A recent commenter on this blog contended that most Arizonans wouldn’t mind having their taxes raised in order to help address and prolong the state’s overspending problem, currently standing at $3 billion for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

I followed up with the commenter to request polling support for such a bold claim yet, not surprisingly, he has not been able to produce anything.  Thanks to our friends at AFP-AZ we now have a poll proving his claim patently false. As it would happen, most are opposed to Gov. Brewer’s proposed tax increase and this sentiment cuts across party lines.
 
According to AFP-AZ’s poll, conducted in the state’s major population centers of Phoenix and Glendale, "Gov. Jan Brewer’s proposed billion-dollar-a-year tax increase fared badly….with 62 percent of respondents in Phoenix opposed, and 64 percent in Glendale."  Click here for AFP’s full report on the poll.
 
Need more reasons why tax hikes should be avoided like the plague? A recent report produced by the Goldwater Institute and Boston’s Beacon Hill Institute shows that Gov. Brewer’s proposed tax hikes, if implemented, would result in the loss of 14,400 private sector jobs.
 
The loss of over 14,000 private sector jobs would be devastating in Arizona, a state that from January 2008 to January 2009 saw private sector jobs shrink by more than 7 percent, a loss of 161,200 jobs.  Demonstrating a government completely out of touch with real world economic conditions, during this same period in which the private sector was shedding jobs by the tens of thousands per month, government employment in the Grand Canyon State actually rose by 2.6%. 
 
The substantial loss of jobs that the proposed tax increases would create would only result in further depression in tax collections, totally defeating the goal of tax hike proponents’ quest for more revenue. This is nothing new though.  In fact, Arizonans need only look to their neighbors to the west for evidence of the deleterious impact that tax hikes, especially in a recession, have on the economy and welfare of the state.  Not long after passing the largest state tax increase in history to address the Golden State’s own overspending problem, the legislature’s budget analyst recently reported that revenues derived from the tax hikes will still fall short of projections by about $8 billion.
 
Some lawmakers just can’t comprehend that tax increases impact the behavior of people and businesses, whether that be making purchases online from out of state vendors, cutting back spending, or just simply moving.