Jan. 8, 2024
Happy new year Milwaukee. By now you’ve realized that your sales tax just jumped from 5.5 to 7.9%. It’s hard to feel sorry for you. After all, you voted for this, or rather you voted for the people who openly said they wanted to do this.
For years, your local leaders have complained that Milwaukee was the largest city in the country without a local sales tax. They fought against conservative reforms that would help them lower costs and better manage the city budget. They scoffed at their quarter of a billion dollars in annual state aid, saying it was never enough. While they blew what money they did have on things like the street car and diversity equity and inclusion programs.
Then they turned to threats how if Milwaukee went down, they would take the whole state of Wisconsin with it, and how they would lay off hundreds of police officers if the state didn’t let them raise the sales tax, while they assured you that out-of-towners would be paying most of it.
We at the MacIver institute warned you not to fall for it, but you have been falling for everything the left’s told you for over a hundred years. This 7.9% sales tax is just the latest example of what happens when you believe them.