By Bart J Allen

Gov. Brownback understands human nature about as well as he does the basic fundamentals of economics, which is to say he doesn’t. Though he clearly has a keen grasp on greed and despotism, he’s absolutely clueless on how the regular Kansan thinks. More likely, he couldn’t care less.

Our governor believes that simply existing is the goal for the majority of Kansans. As with many of the elite throughout history, Sammy sees the troubles of the less prosperous and forgotten as an extravagance, similar to the gout and laugh lines he and his friends suffer from.

Usually, his counting on the greed of business owners and their desire to pay little, if any, taxes would hold the potential to fuel growth. However, Sammy doesn’t seem to be taking into consideration the other half of the equation – the employees the business owners need to create their tax-free wealth.

To a degree, Salina already suffers from this. Though most focus on restaurants as the main employers and providers of low paying wages, the fact is Salina has a lot of manufacturing and technical jobs that pay well and go unfilled month after month. If people truly moved simply because of a good paying job, Salina would have population growth, something we don’t have.

People going to where the jobs are is, to a great degree, an economic urban myth, much like the one that says giving rich people more money results in more jobs. There’s no hard evidence to support that either belief is the rule rather than the exception. Sure sounds good in a sound byte though.

Ask yourself this. Why would workers want to move to a state where they pay all the taxes, the education system is being gutted, arts are non-existent, women are second-rate citizens, and there is virtually no safety net of basic government services for the inevitable economic downturns of capitalism? Those pitiful standards can be met nearly anywhere, plus there might even be something to look at and something to do when not working.

An even more relevant question, from my own perspective, is who would even want to stay? The Kansans I know don’t want to live in the 19th century just so Sammy and his buddies can keep all the money in the name of saving us. Kansas is a nice place, but not that nice.

Of course, the bigger picture is that Kansas is merely a lab experiment for Brownback’s Shiite brand of conservatism and cockamamie economic theories. The real prize is the 2016 presidential race. As for the rest of us, by then, the road kill known as Kansas will be in his rearview mirror.

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