We just had a millage election in Lafourche to support our parish library system. I reluctantly pulled the "yes" lever. Don't get me wrong, I strongly support increasing the funds to support our parish's libraries.

I wasn't even worried that the tax would increase by property tax bill. Like most people in Lafourche, my house is assessed below the homestead exemption.

My reluctance comes from two concerns. First, special elections allow proposals to pass that would not make it if most regular voters were to vote. Few people vote in special elections, but almost every one of those who stands to gain substantially will be at the polls. This is, in part, because those who stand to get pay raises and keep their jobs if the tax passes will certainly vote, while most of the rest of us will hardly remember that there is an election. That is why fewer than seven percent of the registered voters went to the polls in Lafourche's library tax election. This unfortunate effect of special elections is a point I made in April of 1996 in The Courier concerning Terrebonne's school tax election.

The second cause for my reluctance comes from the fact that the large homestead exemption misleads us as to the cost of local government. When I buy groceries, the price I see marked on a gallon of milk is my cost (if I include my sales tax cost and my shopping costs). But when we vote for a millage for one good purpose or another, we usually don't see the full cost we have to pay. Most of us have homestead exemptions, so we think we don't pay a property tax. We are sure that most of the tax will be paid by businesses.

I'll let you in on a secret, though. Businesses never bear the cost of a tax. None, Nada, Zip, Rien! Only people give up something to pay taxes. Businesses are organizations of people. Their employees pay for a good part of the taxes through lower pay. The business's owners pay for some of the tax. And suppliers pay for some of the tax. The rest of the tax burden falls on the business's customers through increased prices. Every cent paid out by a business is a cent paid in by a person.

The bottom line is that people are usually unaware that they are paying taxes on business because the tax is buried in prices received or prices paid. When we think that someone else is paying we are more likely to say "yes, I'll take that," and when we think someone else is paying a tax, we are more likely to pull the lever marked "yes." The large homestead exemption gives us a taxing system that misleads us on how much government costs, resulting in a bloated local government.

Congressman Tauzin's proposal of a National Sales Tax to replace the Federal Income Tax is partially based on the reasoning that the income tax, with its system of withholding, causes us to far underestimate the cost of the federal government. The money that doesn't flow into our pockets seems to never have been ours, and we don't much notice it. Our failure to fully perceive the cost of our national government leads us to approve of more and more federal spending resulting in a bloated federal government.

With Tauzin's National Sales Tax, we will see the cost of government everyday when we see two or three pennies go to government for each dime we spend. We will be much more reluctant to let our representatives pull their "yes" levers in Congress.

If a car buyer does not recognize the fuel costs or insurance costs of a particular automobile, that car buyer will come to regret her decision. If a person does not recognize the health costs of cigarette smoking, that person is more likely to make a bad decision about smoking. If we as taxpaying citizens fail to recognize the full cost of government programs, we end up making many bad decisions, and bad decision making is just bad economics.