Californians: We Support Our Public Workers

this is excellent news (4.00 / 2)

The issue of pensions and public employees is pretty much the last arrow in the GOP that has gained any traction.  If they lose this argument, it's basically over for them.

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by: David Atkins (thereisnospoon) @ Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 20:58:28 PM UTC

Inititative (4.67 / 3)

When are these unions going to start CollectingSignatrues ?
Rallies are fine, but it would have been the Perfect place to collect signatures for the 'Tax Extensions'

Maybe even a tax on incomes over $500K

We CAN'T Depend on the 'goodwill' of Republicans
We CAN'T expect them to allow the extensions on the ballot

Time to start moving

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by: frisco @ Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 21:50:21 PM UTC

tax the rich (2.00 / 1)

So when we institute this "tax the rich" policy, will that include the almost 10,000 retired CA public employees currently pulling in over $100,000 a year?

And when 800 people in a survey all give essentially the same answer to a question on such a contentious issue, you have to question the validity of the survey.  

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 23:27:01 PM UTC

if you actually (4.00 / 1)

read the post you will see that the basically the same answer was his gloss.  what the poll numbers show is a clear majority.  And when people talk about taxing the rich more no one is talking about those with incomes at $100,000.  The real inequities in the tax codes start much higher on the income scale.

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by: call me ishmael @ Tue Apr 05, 2011 at 23:49:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Agreed (0.00 / 0)

Those at $100,000 a year are too far down, It's the Millionaires and Billionaires near & at the top.

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by: SuperJoker @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 03:01:36 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Click though (0.00 / 0)

Not all 800 people answered the same way.  I meant that the answers to the various questions were all pro-worker by the percentages.

I think?

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by: Brian Leubitz @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 01:41:54 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

OK so $100,000 a year isn't rich? really? (0.00 / 0)

What is rich then?  is there a baseline?

And what happens if the voters do not approve new taxes, what happens then?  do we continue to cut schools and libraries and parks while pumping millions into CalPERS and CalSTRS to prop them up?

Collective bargaining is a great thing, but only when its a genuine bargaining process.  All to often its union elected politicians bargaining with the unions that got them elected and we know where that has got us.

POLITICIAN: "how about 3% at 50, does that sound fair?"

UNION "why yes, that will do just fine."

POLITICIAN "And don't worry about making any contributions yourselves, we have all that covered for you."

UNION: "see you at the crab feed in September."

Thats not a bargaining process.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 17:28:22 PM UTC

We already have tax brackets at 379150 (4.00 / 1)

at the top of the Federal income tax.

The problem is, that is low, adjusted for inflation, for the top tax bracket compared to earlier top brackets.

When the top rate was 70%, the top bracket started at $200k, which is now over $600k, adjusted for inflation.  When it was 91%, the top bracket started at $400k, which would be $3,250,000 adjusted for inflation.

Those are the levels where people are arguing new, higher tax brackets should kick in.

As for $100k being "rich," it depends on your definition of "rich."  $100k is around the 85th-90th percentile of income, if I remember correctly.  It is above average, but hardly excessive.

I tend to associate "rich" with accumulated wealth, not income.  Someone earning a high income can accumulate wealth at a faster rate, true, but that is nothing inheriting millions -- untaxed.  And, at least that person earning $100k is often working at a job producing something of value.

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by: CaliforniaCondor @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 18:48:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Oh, please (5.00 / 1)

what has gotten us into the mess that we are in is not public employee unions but the fact that for the last several decades corporate contributions to buy off politicians has resulted in a dramatic decline in corporations paying the taxes that go to supporting the infrastructure, educated workforce, etc that they need to function.  The corporate share of California's taxes has been declining for decades which has led to it being transferred onto income taxes which as an effective burden on people takes a higher portion of income from those at the bottom than those at the top as the California Budget Project has shown over and over.  The share of the state's budget problems that result from the pensions is miniscule compared to that.

If you want to stop worrying about the contributions of labor unions to politicians then find some way to get rid of corporate contributions as well.  Oh wait, I forgot, the "originalists" on the Supreme Court just gave free speech rights to corporations even though no one in the Revolutionary generation would ever have considered them as having those because they knew they weren't persons.

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by: call me ishmael @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 18:58:45 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

good luck raising that upper tax bracket (1.00 / 1)

We already have the most volatile revenue structure in the country with a huge chunk of our state income dependent on the financial wellbeing of a very small number of wealthy people.  Of course you can tax them more and more, some will leave, most will stay, but will this solve the underlying problem?  when the market has a down year and there are no capital gains, the state pulls in very little money and we have another budget bust and have to lay off teachers.

You can demagogue the issue with "tax the rich" slogans, or you can try to actually solve the problem.

And for the record, according to the non partisan, non aligned Tax Foundation in D.C., California ranks 49th in the business tax climate index so its hard to claim that they aren't paying their fair share.

Lets face it, nearly half of all Californians pay no state income taxes and just as many have subsidized property taxes.  We need to fix Prop 13, stop relying so much on volatile income taxes, and enact tax policies that attract jobs not chase them away.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 19:12:04 PM UTC

first of all (0.00 / 0)

it would make the tax structure less volatile if the burden was shifted off of individuals and onto corporations (which is where the shift to prop 13 should come about--in commercial real estate.  As far as the "non aligned" Tax federation that is a lobby group for lowering taxes (check out their latest fulsome praise for Ryan's plan to shift the burden of society away from shared sacrifice and onto the backs of individuals at the bottom of the spectrum).  As far as driving corporations away according to the Council on State Taxation (hardly a radical group) California has a lower percentage of business and state taxes as a percentage of private sector revenues than Texas does (2009) and the ratio of taxes to business benefits is lower (2007--these are the last years they had). Basically as I said before corporations have been pushing the burden onto individuals in California for decades.  Of course that is true for the country as well.

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by: call me ishmael @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 19:45:42 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Tax Federation (4.00 / 1)

Ismael, the Tax Foundation is both non partisan and non aligned.  It favors no party or state.  You are correct that they believe in lower taxes, but thats not the point.

They have CA ranked 49th out of 50 states in the corporate tax climate.  We can push to be 50th if thats what you want, but will that solve our budget problems?

And you really can't be serious that shifting the tax burden off individuals and onto corporations will stabilize revenues.  Really?  you've read  Thomas Friedman? you know the earth is flat, you know corporations can and do move, you know they offshore profits, you know they expand out of state in order to find more favorable tax situations.  You can claim this is all very unfair, but you can't make like its not so.  You certainly can't pretend it doesn't exist and willy nilly raise corporate taxes because its the easy populist thing to do.  

Raising corporate taxes, and concentrating revenue sources in fewer and fewer people and entities that are becoming increasingly mobile, is a recipie for more volatility not less.

Try Again.

40% of Californians pay no income taxes, which is about the same percentage of Californians who consistently fail to vote election after election.  Do they feel any need to participate in the process if they have no skin in the game? who knows.  Perhaps making every Californian write a $20 check to the state at a minimum might be the greatest thing ever to boost civic participation, particularly among low income and minority populations.  Could be great for Dems and for the bank balance.

Of course the rich can always pay more and they seem to get richer every year and find more loopholes to avoid taxes. BUT we play a very dangerous game if we focus all our attention continually chasing them for revenues and ignoring everyone else.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 20:24:14 PM UTC

the tax foundation (0.00 / 0)

Bob, but it is the point isn't it?  If you look at other measures then the whole question of the climate is very different since it includes questions about what benefits corporations (and society)gets from the taxes and that is why the state tax foundation seems to me to be a better bet.
The point is that simply going by what some group that believes that taxes are by definition a bad thing says is a bad business climate is problematic.  It is like all of those claims that California loses jobs and businesses because of it whereas the PPIC studies showed that the rise and fall of businesses in the state has its own rhythms.

As far as Friedman is concerned I don't know as I would take him as seriously as you do.  It isn't that the world is flat as if this was an effect of nature.  It has to do with the way that laws have been rewritten what political will there is etc.  Moreover, some of the forces that led to off-shoring may be coming to an end (rising transportation costs etc).  And corporations face no penalties if they offshore their profits and then claim all of their losses domestically.  That is an effect of political will (or the lack of it)

The problem with the 40% is that a large proportion of them don't have the money.  I suspect that they don't vote because they don't believe that they have any power not because they don't pay taxes.  It is that the game doesn't have any response to them.  But it is clearly a problem since it allows the inequities to grow.

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by: call me ishmael @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 20:53:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

not the point (5.00 / 1)

We are trying to find a less volatile source of tax income, at least I am, not rehash a thousand year old debate about tax fairness and equity.

Its basic common sense.  The more you concentrate your revenue source in fewer people and companies, the more volatile your revenues will become.  Taxing the taxing corporations might get you to the magic number to balance the budget one year, but the next you could be 50% in the hole.  Thats how volatile corporate earnings and capital gains are.

You can also have a navel gazing conversation about the inequity of federal tax policy when it comes to corporations and the rich, but we can't change that.  I'm only interested in the realm of the possible; what we can do here in California to dig ourselves out of this hole without shutting half our schools.

That PPIC study you reference makes one huge elemental error.  They are correct that corporations are not leaving California any ore than they are leaving any other state, but what they do not address are the rates at which California companies are expanding and hiring in other states and not here.  All the Silicon Vally big chip manufacturers are all still HQ'd there, but not a single chip us actually made there, its all done out of state.  The PPIC report thinks that if Intel is still based here, then our tax policy must be working. Not the case.

We need tax policies that put more people to work, that create more wealth for more people, so that more of us are paying in and more of us have a stake in the future of the state.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 21:12:58 PM UTC

But (0.00 / 0)

this conversation started with your insisting that our problems had to do with the power of public employee unions.  So I do think that it was larger than stabilizing revenue flows.

But I do agree that there need to be changes in the tax code to make things more stable.  The way sales taxes are imposed is completely archaic.  But the whole way that Arnold's commission sought to change that was regressive.  I think that if we are going to start revising the tax code it can't be by burdening the poor even more.

The other reason I think that corporations have to be part of the mix is that one of the effects of the shifting of burdens onto individuals has been that--despite the propaganda to the contrary--there has been a decline in spending in real dollars) on basic government spending on things like education.  Despite prop 48 our per capita spending on students is what 49th or something?  As a result more of the burdens of things that should be shared through the government are being pushed onto individuals (or they are not getting them at all and being left behind). I think that a lot of alienation from the state government is a result of the fact that as the burden of taxes has been shifted onto individuals but they have had to go elsewhere for services they feel they are being double-taxed.  If we sufficiently reinvested in things like schools, and roads, and higher education etc, then people would not need to spend the outrageous sums to pay for those things through the private sector and there would be more skin in the game of politics.

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by: call me ishmael @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 21:39:08 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

public unions (4.00 / 1)

Its somewhat ironic that I'm having a parallel discussion on another forum about the cost of police pensions in one local jurisdiction and how they are threatening to bankrupt that particular city.  This PD has a 3% at 50 deal and pay nothing in.

On that forum the standard response is not to tax the rich more, rather its to stop giving expensive services to illegal immigrants and welfare checks to slackers. They are the real reason we're in a budget hole.

Everyone is out to protect what they've got and gore someone else's ox. Nobody it seems wants to do whats best for California.  I'm not rich but I'll glady pay another couple of hundred bucks a year, provided we get more fairness in the system.  I won't pay it so my retired public employee neighbor can have a fat pension and a 1978 cap on his property taxes....f**k that.

There's a lot of unfairness in California.  Its unfair that 10,000 retired public workers pull in $100,000 a year and more while we close schools.  Its unfair that billionaires pay less property tax than regular working stiffs, its unfair that 40% of Californians pay no income tax whatsoever, its unfair that we'll be leaving our kids with a mountain of debt, liability and a state in ruins....a state that we inherited a generation ago and which was the envy of the world.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 21:56:57 PM UTC

look (0.00 / 0)

I'm not crazy that my neighbor probably pays half as much for property taxes than I do but I really don't think that the problem with prop 13 is so much the residential as the commercial property tax, but don't forget that a lot of people who don't pay income taxes because they are too poor do pay other taxes and also a lot of fees (I would prefer they not pay fees but taxes but that is another story).  But if you look at the numbers on the pension stuff compared to the decline in corporate tax revenues it isn't equal.  And most public employees don't get $100,000 a year.  

I'm not saying that it is politically easy (as your experience on the other blog is showing).  But Brown has now cut social services in a devastating way and he is still Billions of dollars short.  That means revenues whether people like it or not.  Or we will have the state you describe (we are pretty far there already).

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by: call me ishmael @ Wed Apr 06, 2011 at 22:29:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

agreed (0.00 / 0)

Most public employees don't get $100,000.00 a year, My Dad never did, My Sister in law is a County Nurse working two or three days a week, She pulls down a good amount per year just above the mid 5 figures, She gets enough to cover Her food, bills, 401K and gasoline for Her commute, But then She's going to retire in a few years, Oh and She's a Republican...

Her son is a Republican too, Agrees with the Tea Party to a point(I think), But has worked with Mexicans driving trucks for as living, He doesn't say much, He says People don't ride passenger/HSR trains, His Mom and His Sisters know better, as do I.

His Sisters are Republicans too, One goes to school and the other, Well She's a college grad with a BA in English and makes as much as Her Mom does, I'm not a Republican anymore, as I'm sick of some Republicans saying that Disabled people who draw SSI(Supplemental Security Income) are lazy bums, are fraudulent, wasteful, etc... Some people wrongly think that If one gets SSI in Cali, then one gets Food Stamps(SNAP, Cal Fresh or something), Which is wrong cause of a California policy named Cash Out which California will not end. Of course California is only the 2nd largest when It comes to the State Supplemental Payment, Alaska is bigger and in Alaska I think they do get Food Stamps... I just can't find the info to be sure, The Alaska calculator for SNAP is making a 404 error(offline). I'd wrote about this Cash Out Policy to our dear Governor Brown and My elected Republican Representatives in the Legislature on this, I got a wall of silence back. In short California gives out $10 in lieu of Food Stamps and does this to homes without regard to the benefits being sent to homes with all income or just eligible income like SSI normally is, So the USDA and SSA have embargoed CA SSI Recipients from getting Food Stamps as a result.

Except for My nephew the rest lean Moderate, My Nephew is My Nephew, He's a good person, But overburdened with a Wife Who's a diabetic and Whose son(not My Nephews) is disabled and I think is autistic If I remember correctly, Of course He's a good 11 year old and He tries really hard. I say overburdened as He's the only one that can work, She's having problems with Her Diabetes and He's lucky to have insurance from work and It isn't cheap either, But then He loves His Wife and He'll do what He can.

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by: SuperJoker @ Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 01:13:31 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Ishmael...a news article for you to read (0.00 / 0)

Intel, one of those California chip manufacturers that doesn't manufacture chips in California was in the news today.  Their former CEO explaining why they invested $7 billion in manufacturing facilities in Ireland.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news...

Do you think we could use those jobs and all that revenue here?

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Thu Apr 07, 2011 at 22:35:38 PM UTC

Ireland (0.00 / 0)

The show "60 Minutes" did a segment on Sunday about US Corps in Ireland.  But, I don't recall the show explaining that the economy in Ireland is a shambles.  I'm thinking maybe Ireland needs to increase the tax rate on corporations.

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by: annie @ Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 04:45:50 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

of course (0.00 / 0)

this guy is also just happening to claim that what his group is now offering is the only way to go so I am not sure how far we should buy what he says.  Intel moved there back in the early 90s right?  When Ireland was being subsidized?  I wonder what will happen now.

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by: call me ishmael @ Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 01:30:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Ireland (2.00 / 1)

Ireland's problems were not caused by a low corporate tax rate.  Irelands problems were caused by a corrupt government who pissed away a huge amount of wealth.  They wanted it both ways, low taxes and a bloated public sector with high wages and benefits as well as a very generous welfare system that wasn't warranted given the 0% unemployment rate.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Fri Apr 08, 2011 at 17:13:23 PM UTC

Ireland (0.00 / 0)

like several other of the so-called european miracles were was being subsidized by the EU so that they could keep their corporate taxes low. I don't doubt that corporations will go where they can to get higher profits and lower costs.  The question is whether or not we should completely de-develop our economy and society in the frantic hope that we can make ourselves so weak that corporations will come back or if we want to pay to build a society where they will flourish--and in which they actually contribute to the benefits they get.  Of course, if the EU wants to pay for our corporate taxes to stay low I am sure that the government would go for that.  But I don't think that is going to happen do you?

As for the collapse, it wasn't because of a "bloated public sector" but because of inflated real estate and the unrestricted power of finance capital.  Their banks got into the same sort of securitized nonsense that the banks did here but unlike Iceland they didn't just tell the banks to take their losses and have been trying to impose austerity.  Sound familiar?

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by: call me ishmael @ Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 01:18:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

oh (0.00 / 0)

and by the way Ireland never had a 0% unemployment rate.  At its lowest it was around 5%

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by: call me ishmael @ Sat Apr 09, 2011 at 02:34:06 AM UTC

[ Parent ]