Our editorial this week is on Gov. Chris Christie’s budget address this afternoon. The budget he has prepared, as I said yesterday, is focused on deficit reduction but also on the fairly standard conservative budgetary tropes — low taxes, spending cuts, assaults on public employee unions. It is, in a word, a disaster.
David Leonhardt writes about the phenomenon that Christie and his conservative allies have fallen prey to — a growing disconnect between taxes and the services we demand. Leonhard is writing about the federal budget, which can remain in deficit. But what he says about the federal budget goes for the states — and New Jersey — as well.
As a society gets richer, its tax rates tend to rise.
This idea is known as Wagner’s Law, named for the 19th-century economist who came up with it. Citizens of richer societies generally prefer more government services, Adolf Wagner explained. With their basic needs met, they want a military to protect them, good schools for their children, comfortable retirement for the elderly, medical care even when it isn’t profitable and a strong social safety net.
Sure enough, the United States followed this path for most of the last century. In 1900, federal taxes amounted to just 2 percent of gross domestic product. By 2000, the share had risen to 21 percent.
Over the last couple of decades, though, we have repealed Wagner’s Law — or, more to the point, only partly repealed it. Taxes are no longer rising. They fell to 18 percent of G.D.P. in 2008 and, because of the recession, to a 60-year low of 15.1 percent last year.
Yet our desire for government services just keeps growing. We added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare. Farm subsidies are sacrosanct. Social Security is the third rail of politics.
This disconnect is, far and away, the main reason for our huge budget problems. Yes, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recession and the stimulus have all added to the deficit. But they are minor issues in the long run. By 2020, government spending is projected to equal 26 percent (and rising) of G.D.P., mostly because of Medicare and Social Security. Taxes are on pace to equal just 19 percent.
New Jersey matches this pattern. Following Gov. Jim Florio’s attempt in 1990 to raise taxes to address what then considered a huge shortfall, the state’s politicians have been been gunshy about taxes and taxpayers have been only too happy to encourage them, while also reaping the benefits of expanding and improving services.
We are now dealing with the fallout, and it’s not going to be pretty.
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Hank Kalet 
When the services are no longer there, when the class sizes increase and programs are cut in the schools, the parents will be screaming and upset. School districts will have to lay off teachers and make drastic cuts and still will probably have to raise taxes. Christie is a disaster for education (it's beginning to look like Obama and Duncan are a disaster for education, too). After he decimates NJ's educational system and it starts under performing from its previous levels, then CC can bash the teachers and the NJEA all over again. CC has a vendetta against the unions and misses no opportunity to demonize, scapegoat and slime them. He's pandering to the lowest common denominator of Neanderthal in this state, your average NJ101.5 listener. This is how fascism will come to the US. In the meantime Christie will be giving big tax breaks to the wealthy.Even with the tax surcharge on the rich (which CC wants to repeal), NJ has the highest percentage of millionaires in the country and NJ has some of the richest counties in the US. And did I mention, NJ is not losing population, it is still growing in population because of immigration and its healthy birth rate. NJ's population grew by 3.2% between 2000 and 2008.