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correction: 47%
The state tax shift
important trend in state capitols around the country: Republican governors and state legislatures are pushing to sharply alter state revenue sources, slashing or even eliminating personal and corporate income taxes while boosting sales t
Louisiana, Nebraska, and Kansas, but the pattern is broader than that: a similar shift is being discussed in North Carolina, and according to Paul Hammel of the Omaha World-Herald, “less ambitious” schemes to reduce income taxes are being pursued in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Indiana.
the shift could also increase inequality by reducing taxes predominantly for the wealthy, who spend a smaller share of their income than middle- and lower-income people.
hey intend to protect lower-income households while doing nothing of the sort—and they’ll probably be able to wield a study from some think tank or advocacy group that backs up their story.
“Who pays if Nebraska eliminates income taxes?”
More than a half million tax filers—earning less than $25,000 a year—will pay an average of $156 more in income taxes under the governor’s plan to overhaul the state tax code. By contrast, roughly 21,000 taxpayers—making more than $250,000 a year—will see an average cut of $5,200 a year in their tax bills.
Taxpayers somewhere in the middle, earning from $50,000 to $75,000 annually and comprised of 185,692 filers, would pay $282.90 less on average.
The calculations weren’t crafted by some liberal special interest group trying to sink the conservative Republican governor’s tax reform plan, but rather by his own Department of Revenue.
The numbers were sent Tuesday to a special Senate committee studying various tax plans. And they immediately provided ammunition for critics who think the governor wants to shift the cost of government from the affluent to the poor.
http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_state_tax_shift.php
Consumption taxes are unarguably regressive, which is why the 1% loves them, always ing the 99% behind some bull pretext smokescreen, like "it'll help growth", which of course, if true, the 1% will benefit from much more than the 99%.
correction: 47%
that's actually the opposite of what texas is doing and why our economy is the best in the US currently, go yourself you rabid psychopathic leftist militant
This thread brought to you by ShazBot...
Texas has the Highest Rate of Uninsured in the Nation
http://www.burntorangereport.com/dia...-in-the-nation
Poverty grows in Rick Perry's Texas
its poverty rate also grew faster than the national average in 2010.
Some 18.4% of Texans were impoverished in 2010, up from 17.3% a year earlier, according to Census Bureau datareleased this week. The national average is 15.1%.
And being poor in Texas isn't easy. The state has one of the lowest rates of spending on its citizens per capita and the highest share of those lacking health insurance. It doesn't provide a lot of support services to those in need: Relatively few collect food stamps and qualifying for cash assistance is particularly tough.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/18/news...as/index.htmas well as near the bottom of all state in spending per student
It's a great ing Confederate state if you're near the top (but everywhere is pretty damn nice in that case).
Shazbot...
We covered this before. When you use a "national poverty figure" to a state that has a lower cost of living than average and therefore, a lower average wage, more of a percentage of people will naturally fall under such a catagory.
Have anything meaningful?
Makers, Takers, Fakers
Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell "Class warfare!" and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn't work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.
As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here's the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.
Consider, as a case in point, how a widely reported recent speech by Bobby Jindal the governor of Louisiana, compares with his actual policies.
Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. "We must not," he declared, "be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive." After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an "attack on success," this represents a major rhetorical shift.
But Mr. Jindal didn't offer any suggestions about how Republicans might demonstrate that they aren't just about letting the rich keep their toys, other than claiming even more loudly that their policies are good for everyone.
Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state's income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1 percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well.
Like the new acknowledgment that the perception of being the party of the rich is a problem, this represents a departure for the G.O.P. - but in the opposite direction. In the past, Republicans would justify tax cuts for the rich either by claiming that they would pay for themselves or by claiming that they could make up for lost revenue by cutting wasteful spending. But what we're seeing now is
open, explicit reverse Robin Hoodism: taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich. That is, even as Republicans look for a way to sound more sympathetic and less extreme, their actual policies are taking another sharp right turn.
Why is this happening? In particular, why is it happening now, just after an election in which the G.O.P. paid a price for its anti-populist stand?
Well, I don't have a full answer, but I think it's important to understand the extent to which leading Republicans live in an intellectual bubble. They get their news from Fox and other captive media, they get their policy analysis from billionaire-financed right-wing think tanks, and they're often blissfully unaware both of contrary evidence and of how their positions sound to outsiders.
So when Mr. Romney made his infamous "47 percent" remarks, he wasn't, in his own mind, saying anything outrageous or even controversial. He was just repeating a view that has become increasingly dominant inside the right-wing bubble, namely that a large and ever-growing proportion of Americans won't take responsibility for their own lives and are mooching off the hard-working wealthy. Rising unemployment claims demonstrate laziness, not lack of jobs; rising disability claims represent malingering, not the real health problems of an aging work force.
And given that worldview, Republicans see it as entirely appropriate to cut taxes on the rich while making everyone else pay more.
Now, national politicians learned last year that this kind of talk plays badly with the public, so they're trying to obscure their positions.
Paul Ryan, for example, has lately made a transparently dishonest attempt to claim that when he spoke about "takers" living off the efforts of the "makers" - at one point he assigned 60 percent of Americans to the taker category - he wasn't talking about people receiving Social Security and Medicare. (He was.)
But in deep red states like Louisiana or Kansas, Republicans are much freer to act on their beliefs - which means moving strongly to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted.
Which brings me back to Mr. Jindal, who declared in his speech that "we are a populist party." No, you aren't. You're a party that holds a large proportion of Americans in contempt. And the public may have figured that out.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=...&sub=Columnist
Repugs are the party of the 99%?
Jindal got knocked down last week for cutting state aid to ho e care.
Repugs are the populist party?
lol krugman. This is the economist that compared Texas S&L bailout to a national bailout.
The tax burden is being shifted away from the affluent to the less affluent...seems to be the MO of modern day conservative governors.. maybe to get back at Obama..
I'd like to see the figures behind the "Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state's income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1 percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. " line. Of course, there aren't any. Krugman's word is good enough for the confirmation bias crowd.
Mocking woldviews and information bubbles from the K. Irony is delicious.
First of all, you've got alot of dots to connect, if you even care to.
Having lived in states with an income tax, I'll tell you right now that K's line is utter bull . The same loophole logic available at the fed level is often there at the state level. The rich are not burdened by the income tax. The property taxes are a tho...across the board.
I wasn't making alot of money at the time and the state income tax was an absolute killer. Matter of fact, it was the impetus behind quitting that ty job and moving.
If voters in those states are on board with it, what business is it of ours? State's rights and whatnot.
REPUGALECWRWCBANKSTERS/#parrot rage
"The same loophole logic available at the fed level is often there at the state level."
K isn't talking about only the top of the wealth pyramid that can afford pay for expertise to avoid/evade state taxes.
Um, yes he is: "Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state's income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, "
The whole idiotic premise behind Krugman's nearly unhinged rant is that Jindal, ergo all conservative [progessive code word for Republican] politicians are interested in sheltering the rich.
Krugman, for all of his obvious expertise, is nothing more than a tautology club member.
so if Repug states are so intent on cutting income taxes that don't matter anyway to the richies, and raising city/state sales taxes, why are they doing pursuing such a blatantly regressive tax strategy?
We know the Repugs entire political behavior is to protect/enrich the 1% and corps while ing over the 99%.
Krugman was okay with regressive taxes back when the idea of a VAT was floating around in 2010.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/201...n-sales-taxes/
Krugman is a hypocrite.
lol @ We know.
"All of which says that if I can trade a somewhat regressive VAT for guarantees of decent retirement and universal health care, I’ll take it."
not hypcritical AT ALL.
highly regressive VAT with no increased retirement plans and universal health insurance/care, he'd be against VAT.
link? Becuase he doesn't say that in the story I posted.
Krugman = hypocrite.
"There’s even argument that American exceptionalism, our uniquely weak welfare state, reflects not so much culture and racial division as the happenstance that we don’t have national consumption taxes."
Yes, bou let's cherry pick an article everyone can read.
Naturally, Krugman opposed Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan because it was too regressive. The trend appears to be that Krugman only has a problem with regressive taxation when it's a repbulican who wants to implement it.
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