You'll hate yourself and want to die.

Here’s the most un-fun game ever! How would you solve Oregon’s $3.5 billion budget deficit?

Would you raise income taxes and annoy the rich? Or would you push a sales tax that punishes the poor? Would you foist prisoners and the mentally ill on broke-ass counties? Or would you fire teachers? Should disabled kids leave their families for institutions? Or should we exile infirm senior citizens instead?

Those shitty options—and several others!—make up the backbone of Our Oregon‘s new budget simulator. Whee! Click here and play along!

But be warned: It’s a sumbitch. Seriously, after finding myself forced to summarily wound thousands of Oregonians (sorry all you poors and state workers!), I might snap the next time I hear some Republican from a cushy McMansion district glibly say something as callous as, “Well, it’s time to live within our means.”

Leave a comment and dish on how awfully you did.

Youll hate yourself and want to die.
  • You’ll hate yourself and want to die.

Denis C. Theriault is the Portland Mercury's News Editor. He writes stories about City Hall and the Portland Police Bureau, focusing on issues like homelessness, police oversight, insider politics, and...

17 replies on “Do You Have the Stones to Pick on Old People, the Disabled, Schoolkids, and Moms on Welfare? Yes? Because Here’s Your Chance!”

  2. Well, I got almost halfway there with cutting a ton of corrections spending– because that’s not a useful industry, not the way we run it– and through freezing salaries and retirement matching. It sucks but it still beats working at FoxConn for twelve bucks a month or using your Masters to try to land that parking attendant job at OHSU. Corporate America– at least, the ones that didn’t just axe a bunch of people– have been in this frozen holding pattern for a couple of years now.

    If it weren’t for the usual glacial pace of bureaucracy (see also: reducing the budget for the “Department of Administrative Services” and, sure, “Brazil”) I’d be surprised they hadn’t done these things already.

  4. Oh, look, I got 78% of the way there with just items in the “Raising Money” section, without adding a sales tax!

    Second homes get a mortgage deduction? GONE.

    Tax breaks for large boats? NOT ANY MORE.

    Corporations get a kicker check? Why? Isn’t insane profit already enough for them bastards?

    A Real Estate Transfer Tax sounds like A GREAT IDEA.

    …and so forth. The only one I’d restructure is the “raise all income tax marginal rates by 10%” – why do we need to raise the lower brackets at all? But that’s not an option so I went with what’s on the form.

  9. Taxed the fuck outta the rich and corporations, froze public employee pay, 3% sales tax, 1$ tax on beer. Done. And fuck you Reymont, don’t fuck with the poor…

  10. What a stacked deck. Where is ODOT ? Where is the option to sell the OLCC ? Where is option to outsource prisons to Vietnam (Look at how well they did with John McCain) ? Where is the Oregon Bank ? . . .

  11. Choosing the category of adding revenue to our state coffers made this task very simple. Of course, one needs to clearly understand that in ALL Capitalist systems–its necessary for EVERYONE to pay their fair share of taxes. I was able to meet Oregon’s so-called budget shortfall for which I do NOT believe there is one–AND then I was able to ADD one billion to Oregon’s budget by simply rewarding corporates in relationship to how many jobs they create for Oregonians AND delete the subsidy given to yacht owners! Oregon has plenty of money IF we ask these economic royalists to pay their fair share and become economic patriots. Thev problem is NOT public service workers–the problem IS THE GREED OF THE UBBA RICH AND OUTSOURCED CORPORATES!

  12. No need for sales tax when I asccrued well over one billion by fairly taxing the economic royalists who currently have enjoyed well over 46% profit under Obama BUT DO NOT GIVE JOBS to Oregonians as they prefer bto outsource to nations allowing 50 cents an hour!!

  13. Absolutely–I garnered well over one billion, three hundred and fifty three thousand dollars by just asking the economic royalists(top 2% U.S. wage earners making billions yearly BUT NOT giving out jobs inspite of their 46% profit margin increase since Obama came into office) who enjoy their welfare AND want to keep it!

  14. “Absolutely?” Are you responding to your own comments, annabee1?

    The yacht thing is a no-brainer – but isn’t it also a bit of a red herring? If we try to tax yachts in Oregon, won’t they just sail away and register in another port? Isn’t that what happens on the East coast?

  15. @Rosy: That’s always a fair complaint with budget simulations. They ask you to look only at the bad menu of options that lawmakers and lobbyists already are considering. (Although I thought the revenue options in this one were pretty good.) The other limitation with budget games (and the budget debate as a whole) is that they don’t weigh how cutting one category, like K-12 or higher education, might wind up driving up prison costs or welfare costs, etc.

  16. @Denis C. Theriault — those discounted future cost numbers are available but not used because that is the future and I might not me re-elected.

    You need some Oregon history. When you look at the record Oregon hates education and loves spending money on prisons.

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