Okay, I don't want to get too political, but this is kind of a political issue anyway, so...

Legislators have a huge blind spot when it comes to taxes. They seem to just assume that everyone will gladly pay new taxes, and that no one will ever change their behavior as a result of a tax increase. I live in Pasco County Florida. The county commission recently discussed increasing the gas tax. Their calculation was, X number of gallons of gas get sold in Pasco county every year. If we increase the gas tax by Y cents, then we will get an additional (X * Y)/100 dollars in revenues every year.

Umm... No. Not even close. Because when you increase the tax, a whole lot of people will buy their gas elsewhere, where the tax is less. One of the people testifying on the issue even explained that to them, but it just kind of went right over their heads. They just didn't "get it."

Going to guess here that the USVI legislators probably don't "get it" either. They just assume that everyone will keep right on coming, and buying, and the tax dollars will just keep rollin' in.