Why shopping outside Long Beach to avoid the Measure A tax is a bad idea

It’s a great, thoughtful and provocative Mailbag this week. No dire threats or sophomoric name-calling. It’s like a roomful of grown-ups up in here.

We’ll start with a letter from our math-whiz wingman Dan Villani who asks, “Would you like me to beat up Dimwit? Mathematically, I mean?”

That’s in response to a column last week in which our old buddy/nemesis Dimwit (this isn’t name-calling, by the way; it’s his go-by) made the argument that because we’re bad at math then we’re bad at logic, therefore a liberal.

Our man Dan is a liberal, and he writes “As far as math skills go, I will cheerfully take on Dimwit equation-for-equation. He is welcome to choose the level of math: algebra 1 or 2, plane geometry, trig, calculus, vector algebra & calculus, or, if he really wants to swing for the fences, differential geometry.” Boom! Dan and we are ready to clean Dimwit’s clock (we being the coer man who sharpens pencils and stuff).

A phone message from “loyal reader” Sandy Davidson deals with a subject that always causes us conce, if not consteation:

“In the euphoria over the passage of Measure A, has anybody considered that for people in East Long Beach, it’s under a mile to go over to (Orange County) and on Jan. 1 they’ll be doing that for major purchases and things over $50, because they’ll only have to pay 8.5 percent tax instead of 10 percent. I think it’s going to hurt businesses, conventions, restaurants and everyone else who charges 10 percent.”

Well, yes, it will, if everyone crosses the boundaries of Long Beach to spend their money.

But, a tax is not a fine or penalty, as many people seem to think it is. The money is used to run the city and, in the case of the Measure A pey-on-the-dollar tax that kicks in on Jan. 1, improve the city’s public safety departments, libraries, parks, roads and other infrastructure.

When you leave town to save 75 cents on a $50 purchase (we’re going Villani-less on our math here, so we could be off some), not only are you not giving money to the city in which you live, you are paying (albeit a little less) to make improvements to a city in which you don’t live. And, later, you’re going to write irate letters to Long Beach officials wondering why the streets are nicer just across the city line — and you’ll know this because it’s where you do all your dining out and big-money purchasing.

And now, because we forgot last week ...