- And this blank page where my fingers move
- Pennsylvania Hunger Games Diet: Cash for Corporations, Cuts for Kids
- The Incredible Shrinking Mayor
- Multi-tasking with the 1% … killing the schools AND making the poor pay for their funeral.
- Council Can Give the SRC the Money to NOT Privatize the System
- Predatory Payday Lending Bill Flies Out of Cramped PA House Committee
- Let the Games Begin: PA Senate Announces Details of Budget Proposal
- Good News on PA Revenue But Don’t Count Your Blessings Just Yet
- Defeat Corbett
- Set off without a Paddle: Unpacking the School District’s Disaster Capitalism
Predatory lending and why casinos become more and more like hell
Submitted by HelenGym on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 1:31pm.
Photos c/o Casino Free Philadelphia
As a number of groups appropriately mark and protest Day 100 without a state budget, it should be noted that one of the primary reasons for the budget hold-up is . . what else? Gambling of course.
While day care centers are shutting down and people go without paychecks, legislators are fighting over expanded gambling via table games and a new proposition that should ensure that casinos are pure misery: gambling on credit.
The table games law (SB711 which was supposed to be only about gambling reform -Note: This is also in the latest SB1033 reintroduced last night) now includes Sect. 1326 A/B and Sect. 1504. These lift a former ban on slots on credit and now allow casinos to become check cashers and, yes, lenders for both slots and table games. Even better: though there's an extensive section on legislating how to fill out a credit application, there's nothing about basic consumer protections to avoid predatory lending or stop problem gamblers from losing everything at the penny slot machines.
Philly consumer advocate Lance Haver told me that asking for basic protections like fee and check cashing limits as well as wait periods for credit card applications is the most minimal bit of protection on an otherwise horrible idea.
Sen. Farnese is trying to move an amendment that would limit free alcohol and stop slots on credit. He's falling short on his votes however. Other local supporters of his bill are Sens. Kitchen, Stack and Hughes, among others.
At the end of the day though, gambling on credit just ensures that casinos are just becoming a little more like hell every day.
Ludicrous and offensive.
Maybe we can set up organ donation and blood donation for cash operations right on the casino floor as well.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I know it may seem like a leap but . . .
the division we have on tax policy is a major reason for this mess. We have predatory gambling -- not exclusively, but in large part -- because progressives have no consensus on how otherwise to raise revenue. Yes, some groups kind of coalesced -- very late in this budget round -- on a package of acceptable progressive taxes like the severance tax, and combined reporting of business tax income. But we were really weak on pressing for a personal income tax increase, and there was not even a mention of raising the business net income tax even on a temporary basis. We did have reason to be unenthusiastic about a PIT increase since that's (pretty much) a flat tax. But then, we've never done anything to amend the PA Constitution to allow taxes to be graduated. At least not since Ed Schwartz marched to Harrisburg for such an amendment, and that was 40 years ago.
Here's the result: when Republicans claim that Democrats want to raise working class taxes, they do so with great credibility. Democratic Congresses have repeatedly raised the payroll tax, one of the most regressive taxes ever conjured by the mind of legislators. Sales taxes have crept up slowly year after year, and in PA there are few cushions for the real estate tax for those who can't afford the price of rising assessments. Democrats do, at least, tend to favor programs that spend money to help working people and the poor. They don't want to cut them. But to pay for good stuff in the absence of any organized pressure for progressive taxes, and given the massive and well funded opposition of the elites to such taxes, Democrats join Republicans to enact the other kind. Promoting and then taxing gambling is a major one. Of course, there's all the payola that attaches to gambling as well. You might say that campaign contributions are the politicians particular gambling related addiction. So yes, there's the corruption, which we have to fight tooth and nail. But there's also our own ambivalence about promoting and fighting for other ways to fund what needs to be paid for.
This problem starts here in Philadelphia. Those who read this blog know well how divided we are on taxes right here in the heart of Democratic Pennsylvania. Unless we get our acts together on it, predatory gambling, in one form or another, will only continue to grow and further debase our politics, our culture, our economy, and the core values we all treasure.
You might be happy to hear
that Joe Hoeffel says he supports a graduated income tax for PA. Even with the PIT we have now, I think most folks here would have supported that as a broad-based solution to extreme financial problems at a state level. But a commitment to working people thriving in Philadelphia also means having a concern about the loss of city jobs to surrounding counties, to other cities. As jobs flee working people simply become non-working people or move away - thats not serving working people either.
Moreover, what I would say about corruption is that it amplifies negative perceptions about the cit's local tax environment 10-fold. If the taxes are slightly higher in municipality A than municipality B thats a calculation a business is more likely to take into considertiaon rationally. Corruption on the other hand, feels like an "extra cost" you can never measure, never know how far it goes. You may if you are going to see show decide its worth the higher cost tickets if you get a better view (lets say metaphorically access to vendors, customers, well-educated workforce) but noone volluntarily signs up for extortion because you know from the get-go there is no end to blackmail. And worse than even that is the belief that the corruption is a systematic breakdown in the politics and culture of a place that will never be fixed.
Which is why in a high poverty, low-education, ex-industrial city you already have a few strikes against you and it becomes that much more important to be better than your neighbors on transparency in government, in having a bureaucracy that works well or at least the way it says it does and is not mysterious or arcane to navigate.
I hear your "all progressives have to care the fairness of taxes" but I have counter that "everybody who is concerned about the fairness of taxes has to be doubly or triply concerned about corruption", because it takes the job-bleeding problems that people blame on taxes and makes them exponentially worse. Nothing ruins the case for more taxes than galling examples of waste and bad government. DROP for electeds is a tiny drop in the bathtub of the city budget but its symbollic and psychological weight for many folks considering whether the city really does need more revenue is 20 or 30 times its actual fiscal impact. Corruption, self-dealing and waste in government is the best argument "starve the beast" conservatives have going for them. Why give it to them when its so much easier to try to fix the problem?
That all being said, lets not turn this one into a "social justice vs. good government" discussion. Regardless of what you think of the BPT, anybody with an ounce of morality in them sees that putting check cashing places, credit card slot machines, and pay-day loan places in a casino simply eliminates any ruse of it being about "entertainment". Its patently about profiting on manipulating vulnerable people's sicknessat that point. You've entered the corporate equivalent of getting crack addicts to turn tricks for you at that point.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Stan, your Tax strategy Can't Work IF...
It's easy for businesses to flee the taxing jurisdiction, which it is.
PA can raise business taxes to cover revenue shortages in the very short term, but the shortages will re-appear when businesses either re-locate or offshore more services which they have now been doing at a quick clip since the late 1990s.
I'm not talking about low-paying clothes factory jobs, more like the $70,000-$100,000 professional services jobs which workers in other countries (like India) can do quite well for only $15,000 a year. Even if you retro-taxed offshore contracts, the dollar value of the contracts which supply the wages to offshore workers is way less than what the workers in the US were making before the outsourcing occurred.
The only way to stop that would be to shut down the Free-Trade Agreements or place new humongous paperwork burdens and quotas on offshore labor contracting to dissuade US employers from doing it. And you know as well as I that no Democrat is going to touch any "Free Trade" Agreement because that upsets the mis-perception that FTA's benefit 3rd world countries and are great for our planet.
where has this idea of higher taxes leading to greater rev
ever been proven? in australia taxes are lower than in the us yet australians get free health care( ie payed out of gen rev,no add medical tax),free college and if they so choose lifetime unemployment benefits (thats why we have the worlds best surfers). a guy who makes 75k in the us is taxed at 28% fed inc tax plus 15% social sec plus about 7% state and city plus a realestate tax that probably comes out to 2 or 3 % of inc for a total of 52 or 53 %. in australia the same guy pays 31 % fed inc tax and thats it.( the realestate tax is almost nothing , a 300 k home pays 300 bucks a year ) . so australia brings in 22% less of every 75 k worker yet have enough money to pay free medical ,free college and lifetime ( from the age of 15 )unemployment benefits, plus of course soc sec benefts .on top of this, up until the recession they had a budget SURPLUS for 12 straight years.
the secret to their success is that they realised you can have a nanny state and be business friendly at the same time . one does not preclude the other. the second reason is no waste. patronage jobs are illegal . 100% of govt jobs are civil service and politicians have received jail terms for even just trying to finangle a friend into a govt job.about 5 years ago a handfull of fed politicians were either expelled from office or received jail terms ( i can't remember which ) for abusing travel vouchers! plus absolutely no WAM. if anyone thinks raising taxes is a way to inc social spending please go to australia and do a study!
It helps if you don't divert 20% of your GDP into weapons
Actually I don't know if that's the right figure for the US, but it's huge. Our "defense" budget is more than that of the rest of the world combined. So we don't have as much to spread around for social services as does Australia. I would think that if we cut our military budget by 80%, we could probably cut taxes pretty substantially. Beyond that, I'd point out that like the rest of the industrialized world, Australia can afford universal health care because they have no insurance companies taking 30% off the top as we do here. Bottom line, you've hardly proved that a society can provide decent services without imposing taxes, or that raising taxes, when needed, fails to raise revenue.
You don't get a lot of argument from me
America spending like a drunken sailor on being the world's enforcer while the rest of the world concentrates on building environmentally sustainable economic power is a losing arrangement for the US.
That said Australia is not exactly all that dovish. They are the major military power in their region besides China and participated in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are also however one of the prefered places for India's rising middle class to pursue higher education and education is a major component of their economy. They have a tremendous amount of natural resources they tax sanely (unlike our governor and his unfortunate stand on Marcellus Shale). They also attract tons of immigrants. There are a lot of broader lessons to be learned from Australia than the simplistic "pro-tax" vs. "anti-tax" dichotomy being put forward here.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
the us is spending 600 bill on defence this year
so if the fed deficit comes in somewhere between 1.4 and 1.6 trillion,even if the us spent the same on a per capita basis as australia ( that would be 250 billion) on defence there would still be a def of about 1 to 1.2 trillion , so i doubt if taxes would be cut or social service spending inc . what i think i have proved is that one country can tax a guy at 31 % and that generates enough revenue to pay for decent social services while another taxes a guy at a combined 53 % and doesn't generate enough revenue to provide for decent social services.
You're ignoring the debt service on the defense budget
since we've been on a constant war footing for over fifty years. And Veterans' Benefits. The War Resisters' League says that if you account for those costs, more than half of the budget is spent on war, and war related spending. And you failed to address the health insurance problem that is unique to the U.S.
i don't know what the debt service on just military spending is
but for all TOTAL us fed govt spending the debt service is 250 bill this year. so if the us spent the same per capita on defence spending as australia (250 bill as opposed to 600 bill ) and had no debt service at all the us budget would still be somewhere between 800 bill and one trill in deficit. so obviuosly taxing people at a combined 53 % rate still wouldn't provide enough revenue to provide decent social services including a good public health program ,which this country obviously needs. the point i'm trying to make is that australia has significantly lower tax rates and that that lower tax rate generates enough rev to pay for a public health system as well as other social services,whereas a 53% combined rate doesn't .
These last two posts illustrate our dilemma perfectly
Many writers here -- like Sean -- argue that we can have progressive taxes in PA, but not Philly. But East Chestnut, and every Republican in sight -- take it further. They say that the argument that Sean makes about Philly taxes applies just as well to PA taxes. That is, if Philly taxes drive businesses and people to Bala Cynwyd, PA taxes send them half way around the world. And they go on to say that US taxes do the same. Therefore, contra to Sean, we can't afford social spending at the state or national levels any more than we can afford them at the local level because in the global economy, capital is king. It can go anywhere anytime to avoid any tax it doesn't like.
Eastchestnut's argument rings true for many ears which is why we can't even seem to get a surtax on wealth to pay for health care reform. The low tax mantra has sunk deep roots of fear into Democrats at all levels of government. If progressives don't develop either alternative business models, or alternative models for promoting growth, we will continue to have starved social programs that no level of government will long be willing to support. Alternatively, we will have the programs, and blood sucking predatory ways to pay for them like all forms of legalized gambling.
You confuse Libertarianism again...
I am not Republican. I'm a registered Democrat.
I simply do not vote straight party ticket. I've voted for pols running in almost every political party (counting greenies, indeps and I even do write-ins), and also voted Nader (a decision which I do NOT regret).
It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or not.
You make Republican arguments, especially on the economy. For these purposes, that's just an observation, not a criticism.
The whole "predatory lending" thing is a facetious argument
Where are any Democrat/Progressive candidates when it comes to payday lending stores? It's a parasitic business that serves to tarnish credit scores of the poor and trap them into financing deals they can't get out of lest they default and wait the 7 years for the FCRA to give them clean credit again.
IIRCC, Sharif Street (Milton Street's nephew) used to lobby and represent check cashing and payday lending interests in Harrisburg. Few people directly called him out on it until he tried to run for a City Council seat.
For a business model that's truly a bad idea for your wallet, I see nobody in the Burg or here who wants to step up and rework PA's usury laws to put these businesses out of business, or tax them to death to discourage their spread.
You must not remember the City's predatory lending ordinance
Maybe you don't remember it because it was almost instantly pre-empted by State legislation largely authored by Dwight Evans. But actually your point is mostly valid; Democrats have done little to ward off predatory lending or regulate much of anything which is backed by deep-pocketed lobbyists. I'm no apologist for the mainstream Democratic Party. It is, however, much better on social issues -- witness the hate crime legislation that passed the U.S. House yesterday -- and on safety net issues. And it's an arena in which we can nominate candidates who are true progressives.
That might have ocurred before my era
But I welcome the historical info. Thank you.
Note that DiCicco however exempted casinos
from predatory lending practices, particularly payday loans.
Philly is one of the highest taxed big cities
Its also a city that continues to export both jobs and population while its metro region expands both.
Stan, simply put, the scope of the folks who contribute to the pot matter. Exporting jobs a few miles across county lines is very, very easy, across state lines much harder, and overseas much harder than that. As the scale increases education levels in the workforce and infrastructure becomes more relatively important, taxation levels less so. Ex-urb Chester County benefits just fine from Philadelphia's port and transit infrastucture and major universities and research centers. The quality and availability of higher education in the US, on the other hand has relatively impact on whether a company builds a factory in Honduras, by contrast. Redistributionist tax policy, particularly that invests in "human capital", gives a bigger pay back and has less of a down side at a national or state level.
Trying to make up for wins you fail to achieve for residtributionist tax policies on a larger scale on a local scale is a recipe for political disaster - because post-war America excels using the urban geographic isolation of the poor as a way to deny investment and services to them. I differ with you on local taxes because ultimately by choosing the "easy" local fight over the sometimes tougher state and national one you actually set the stage for the political abandonment of the urban poor in Philadlephia. Being poor in Detroit is a lot worse than being poor in San Francisco or New York which is much worse than being poor in London or Brussells. I think your cavalier anti-job local tax policies ultimately aid in disempowering urban Philadelphia and in the long run hurt the bigger aim of broad range social justice more than it helps.
Philly needs to grow jobs and better jobs. It needs a boader and stronger tax base. It needs lots more middle class people with middle class jobs and middle class expectations of schools, services and public safety. I would prefer that happens by holding onto our folks who move up instead of moving out and by attracting more immigrants who use Philly as a place to build the American dream.
And again Stan why do you insist on turning this thread about mixing predatory lending and casino gambling in PA to a rehash of "everyone who call themselves a progressive has to agree with Stan Shapiro on the BRT"? Its not fair to the subject at hand.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
All I'm saying is it's not enough to say you're against the BPT
As I've said many times, I too prefer greatly that increased taxes come from the state and/or federal governments. So to that extent I'm also against the BPT, and the wage tax for that matter. But we're not getting our fair share from other governments. So we may have to make lousy choices locally.
But my point was not to push for anything -- up, down or sideways -- related to the BPT at this point in time. My point is that this is the time, now, before the next budget rounds, for us to figure out how to talk about taxes. If we don't, and if we get into another debate that can be caricatured as the "job killers" against the "service cutters" then all of us will lose.
We need to come up with a program and a plan that is both coherent and marketable, and also gets us the money we need to move our City and State forward. From a purely marketing standpoint, if we use Republican talking points against local taxes, that reinforces those points at the State and federal levels as well. Republicans and those who listen to them on taxes -- which includes a lot of Democrats and independents -- don't make fine distinctions about which are the best jurisdictions in which to levy particular taxes. When is the last time you heard any local business person, not to mention the Chamber of Commerce, argue that we should increase corporate taxes in PA or at the national level so that we can cut them here in Philly? No one else is doing that either. But maybe some of us should.
I am not trying to suggest that I have all the answers. I'm only saying that we have to find a high place in our priority list to get taxes right. And that's the tie to predatory lending and casino gambling. In fact that's why I keep coming back to this issue in a variety of contexts. How we tax -- and to some extent, even how we talk about taxes -- is central to all progressive notions of how we grow and divide our common-wealth. Without finding ways to collect revenue fairly from its citizens, a society rots from its core. Predatory gambling is a symptom of that, but not the only one. And I'm going to continue pointing that out.
By the way, and I should have said this sooner, I have nothing but huge admiration for the work of Casino-Free, Helen Gym, Jethro Haiko, Ellen Somekawa, and other leaders and participants in the fight. They inspire me every day to keep going, no matter what the odds.
Well not that I consider myself particularly adept at it
but I do consider myself a local businessperson and I do think that I try to articulate arguments for a fairer, more rounded tax structure at a state and Federal level pretty consistently. You talk about businesspeople like they are little green martians.
I think its the heart of progressive ideas to talk about taxes in terms of being smart about encouraging sustainable economic growth, about investing in education and "human resources". Casinos are a bad economic development plan because they lie about what they deliver in terms of revenue when compared to the social costs and because the majority of the types of jobs they produce are not skilled, family sustaining ones.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Actually I'm the little green martian
as you know.
Meritless
Stan, you craftily avoided my previous point that it's relatively easy to escape onerous taxation. In fact, it's a breeze for many of the big evil nasty corporations you speak of. What occurred in Philadelphia on a microeconomic scale (explosion of the suburbs from people fleeing Philadelphia) is happening on a national scale.
I am more than willing to chuck my economic beliefs if it comes to right-sizing Free Trade to make it Fair Trade and employing cost-recapture mechanisms to stymie household wealth from having a net outward flow out of our country.
We should be taxing our insatiable appetite for imports to get Federal, State and Local revenue... not taxing the workers left standing after this economic Holocaust.
But your party nor the Republican party are neither willing, yet able, to do any of this.
Your strategy to "sock the rich" will fail when anybody can pack up their headquarters and go to Bermuda, produce and do service work in super-low cost countries, communicate over the Internet, et. al.
All you will have left to tax are deeply-discounted commodities and marginal wages of US workers who are selling the outsourced widgets, and the 1%'ers who are savvy at hiding their assets and using loophole magic tricks to make it appear as if they're broke come April 15th.
Of course I'm for fair trade
and for rewriting our Free Trade Agreements. To the extent your point is that Democrats are complicit in having our manufacturing base decimated through NAFTA and similar agreements, you'll get no argument from me. We need enforceable labor, environmental and regulatory agreements with our trading partners that sharply reduce the capacity of corporations to roam the world looking for the easiest populations to exploit. But that doesn't mean we can starve public services while we wait for NAFTA to be rewritten.
I don't think if we raise marginal tax rates back up to where they were in the Clinton administration, or even beyond, all the rich people will pack up, leave their homes and head for Bangladesh. I could be wrong about that. Admittedly big business has been doing that for decades. But they're not doing it because of the Business Privilege Tax. The fact that they can pay labor 5% of what they pay for it here just might be a slightly greater motivator.
But I don't really want to get into substantive discussions on this thread. I want to stay on one point, even if it's one that you, EC, don't care about. And that's that the left -- of which you will admit you're not a part -- has a problem as a movement. And its problem is that it wants stuff that it doesn't know how to pay for. And as long as we put forward no credible way to pay for what we want, the right will be positioned to keep cutting. Or keep propping up evil sources of funding like the gambling industry. Exhibit A for the horrendous results of that conundrum is right here in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.
I will add one other point. Regardless of the economic merits of the argument against raising the BPT, at this point in time that argument feeds the conventional Republican wisdom that taxing corporations is bad for business, and what's bad for business is bad, period. Most Americans don't make subtle distinctions in their minds about whether a particular tax is good for their cities or states, but bad for the federal government, or vice-versa, or any other mix of these options. They generally hate all taxes, but some more than others, mostly based on whether they have to pay them. When we help demonize corporate taxes that most Americans don't have to pay, we're left with a lot fewer viable options. So we need a unified theory of how to tax, and we need to press it at all levels of government, just as the right does. Otherwise they win, we lose.
Translation
Everyone I want to call a 'virtual Republican' is one. It's 'my way or the highway' on how to be progressive and its morally more important to stick it to evil corporations at a local level even if them taking their jobs with them in the end hurts Philly's poor more than it helps them. The symbolic victory of sticking it to the evil meanies is more important than Philadelphia being a place where someone in every neighborhood, from every school can grow up to have the same job opportunities right here in the city as someone growing up in Lower Merion does.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I'm not rising to the bait, Sean
If you want to twist everything I have to say to fit the frame you've made for me, so be it.
You are fine one to talk
about fitting people into frames. That's all I have to say.
Look I get your wider point about progressives need to stop being shy about how how Federal tax policies over the last decade have benefited the top 5% in income in this country. I think we need to stand up for broad based, progressive taxation in the state of PA. We agree.
But why does that mean that everyone buys your take on the BPT hook, line and sinker? And if thats your line in the sand aren't you the one marching your more limited definition of "progressive" Philly politics directly away from lots of educated younger professionals and semi-professionals we actually need?
"Accept my take on local taxes or else wider progressive politics will lose because most people are too stupid to tell good taxes from bad taxes" is not a position that draws a majority of people to your cause because it directly insults a majority of people's intelligence.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Exactly where in any of my posts did you find a line in the sand
Where I said:
Progressives need a unified theory of how taxes should be levied ?
The last budget rounds ended badly, in part, because there was a lack of unity on how taxes should be levied?
Republicans have talking points on taxes that are much clearer than ours?
It would be better to raise taxes at the state and federal levels but if we can't get that done, we have to make tough local choices?
And which of these things do you think are horribly, if not criminally, wrong?
And btw, did you see my comment that I don't think I have all the answers. And did you read Marc's post a while ago in which he said, if anything, my point of view on taxes is too flexible for his taste? Marc, of course, has actually worked with me instead of just finding fun things to say about me.
How about the senteces before.
That basically says any argument that posits a cost, a trade-off in any form of business taxation at a local level is the exact same thing as having a Reason-magazine Chicago school evil "Republican -in-spirit" world view. You are either on either our side "demonizing" businesses and corporations across the board or you are on the other side "demonizing corporate taxes". Saying the BPT has a cost in terms of job loss, as well other things - like perceptions of corruption and a city bureaucracy that is often Kafka-esque (have you ever dealt with the Water Dep't?), like low-educated work force and perceptions of crime - which I always include - is not merely parroting Republican talking points.
I'm not a never, never, no way on businesses taxes but clearly Philadelphia is with Detroit in losing out on a national trend that is benefitting every other major city in the US.
Doesn't this bother you? Doesn't it give you grave concern about the long term health of this city? Can we afford to miss out on the relief this trend is offering every other long suffering major city except us and Detroit? Don't you have concerns that this path- more here - is bad for Philly's poor people too?
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
I stand by that paragraph, but it's not my whole point
What I'm saying is we can't demonize corporate taxation, locally or otherwise, per se. And that's the position that has pretty much become conventional wisdom, on much of the left as well as other places on the spectrum -- in this town. In my view, that is an oversimplistic position that hurts us in the debate on taxes at the state and federal levels too.
I'll repeat again that I'm not inflexible on how to tax business. I do not equate big and small businesses, as you well know from the last round of tax discussions that we had on this blog in the Spring. And I don't equate in-City and out-of-City businesses. I'm not against smartly taxing business, nor taxing them primarily at the State and Federal levels. But I am saying that a frame that suggests, for instance, that the entire reason for the chart that you posted above is the BPT, writ large, is damaging. It's not demonstrably true, and it only reinforces the ability of conservatives to quash progressive taxation everywhere. Are you saying, Sean, that we shouldn't discuss framing, because to do so is to insult the intelligence of voters? Well, if we were all to follow that advice, the right wing echo chamber would be thrilled.
On the chart itself, I would say that there are a wide range of factors involved. They may have to do with one or more of: our location, labor quality and costs, educational levels, corrupt government, housing availability and quality, utility and insurance costs, real and perceived crime levels, climate, city service availability and quality, health care costs, and any number of other things. Taxes may be a factor, but lack of services funded by taxes could also be a factor as big or bigger.
Frankly, Sean, it seems to me that you're the one who is drawing a line in the sand here. Your position seems to be that corporate taxes should be cut in Philly, period, or at least never raised beyond where they are now. It doesn't matter how business taxes are structured, who they fall on, what other revenue sources we have, or what services might be at stake. Corporate taxes must be frozen or cut, period. Am I getting it right?
Nope
I have I repeat no "never, never, no ways". But its not enough to say "its a variety of causes", responsible Philadlephians have to offer concrete solutions. Business taxes have a cost to attracting jobs, its not the only cost - but you have to more than make up in those other departments if you don't compete in that one.
Or better yet you do a little when possible on the biz tax front while doing everything possible on the clean government, better educated population and user-friendly, effective city bureaucracy fronts. Again I'm a polyglot in the approach and you are binary. Either its business taxes or you are a secret Republican undermining wider goals. The broad brush does not serve wider coalition building well.
P.S. as an aside - did you actually just say Detroit's problem might be from lack of affordable housing? Yee gods man, they are planning shutting off water, sewer and electricity to vast stretches of the city to force the remaining population to reconcentrate in areas where its not so expensive to deliver services and intentionally let the rest go back to forrest. Lack of empty and low cost houses is not the problem.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Which post of mine was that?
I've tried to follow this but I've gotten a little confused about what point a post of mine is being used to support.
wow
I saw 28 comments on this post and was excited to see what the debate was about. Imagine my disappointment when I saw it was just a debate between a small number of people.
Not to mention that it is a group of people who seems more intent on scoring points off one another than actually listening (of course I didn't actually read about 3/4 of the comments so maybe I am wrong).
The one thing I did read, which seems right to me, is Stan's point about the reasons casinos are even being built.
It's because Democrats want to keep funding government (whereas many Rs want to drown it in the bathtub) but are afraid to talk honestly about taxes and fairness. So they have gotten into easy money ideas. Bad scene.
So I agree with Stan that this kind of cowardice is the root of the casino problem (not that greed and money in politics don't play into this too).
I would love to see a back-and-forth that is about how much that realization has struck folks organizing against casinos. Specifically, I would like hear reports from anti-casino organizers reports in the field about where their members are at with larger tax policy/equity issues and how/if that fits into some long-term plan.
A couple of thoughts for Ray
I'll chime in quickly here:
Asian Americans United (and Casino Free too) is part of the Coalition for Essential Services and certainly supports progressive taxation and a need for a better plan to generate revenue and stimulate economic development. AAU was a founding member of the No Casino in the Heart of Our City Coalition which brings together groups from across the city and articulates a broader dialogue about gambling and economic and community development; it's a coalition that's holding together despite the current move of Foxwoods off of Market Street because it sees a continued need to articulate a more citywide voice on predatory gambling.
Obviously for AAU and myself we're not issue oriented organizations or people, and I don't think CFP really is anymore either, though I'll let CFPers speak for themselves here. In terms of AAU, most of our efforts have involved investments in education and youth programs, the arts, and greening projects and development of public spaces as ways to support vibrant immigrant communities. I'll also throw in Parents United's efforts to seek improved revenue for the public schools as another example of how anti-casino folks are trying to contribute to a broader dialogue. I'm not sure that these are the kinds of things you meant above but it's the ways we're currently trying to contribute to and re-define the notion of how to build community - of which equity and taxation is one part. And in general, I would say that the Philly anti-casino folks who have joined together largely because of concerns around predatory gambling, the social and economic impact on neighborhoods, and gambling as a farce of economic development - have a history in working towards a more just economic system.
Two other thoughts:
In looking at the budget, I don't just blame legislators for failing to consider raising taxes but failing to do that while giving a pass to numerous revenue options like:
And the second thought: In this particular go round on the table games legislation and the frenzy around unfettered expanded gambling, I don't think you can overlook the fact that the Supreme Court conveniently lifted the ban on gambling contributions in the months before table games were introduced. This allowed a completely unregulated industry to hire former legislators and state officials as lobbyists with the clout to "issue ultimatums" to the legislature. The lobbying was so relentless that one legislator complained on record that he "resented" the shameless lobbying by high level former officials.
In other words, the issue this budget season may not have been as much cowardice as it was a corrupt process that allowed the most monied and aggressive industry in the country to seek and win unprecedented access and influence in the legislative process.
Guilty as charged
I quit. I will say I protested going down this path early on but Stan wanted to rekindle the same-old, same-old.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
Ditto.
But the issue comes back because it's there, Sean, no matter how much you think it would go away if I did.
Those posting didn't agree with Stan's leap, Ray
You did.
You don't always get the progressive movement that you want.
People, Calm Down
Look. Even if a consensus can't be formed now, that shouldn't distract from the ever-present problem NOW, that's getting bigger the longer it is being ignored.
Look at it from a politically agnostic perspective and look at it from the point of an economist. SOMEthing is draining away household wealth and jobs (let's not debate what) that are available today. I'm talking the open positions awaiting to be filled and those in the near-term projected future; they're stepping lower and lower in take-home income when you marginalize those wages for inflation.
The primary method of wealth redistribution in any western civilization is through employment from people producing and consuming in the economic forum. In a balanced economy, there is a stable amount of employment providing incomes for those who need to consume. Money itself is only a transfer medium used as a catalyst to enable goods and services to be traded, the more money that's flowing around the more liquidity there is.
Now, I have my own separate ideas as to why we're in such a financial pickle that are way more simplistic than simply arguing back and forth about taxation. When entities who provide jobs do not recycle their capital back into the economy in the form of capital investment and capital purchases you will create an economy that shrinks in size.
If it shrinks too much, then the economy obviously cannot support the population which the economy serves, unless the people create liquidity, production and income in some other way.
That's the problem we are suffering from right now. We incur net trade losses each year with many countries that we trade with. That has a deflationary effect on our economy overall, but it's offset by a use amount of monetary investment that flows back IN to our country, replacing the wealth that was exported.
Unfortunately for us, this money coming back to us is in the form of debt purchases and private capital investment. Some of this is good, some of it isn't healthy. The Treasury purchases made by foreign investors are particularly bad for us (in the large volumes that occur presently) because that sucks up more of our nation's capital in the long run to close that debt.
If we don't solve this problem, regardless of who is in power, then we could become the next Argentina and undergo a very chaotic meltdown of our monetary system.
The credit crisis that we are experiencing is basically a disruption of only a PART of the banking and financial system. The currency crisis which Argentina experienced affected every man, woman and child and thrust that nation's population into a 52% poverty rate which has taken almost this entire decade to recover.
If we go through such an experience like Argentina did, we won't have an international lender of last resort to bail us out and reset our monetary system like Argentina did.
In order for us to plug a hole in this huge dam that's flooding national income out of our economy, we need to take measures way more critical than just taxing local citizens and small enterprise. We have to come back and look deep and hard at excise taxes which generally go ignored. We don't even responsibly capture tax on items that are imported to the US by producers who exploit the environment to escape our clear air, water and soil laws. Why isn't anyone fighting for this?
We need to stymie our trade deficits and/or create new trade surpluses. We need to encourage foreign capital investment here, which means we need to come clean about what kind of immigration policy we want to have. We can't function well as nation if we behave like shut-ins just like we can't be a nation that babysits the world's poor, either.
Thoughtful, logical economic policies that preserves our capital and grows it for future generations is what we need the most and we need this yesterday.
This isn't something that can wait for another 2 decades before we decide it's a problem we should fix.
Sidetracks on taxation from within our country, in my view, is a meaningless debate to have when the pie we we all must share is getting smaller and smaller and smaller.