Freedom vs. Equality

Note: This is post is on local politics, but has application far beyond that, so you might want to read even if you are not a local.

Today the Free Press profiled the Ward 6 City Council race between incumbent Democrat Andy Montroll and his independent challenger Tom Licata.

It is noted in the article that the first time (of three) that Tom ran, it was as a Republican, in 2005. If you are up on your Charity Tensel trivia (which no doubt you are), you also know that I was chair of the Burlington GOP at that time. I sat down with Tom at the Bagel Cafe on North Ave. to find out more about him. I have to say that he was probably the single most impressive person I have met in local politics. That man knows economics. Our city would do well to have someone like that on the council.

(No offense to the other impressive people I have met in local politics. You know who you are.)

He had this to say in his personal statement in the Free Press this morning:

Nobel laureate and economist Milton Friedman captured Vermont's unacknowledged battle between freedom and fairness when he gave one of his last interviews in July. When asked about his thoughts on a China versus India comparison, he gave the following response: "China has maintained political and human collectivism while gradually freeing the economic market. This has so far been very successful but is heading for a clash, since economic freedom and political collectivism are not compatible." It's this incompatibility of tensions, defined as cognitive dissonance, between Vermont's collectivist leanings and prosperous economic wants that drives our current state-of-confusion. Meaningful progress as a city, and State, requires us to bridge this gap of incongruence.

The results of Burlington's collectivist leanings: 50% increases in property and sale taxes in 3 years; millions of dollars in under funded pension benefits; a refusal to provide tax relief through an objective productivity study of city operations; refusal to unlock tax revenue relief that a partnership of public and private developers would consummate in developing our waterfront; and prized Burlington properties and institutions co-opted to achieve political ends (City Market, our failed waterfront bus terminal, Intervale land sale, Moran Plant). This quiet campaign to leverage city assets to further an economically-challenged progressive movement has resulted in enormous opportunity costs in the form of lost tax revenues and higher taxes.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is what Einstein defined as insanity; stop voting our entrenched incumbents into office.

Vermont's adopted 1778 State motto of "Freedom and Unity" and Mr. Friedman's view on this subject best summarizes our dilemma: "The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both".

Vote thoughtfully.