Today’s piece over on the homepage is a buffet table of outrage. While you’ve been going through tough economic times, state and local governments have responded to those same tough economic times by hiking taxes left and right.

Have some cut their budgets? Sure, after many, many years of increases, spending hikes that almost always outpaced inflation. But the cuts are pretty small, considering the crux of the problem: For much of the past decade, state legislatures bought more government than their tax base could afford.

Lots of state governments are borrowing from the stimulus allocation set aside for next year, ensuring that unless we see a huge jump in the economy and state tax revenues in the next 12 months or so, they’ll be in the same jam they’re in now.

Perhaps most gallingly, a bunch of state legislators have gotten their usual pay increases this year; in Hawaii, they went forward with an astonishing $12,000 pay raise this year, from $36,700 to $48,708.

I mentioned this yesterday on Ed Morrissey’s show, and said that the plethora of tax hikes at the state and local levels amounted to a de facto inflation. A commenter or two took me to task, and so I’ll emphasize, it’s the psychological equivalent of inflation, not an increase in the money supply; the average family’s take-home pay is shrinking from hgher state income taxes, and its purchasing power is shrinking from hikes in state and local sales taxes.