":["post-52529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-government","tag-government-collapse","tag-tax-revenues","tag-viral-pandemic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52530,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52529\/revisions\/52530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}