Yesterday, we saw with strong turnouts at We are One rallies across the state, that Californians don’t take kindly to the anti-worker tone emanating from some of the other statehouses. But now we have numbers:
In the aftermath of major demonstrations by labor unions on Monday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death and to bring attention to working families, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) today released new polling results showing that 56% of California voters have a favorable view of public employees and 61% support their right to bargain together. With public sector workers under assault and major battles over union rights in Wisconsin, California voters also sided with the Wisconsin public employees (56%) over its governor (37%). (Tulchin Research/CFT)
The poll asked 800 Californians a variety of questions on public workers, and they basically all turned up the same answer: Californians understand that public workers have a tough job, and that they should be supported.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.