So Arizona doesn’t have movie stars in political offices. We’re also a lot smaller than California. But still, Arizona has to avoid the mistakes that are breaking California and threatening just about every other state, including us.

In their zeal to control everything, California went overboard in making rules and creating bureaucracy to administer them.

In their compassion for the poor and disadvantaged, California offered lavish assistance to the needy. To do this, it  increased taxes on businesses and on people who, fairly or unfairly, earn their own living.

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The businesses and the public, responding to these incentives, are voting with their well-known feet. People who earn their own living are leaving for states with less punishing climates. States that leave them more freedom and money after taxes. And these businesses are taking their jobs with them.

At the same time, people who need help with money, food, medical care, guidance, and all the other things everyone needs but who can’t pay for them, are attracted to the gold-plated benefits of California.

Unfortunately, with the revenue producers flocking out and the revenue consumers flocking in, the entire flocking system is failing.

The same condition obtains in other high tax states. New York, Virginia and others are suffering the exodus of their most heavily taxed citizens. They have reached the point at which state taxation has become intolerable. And they have alternatives which they are taking.

In Arizona our sales tax is being considered for a “temporary” increase to 6.6 percent, from 5.6 percent. The higher rate isn’t so bad until you add in local taxes. Pima County tacks on a rate of 0.5 percent and the cities and towns of Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita take their 2 percent; in South Tucson it’s another 2.5 percent. For most of us that makes an effective tax rate of 9.1 percent. And that’s not the end of it. The City of Tucson is considering doubling the tax on utilities, making the effective rate for such luxuries as electricity 11.6 percent!

But there is a plan afoot I think is more tolerable than just raising sales taxes again. When the sales tax rate gets into double digits, it’s too high. It will scare people away. We do not want to get the reputation of being a high-tax state.

A plan I like is one that coincidentally I proposed years ago, one that is proposed now by Democrats, to lower the tax on everything, but broaden the base to include most services. Democrat lawmakers called for reducing the state sales tax to 3.4 percent. Even when adding on county and most local municipality rates, it would still come to just 5.9 percent. That’s a lot less scary.

But the Democrats have figured out that rate would produce the same revenue is they expanded the range of transactions subject to the sales tax to include services except medical services.

In my plan, the tax on services would be limited to mercantile services not professional services. Repair your car, store your fur coat, polish up your jewelry? All taxable. Engage a lawyer, accountant, architect, no tax. Buying advertising, insurance or other intangibles? They should not be taxed either. The fees professionals charge are more subjective, maybe even arbitrary, than providers of mercantile services. And it is just as easy to buy insurance or advertising out of state.

One way to structure state and local taxes is to figure out how much we would have to pay to tell the federal government to go fly a kite. If we could buy back our state’s sovereignty so the feds weren’t always telling us what laws we had to pass, that might be something the taxpayers would be willing to fund.

Ideally, we could be taxed the way the Virgin Islands are, where they pay taxes to the islands government at the same rate as the federal taxes, but the revenues are applied only to the islands government and none of it goes Washington, D.C. That makes their tax burden considerably lower.

But that will never happen. Washington keeps the states dependent on their magnanimity in highway funds and all sorts of other grants, just as they like to keep individuals dependent on various levels of government.

Yes, they are buying us with our own money, even though the ink is not dry on the stuff they are sending us. And we’re selling.

In the extreme, Californians will become vassals of the federal government. Can Arizonans avoid that fate?

What we can learn from California is that taxpayers have their limits and if you exceed those limits they will leave, taking their productivity with them.

Contact Lionel Waxman at territorial@waxmanmedia.com or visit his website: www.newflashpoint.com.