I'm not a huge gamer, really, but I have had random moments of addiction to SimCity and other "Sim" games (aside from my once-upon-a-time "Carmageddon" marathons, it is among the few genres of video games that have consistently captured my attention).

One of the strategies, of course, of these games is to set taxes. Too low, and you don't have enough revenue to operate. Too far and the residents run from your town faster than Michael Moore from Richard Simmons.

Too bad modern politicians haven't played the game.

Texas has a base sales tax rate of 8 percent. To someone on a fixed income, that's a whopper. Eight percent often means you need to make nutritional sacrifices to feed your family adequately because of the added cost of taxation. Fruit juice is sacrificed for fruit drinks, provided the latter has a sufficient amount of vitamin C, whole grain bread is often sacrificed for wheat bread, and, in a pinch, even WHITE bread, brown rice sacrificed for white...the list goes on.

And it would be bad enough if it stopped there. But the nearest city to us is considering yet another half cent sales tax increase, driving the city's tax rate up into the stratosphere. Worse yet, the city is led by Republicans, who hold themselves to be the champions of tax cuts and fiscal conservatism. And, while the local job market is stagnant and gas prices are going up on a weekly basis, this means that too many Texans may find themselves financially forced out of the panhandle.

The panhandle, for those who don't know, has consistently experienced population declines of about 10% per decade. We have plenty of amenities that could conceivably attract retirees to our area; summer temperatures rarely exceed the century mark, winter temps rarely drop far enough below freezing to cause serious problems, land is cheap and water, though not abundant, is certainly sufficient if T. Boone Pickens doesn't buy it all up. In fact, there's only one real deterrent to retirees living here: sales tax. While Texas doesn't have an income tax (YET; stay tuned), many retirees make second homes out of their panhandle houses. This means they're paying income taxes in their other state of residence as well as the astronomical sales taxes here. And because the sales taxes (and real price of goods) are lower in their other state of residence, they often buy goods there and reduce the revenue Texas would have collected otherwise.

It goes without saying that sales taxes hit the hardest those who can least afford it. But uncaring politicians just keep tacking on. And, like the sim games, they will continue to see population declines unless they return to the fiscalm responsibility that they used as justification for their election in the first place.