Opinion: In today’s pages: Rising state taxes, Catholics and President Obama, and prostate cancer
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It’s no April Fool’s joke: the state’s portion of the sales tax increased 1 percentage point today. The Times’ editorial board points out, with no civic pride, that Californians pay the highest sales tax rate in the nation, with rates reaching 10.75% in parts of Los Angeles County in July. The increases in the state sales tax, vehicle license fee, personal income tax were a ‘damaging’ choice by lawmakers, but the alternative was ‘disastrous,’ the board argues:
The state is in dire need of tax reform, but taxpayers should not be misled into thinking that the higher taxes they are now paying constitute reform. They are, instead, a response to an emergency. They don’t answer the basic questions: Which Californians are paying too much? Which are paying too little? Which taxes raise the most revenue with the least effect on the economy?
The board also defends the decision by Notre Dame University to have President Obama give the commencement address this year, despite his views on abortion.
On the Op-Ed page, H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute of Health Policy and Clinical Practice, argues that screening for prostate cancer is a mixed benefit. A recent European study that found that screening had saved lives, but a U.S. study found the opposite, Welch notes, adding:
I believe there probably is a benefit to prostate cancer screening. But it is accompanied by a substantial human cost. Let’s assume the European study is right. Its data give us some idea of the magnitude of the trade-off: For every man who avoids a prostate cancer death, about 50 are treated needlessly (some of my colleagues might say the number is closer to 30, others might say it’s closer to 100).
Also on the page: columnist Tim Rutten muses about Los Angeles’ historic love of cars and the early days of autoworkers’ unionization. And Morris Dickstein, who teaches literature and film at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, makes a case for the arts as a critical source of ‘social therapy’ in these troubled times.