Bonds Are Taxes

by | Nov 4, 2016

Bonds Are Taxes

by | Nov 4, 2016

On Nov. 8, voters where I live in Fairfax, Va., will be asked to approve general obligation bonds to finance subway maintenance, park renovations, and other run-of-the-mill local spending. There will be hundreds of similar questions on ballots across the country to issue billions of dollars in new debt.

Voters typically approve state and local bonds by large margins. Bond Buyer data show that bond approval rates in presidential election years have been more than 80 percent. Apparently, voters think that there are prudent and practical reasons for governments to issue general obligation bonds. But there usually aren’t.

Using debt allows politicians to claim credit for spending while evading responsibility for the resulting higher taxes, which hit citizens down the road. By putting bonds on the ballot, politicians are really asking voters to hike taxes, to enrich finance industry middlemen, and to make government budgets more complex and opaque.

Read the rest by Chris Edwards at the Cato Institute.

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

Podcasts

scotthortonshow logosq

coi banner sq2@0.5x

liberty weekly thumbnail

Don't Tread on Anyone Logo

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

313x0w (1)

Our Books

Recent Articles

Recent

Mass Production Equals Mass Consumption

[R]elative shares in national income have remained substantially constant over the last hundred years. This, however, is true only if we measure them in money. Measured in real terms, relative shares have substantially changed in favor of the lower income groups. This...

read more
Shooting Down Russian Drones Over Poland

Shooting Down Russian Drones Over Poland

The world is now closer to a full-scale war between NATO and Russia than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In the early morning hours of September 10, 2025, Western air defenses spotted a fleet of Russian drones that had entered Poland’s...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This