No doubt you heard the news. A recent study declared Maine has a heavy business-tax burden, among the heaviest in the country if looked at from a certain angle. Except that probably the study didn’t measure business taxes accurately because it assumed that nearly all property taxes here and elsewhere are paid by businesses, to which, you and I can attest, they aren’t. Nevertheless, Page One: “Study: State business taxes heavy.”

The meaninglessness of this conclusion, even if accurate, is difficult to fathom until more rankings are held alongside it. Comparisons are odious, some long-ago ruler (who didn’t measure up) observed, but we make them anyway because it is human nature to want to know not just that something seems good but that it actually is better than what someone else has. Comparisons may be odious, but they are irresistible.

For instance, Maine was worst last year for adult asthma percentage. A breathtaking result. And did you know energy prices in Maine (per million Btu) in 2000 ranked 24th nationwide while the percentage of bachelor’s degrees here was 28th? All true, or at least as true as the reputable sources on the Internet can make them.

Heart disease among Maine women as of 1997? A middling 22nd nationally while revenue per capita as of that same year came in at 31. Not coincidentally, Maine ranked 22nd for infectious diseases overall last year and 31st in the Progress & Freedom Foundation Digital State survey (2000). But, in the digital state survey for 2001: 5th. Lemon-law ranking (2002): 11th; Crime rate (1999): 46th; library visits per capita (2001): 21st. And a Lawrence, Kan., publishing company’s “Smartest State Award” rank (2003): 6th, which, given all Maine’s other rankings, is a pleasant result.

There are many more statistics out there and nearly all are as unilluminating as these. My purpose in laying so many of them before you is to argue against their misuse. Maine will soon continue its debate over how to pay for state and local governments. It is a debate with added urgency now that a 1 percent cap on property taxes will be decided in November, with an outcome that could cut local taxes in half in some communities.

Maine’s overall tax system and the kind of life it buys are the subject of endless rankings, often showing Maine to be a costly place but just as often avoiding the larger question of what services Maine provides, what it can afford and who should pay for it.

There are numerous ways to lower taxes dramatically – 90 percent of the population could move to the southern part of the state, making the delivery of services much more efficient, for instance. That certainly is a poor trade (Why would anyone give up Februarys in Bangor?) but it would make Maine look more like New Hampshire, a state to which it is often compared unfavorably. Or it could drop public funding of kindergarten and let parents pick up the cost for educating their 5-year-olds. Or why not drop down to the minimal Medicaid services and let the poor’s health costs shift onto hospital charity care and private insurance premiums? All very bad ideas but all that would save tax dollars and move those rankings considerably while moving costs to private purses.

Maine is a rural, dispersed state. Its residents accept to an admirable degree the social duty of taking care of their neighbors, maintaining small-town identities and educating their children to compete against and work with the best. These things that we value are expensive; perhaps not exactly as expensive as the current price demands, but high enough in a state with at best a middle-class income. We can’t afford to spend as much as we do, but we don’t want to spend as little as some states.

What some feel is a crisis, expressed in our attention to tax rankings and now in three referendums on property taxes, may really be despair. It is despair at not knowing how to affordably provide what we’d like and a dearth of political leaders who can explain even why we should, not only when we benefit directly but especially when we don’t, when retirees are shocked by local school bills and young couples frown on services for the elderly.

Because it is difficult to assess or appreciate the things our tax money buys in a $5 billion budget, without articulate explanations from these leaders, the next step down is to focus on the price of the services without knowing their value. Numbers rather than wisdom.

Good numbers, bad numbers, numbers unhinged from meaning larger than themselves. Digital government up to fifth place for 2001? You don’t say.

Todd Benoit is the BDN editorial page editor.