Thanks goes to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire for the heads-up on this...
From Business Insider -
From Business Insider -
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Cliché, sure, but it's also more true than at any time since the Gilded Age.There are 15 slides detailing the ever-widening income and wealth gap in the United States. Each of the slides is eye-popping and the piece is worth checking out in its entirety, but I'll include one here -
The poor are getting poorer, wages are falling behind inflation, and social mobility is at an all-time low.
If you're in that top 1%, life is grand.
The Prop 100 election (temporary sales tax increase) is very important. I'm not sold on it yet, not completely anyway, but there is no doubt that the state's education and social safety net infrastructures will be devastated further if it doesn't pass.
What is causing my hesitation, however, is my fear that people will come out for this one in May and think that the fight is over afterward. If the folks mobilizing in support of Prop 100 stay home in November, they'll just be winning one small battle but losing the overall war for Arizona's future.
Approving Prop 100 will just be delaying the inevitable if Arizonans don't kick the Kool-Aid gang to the curb.
It's time make some serious changes at the Capitol, and that can only happen in November. Not May.
More on these subjects (Prop 100 and the corporate tax cut) here and here, from AZBlueMeanie at Blog for Arizona.
A related story from Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services, via the East Valley Tribune, here.
4 comments:
A sales tax increase will not make the rich any appreciable amount less rich. A sales tax increase will definitely make the not rich some appreciably amount less rich.
Evey tax affects somebody, rich, poor or middle class. Not so long ago the US government passed a luxury tax on yachts and as a result the yacht industry had to cut back and many non-rich craftsmen who built yachts lost their jobs.
In Arizona I hear claims that country club memberships should be taxed. Who do you think will be laid off if people stop buying country club memberships? It won't be the president of the club - it will be run of the mill workers.
Higher taxes have consequences.
As long as I got mine...right?
Do we REALLY live in a society where we expect LUXURIES like country club memberships and yachts to be tax-free? Why? What makes yacht folks so much more special than car folks? Or folks who want to FEED their kids? I don't need a YACHT. But I NEED to feed my kids!
Why is it when ANYONE DARE suggest that random and dare I suggest exclusive amenities be taxed, someone inevitably threatens some else's job?
Do you know how many "run of the mill workers" will lose their job if Prop 100 FAILS? A recent study out of the UA says 20,500 jobs will be LOST if Prop 100 FAILS. That's opposed to the 7,500 if it passes. And please spare me the Beacon Hill Institute thing the G.I. is so fond of regurgitating. I'd put my trust in a study based in some understanding of the local it is presenting analyses of, rather than some random out-of-state forumla.
At the end of the day, if given a choice, I would RATHER pay a luxury tax on a pedicure, a trip to the groomers, a country club membership or even a yacht than ask my neighbor who is having a hard time making ends meet to pay taxes on the food he buys to feed his kids. If paying a little extra for the finer things in life means my community is fed, educated, protected, and their health safeguarded, then so be it.
People are not going to give up their country club memberships because a small tax is placed on them. The social and professional rewards are too great. It's as much a canard as the one about how if you raise rich people's marginal taxes 3% they won't hire new employees or they'll fire existing ones. Give me a break.
Donna, people can and will drop their memberships. Saying that "it is only a small tax" is being presumptuous. It may not be any more than one person but that one membership pays for somebodies salary. Thinking that taxes have no consequences because "it is only a small tax" is ignoring the fact that Arizona is Taxed Enough Already.
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