After Oregon: Progressives Call for Tax Reform
Cross-posted from Olympia Newswire:
We can’t focus tax hikes on the wealthy as easily as Oregon with its progressive income tax. But here’s what we can do instead.
Washington’s $2.6 billion budget gap presents state lawmakers with a two-for-one opportunity to lay the groundwork for a more prosperous future. By raising revenue to protect important public structures like K-12 education, health care for seniors, and affordable colleges and universities, policymakers can simultaneously correct some of our tax system’s fundamental shortcomings. Read the rest of this entry »
Ax It or Tax It: $241.8 million for an interstate commerce fuel tax break and an increase in the state estate tax
“Ax It or Tax It” offers budget solutions that will both balance the state budget this year and provide long-term budget stability in the years ahead — without eroding the high quality of life that makes Washington State a great place to live, work, raise a family and do business.
Today’s suggested exemptions to ax and sins to tax: Read the rest of this entry »
Recipe for Disaster, or: How Your Kid’s Schoolteacher Caused A Budget Crisis
Reading Richard Davis’ latest opinion column in the Puget Sound Business Journal is like eating a meal prepared by a blindfolded cook.
We begin with a helping of red herring, in which Mr. Davis cites a Heritage Foundation report that says unionized government jobs pay $430 per week more than comparable jobs in the private sector. He leaves out the real economic beef, which is that real wages in the private sector have been flat for more than 20 years while costs for everything from housing, child care, college, and health care have taken up more and more of the family budget.
Of course by comparison, union jobs are better paid. The unions bargained for a better deal from their employers. Read the rest of this entry »
News and Views: Cutting through the rhetoric on state taxes and spending to see the real effect on our economy.
In which Senator Debbie Regala (D-27, Tacoma) takes a clear-eyed look at state taxes and spending over the long haul, and Amy Kinsel (Professor of History at Shoreline Community College) points out the short-sighted irony of cutting funding for the very community colleges people need to retrain for new jobs during a recession. Plus, EOI gets a little ink in a piece from Olympia Newswire.
Yes, state spending should match the revenues at hand | But when you hear that state spending has increased, please remember we didn’t spend any more money per person than we did 10 years ago. Our state’s population has increased by nearly a million people over the last 10 years. Despite that, state spending per capita, revenues per capita and state spending relative to the state economy have all declined during that same period. | Senator Debbie Regala
Two-Year Colleges Can’t Absorb Further Cuts Without Turning Students Away | The cruel irony of last year’s legislative session is that Washington State deeply cut funding to higher education just as enrollment skyrocketed. As unemployment grew last year, many Washingtonians decided to enter or return to college, only to find that they were being asked to pay more for less. With further budget cuts next year this problem will get worse. | More: Olympia Newswire
Liberal Revenue Agents: 115 Groups Unite to Promote New Taxes | The quality of life for tens of thousands of Washington’s most vulnerable residents depends on a group with a clunky name that most of them have not, and will never, hear of: the Rebuilding Our Economic Future Coalition. Nearing the midway point of the legislative session, it is unclear whether the Coalition will be able to achieve its ambitious goal — but the Coalition’s lobbyists are putting options before legislators, drawn from the work of liberal economists like the Economic Opportunity Institute’s Marilyn Watkins. | More: Olympia Newswire
Facts about America’s working women
The National Partnership for Women and Families recently released a “State of the Working Woman” info sheet highlighting important facts about economic life for America’s working women. Keep an eye out — EOI will be releasing the 2010 edition of “Washington’s Working Women” this March.
- Percent of U.S. workers who are women: 49.9 [1]
- Proportion of mothers who are primary breadwinners or co-breadwinners for their families: Two-thirds [2]
- Unemployment rate among unmarried women who head families: 13 percent [3]
- Percent of minimum wage workers who are women: 68.5 [4]
- Cents that women are paid for every dollar earned by a man: 77 [5]
- Cents that African American women are paid for every dollar earned by a man: 68 [6]
- Cents that Hispanic women are paid for every dollar earned by a man: 58 [7]
- Percent of U.S. women workers who are union members: 11.3 [8]
- Hourly wage gain for women represented by a union, compared to non-union women: 11.2 percent (about $2.00 an hour) [9]
[1] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Employment Statistics, January 8, 2010.
[2] http://www.americanprogress.org/pressroom/releases/2009/10/awn_final_final.html
[3] http://www.iwpr.org/pdf/Pressreleaseunempjan2010.pdf (as of December 2009)
[4] http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2008tbls.htm#1
[5] http://www.pay-equity.org/
[6] http://www.pay-equity.org/
[7] http://www.pay-equity.org/
[8] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/union2.pdf
[9] www.cepr.net/documents/publications/unions_and_upward_mobility_for_women_workers_2008_12.pdf
