It's school budget time in Massachusetts (and elsewhere), which means it's time to lay off teachers, increase class sizes, and cut funding for everything from basic supplies (i.e., make teachers pay more out of their own paltry salaries) to "extras" like music, art, or P.E.. As the Boston Globe has reported this week (here and here), some towns are putting measures on the ballot to allow them to assess additional property taxes for school funding and other municipal services. Since 1981, Massachusetts has prohibited municipalities from raising property taxes more than a certain amount unless voters specifically approve the increase by referendum (details here). In "Taxachusetts," although some towns are enacting the increases, many are voting them down (not to mention those towns where the council doesn't even put it on the ballot). If only we lived in a society where "Support Our Teachers" had the same valence that "Support Our Troops" commands now.

Because Massachusetts severely limits the ability of municipalities to raise revenue (for example, municipalities are not entitled to impose a sales tax), property taxes are one of the few tools municipalities have. Opening up commercial space is less attractive for towns—they'll get all the negatives like traffic, noise, and light, with less of the financial benefit. (This limitation on the autonomy of cities in Massachusetts hinders the ability of Boston to grow and develop and sets somewhat undesirable incentives, as this report by Professors David Barron and Gerald Frug demonstrates.) It's an empirical question, though, whether more home rule would solve this problem, or if it would just be used—in the case of schools—to shift the tax burden from property to sales.

Unlike with schools, support for obscene funding of the military-industrial complex has been politically necessary in this country since World War II. As this essay from the New York Review on Cold War military budgets argues, “[t]he $5.5 trillion spent on nuclear weapons—‘enough to buy everything in the United States except for the land,’ noted Carl Sagan—was money not invested in domestic needs,” while “the aggressive American buildup created new dangers without diminishing the Soviet problem.” And consider the example of Iraq. As long as the U.S. is committed to a mission there, even the war's fiercest opponents support fully funding that mission. When it comes to schools, though, Congress comes through with grand mandates, but refuses to fund these supposed commitments. Local school districts, even relatively wealthy ones, do no better: residents fly their yellow ribbons but vote down property-tax increases that would increase funding. Maybe the problem, as this editorial cartoon suggests, is that school funding requires a referendum to increase taxes, while Congress funds the wars outside the budget through borrowing. In any case, he Women's International League for Peace and Freedom put it best in 1979: "it will be a great day when schools get all the money they need, and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."