Gifts From the Maharajah

GIFTS FROM THE MAHARAJAH IN ANCIENT TIMES, so we are told, shrewd potentates had a clever way of bringing local governors to heel. They smothered them with solicitous kindness. Let a distant principality show too much indepen dence and the gracious Maharajah might pay it a visit, bankrupting the countryside which had to play host to his grand entourage. Or mayhaps the local ruler would receive the generous gift of a royal elephant who would eat him into ruin. Thus reduced to need, the local peo ple would receive gratefully any largess from the Maha rajah. And of course receive resignedly the instructions that came with the relief. This interesting gambit is still being played, as any one might notice who listens to one of the current argu ments as to why the federal government must give aid to the states for this-or-that costly program. The argument runs like this: Education (or care of the indigent or whatever) is one of the essential tasks of a community. The blueprint of the program needed, From The Wall Street Journal, February 24, 1961.

369 370 AN EDITORIAL drawn up in Washington, runs into uncounted billions. These projected billions are obviously too much for the local communities whose tax resources are already ex hausted. Hence, there is no alternative but for the fed eral government to relieve the states of this burden. To this argument it is not easy to turn a deaf ear; in deed, it seems a blessed relief to many a poor taxpayer already buried in local taxes to pay for the state's pres ent program for schools or hospitals or roads or any other community service. And in his harassed condition, the poor taxpayer is hardly able to reflect how this state of affairs came about, or to think too much upon what else will come with this generosity from Washington. Unseen Consequences Yet the process is, really, quite simple. Take that ur ban development project down the street. It came as a "gift" from the federal government; but to get the gift the local community had to raise its own taxes a bit to pay incidental parts of the cost. The same is true of the new hospital or the new library. And, of course, the gift from Washington brought other hidden burdens: sometimes a drop in taxable property, sometimes the need for more roads, more police protection, more fire equipment. But all adding to the local burden. Enough such gifts from Washington and the town treasury is in dire straits.

Meanwhile, the federal government is doing other GIFTS FROM THE MAHARAJAH 371 nice things for the people. The local veterans have been sent to school and the neighboring farmers have been paid for not growing things. Some of the community's money has been siphoned off and sent to Laos; there's that much less for the new school. And for more than.a gen eration the government has been quietly clipping the coins, so that the dollars which only a few years ago would have bought the school will not do so today. All calculated to shrink the local resources. And consider those blueprints drawn in Washington. Citizens knowing their own community can judge whether the new school is needed and if so how big. But when Washington says the nation needs to spend so many billions, what doctor in Duluth or plumber in Poughkeepsie can measure the sense of it all? All he can know is that, sure enough, the taxpayers of Duluth and Poughkeepsie have already got enough trouble. Isn't it nice that the Maharajah on the Potomac is going to help out?

It is, when you think of it, a beautiful gambit. First of all, the federal taxgatherer milks the poor taxpayer as dryas possible. Next the federal government "gives" the people some nice things, being careful to see that the communities not only pay Washington for Washing ton's share but also have' to dig up some more money to pay the local costs. Then when the gifts from Washington have just about exhausted both the local treasuries and the local tax payer, Washington discovers a new unmet need, the size of which, true enough, is bigger than the poor local 372 AN EDITORIAL communities can handle since the size is limited only by the imagination of Washington in drawing the blue prints. At that point in the argument comes that clincher. Nobody can argue against the desirability of schools. Nobody can argue that the blueprints as drawn can be met by "local action." So there's nothing left to do but run once more up Capitol Hill, hat in hand.

For, of course, hardly anybody ever suggests that this vicious circle could be readily broken by spending and taxing less in Washington, thus leaving more for the folks back home. Hardly anyone, indeed, stops to think that anyway there's only one hide for all this to come out of, that same poor taxpayer's. And by this time almost everybody seems beyond car ing that with each gift come more and more controls from the faraway potentates. Or cares to notice that each new and gracious gift, for which relief we give such thanks, just makes the circle more vicious. Clever fellows, those Maharajahs.