If there’s a Democratic primary for governor, I’m supporting the candidate who says “Tax the rich.”
David Garcia already signed on to run against Ducey in 2018. Steve Farley has said he’s interested. Farley and Garcia are both very smart, energetic guys who I would be happy to see as our next governor. Add the extra pleasure of seeing Ducey crash and burn at the polls, and I’d be damn near ecstatic if either won. Both of them are strong backers of public education. Both will push for inclusive social services from state agencies. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but not enough for me to give either the political edge. That makes it tough to choose between them, assuming Farley jumps in the race.
So if there’s a primary, I’m going to be listening for their stands on raising taxes. There’s no way to stretch current dollars to pay for what we need. Education. Social services. Did I mention highway repair? Those are all big ticket items, and Arizona has a small ticket budget.
Farley has made a good case for getting rid of some of the tax exemptions gifted to special interests over the years. He thinks there’s at least $2 billion in trimmable tax breaks, maybe more, without touching the sales tax exemptions for things like food and prescriptions. And that would be terrific. But whenever I hear that kind of talk from Farley and other Democrats, much as I think it’s a great idea, I always feel like it’s a way of avoiding the elephant in the room. And I don’t mean the Republican elephant. I mean that big ol’ “Tax increase” elephant.
Garcia has edged up next to the idea of a tax increase. He says we absolutely need more money for education and he wants to raise revenue, maybe even raise taxes if necessary. But if he has a plan, I don’t know what it is.
So long as Arizona Democrats are afraid to say we need a tax increase, voters assume the Republicans must be right when they say we’re taxed too much already. And I admit the Rs have a point when it comes to most Arizonans. Our state’s tax inequality is among the worst in the country when you add together income, sales and excise taxes. By keeping our income taxes low, we’ve shifted the costs of government away from the rich who can best afford it and placed too much of the burden on middle and lower class taxpayers. Whenever we need more money, state or local, we go for another regressive sales tax increase when we should be making the rich pay their fair share by increasing their income taxes.
It’s going to take some heavy lifting for any Democrat to make it to the governor’s office. Ducey has done himself some political damage lately, but he’s still the odds-on favorite. Playing it safe won’t get a Democratic candidate anywhere. Somewhere, somehow, some Democrat is going to have to take a serious political risk or go down to another safe, predictable gubernatorial defeat. Finding the right way to say “Tax the rich” is one way to get the voters’ attention, and the only way to lift Arizona out of its budgetary quagmire.
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2017.
Same old same old. Can’t you guys come up with one new idea?
I heard the former democratic treasurer from California say that unless their party figures out that it isn’t about increasing taxes but running things responsibly that they will lose. He said California is on the brink of bankruptcy and “the rich” are leaving the state. He said the majority of the programs are bloated and should be trimmed to save the state from disaster.
Smart thoughts David. I have been thinking along these same lines. But, I offer this back. Closing loopholes IS about increasing taxes on the wealthy and maybe a great first step? The second step is that government, more properly funded, can help improve people’s lives. Then, the people would be more willing to trust government with more of their hard-earned dollars.
Define “Rich”.
Let me guess. In the Democratic Party dictionary:
–Annual income of 0-$20K per year = poor
–Annual income of $20K – $40K per year = middle class
–Income between $40K per year and the level of income it takes to be a MAJOR Democratic Paty campaign donor = “THE WEALTHY!!!” Tax the hell out of them and if they want to send their kids to college, make them indenture themselves and their kids to the banks to do it.
–Special class never to be discussed: the truly wealthy who fund campaigns. Let them off the hook for everything, always.
The devil is in the details, David. The Democratic Party has been complicit to such a degree with the financial “industry,” no plan that omits what is meant by terms like “closing loopholes,” “the rich,” “the middle class” means anything. We’ve seen far too many “plans” concocted behind closed doors and sold to constituents who work for a living that sound like they’ll defend our interests and don’t actually end up doing so.
The government is not in the business of improving lives. If they were they would fix the potholes. Their promises and their lies are much much bigger than that.
Let’s make some educated guesses about what “support public education” may mean to Democratic Party candidates, based on what kinds of governance and policy our local establishment Democrats have been seen supporting and / or endorsing:
Increase funding to public school districts without taking the trouble to ensure that even the most basic financial transparency and accountability protocols are in place. Look the other way when funds end up pooling in the pockets of overpaid central administrators while classrooms and teachers go begging. Outsource part of your teaching workforce, reducing their pay and destroying their ability to qualify for benefits, which will worsen your existing teacher supply problem and further degrade teaching and learning conditions in classrooms, especially in schools that serve primarily low-SES families. Then, when you campaign for re-election, don’t forget to repeatedly state that you firmly oppose outsourcing, while receiving large campaign donations from an executive in the company to which labor has been outsourced. Do nothing to effectively prevent the spread of crap curricula and toxic, mindless multiple choice tests. Then slam the door shut and lock it. Never NEVER tolerate any policy that would allow a non-plutocrat family to remove their children from the mismanaged disaster of an “educational” institution created by a persistent, reform-proof, entrenched and toxic combination of ignorance, cronyism and negligence.
Sorry. Not voting for Garcia or Farley or ANY candidate who is part of the network that is responsible for what some of our large institutions of public “education” (?) have become in Southern Arizona. And, for the millionth time: our schools have become this way NOT just through under-funding. They have become this way also by decades of tolerating and / or encouraging and rewarding egregious mismanagement. We certainly don’t need more of THAT, and elevated to state-level, not just local, office.
The time has come to start the discussion on raising revenue. For 25 years we have methodically lowered taxes using as a promise that lowering taxes will boost the economy, employment will rise, the economy will boom and the increased economic activity will make up for the short term loss in revenue. But….after 25 years of this it is time for a reality check. Guess what? IT DOESN’T WORK!!!. Instead our state is in an endless cycle of fiscal crisis and, sadly, our greatest resource our kids have born the brunt.
We need to start, at least, to reversing this death spiral, yes we need to raise taxes.
Now consider our choices: Raise income and corporate taxes, raise the property tax or raise sales taxes.
Already our State sales tax is the 11th highest in the nation while our property and income taxes are 5th and 6th from the bottom. Sales tax is generally considered repressive in that it disproportionately impact the poor. So there you have the sad data, read it and weep. Yes we need to raise both income and property taxes. Time to start the discussion. David is right on.
I’m old enough to remember the ‘good old days’. The difference between then and today is noticeable. We had strong public schools in most communities, people made a decent paycheck and lived reasonably safely.
What changed, two things, we stopped taxing the the very wealthy and mega-corporations. They both pay about a quarter of what they used to. Corporations paid 30% of the federal budget then, today, 10%. Your taxes, those of the lower 85% of Americans has been raised to cover the some of difference but it doesn’t nearly cover everything. Tax cuts for the rich were made, about 14-15 rounds of cuts, on the promise of great rewards for all of us. It never happened. All it did was make the rich tremendously richer, like never before, and cut government services.
Second, the advent of a well funded, extreme hard right echo machine that has saturated the radio dial, and TV to some extent, for the last 45 years or so. For the last 45 years they have maintained 95-98% of all political talk on the radio. Even more, it’s been an extreme set of views and largely fact free, relying on a constant attack mode to denigrate any opposition. So extreme that the Russian cyberwarfare division flooded the US presidential election with a partisan attack of full out lies and ludicrous accusations and most people didn’t even notice any difference.
Yes, a good start would be to tax the rich, to return to the way it worked…..’in the good old days’.
I think the word you’re looking for is “regressive,” Michael S. Ellegood, not “repressive.”
What doesn’t work to improve education is handing people like those running TUSD more money without simultaneously increasing oversight and transparency. But that is just what the sold-out establishment Dems keep proposing. Guess they don’t realize just how much they have egg on their faces after what has been revealed about what the district did with the 301 funds, or the 123 funds the Dems connected with TUSD helped Ducey secure from the land trust.
But keep talking about “the poor kids!” while averting your eyes from what is actually done with money the Dems have begged for on behalf of “the kids!!!” No doubt some portion of the electorate will always be ignorant enough to keep falling for this shell game.
But it does work. You just have to know ALL the facts.
However, the numbers, crunched by Heritage’s Brian Riedl, show otherwise (see chart below). In 1980, the last year before the tax cuts, tax revenues were $956 billion (in constant 1996 dollars).
Revenues exceeded that 1980 level in eight of the next 10 years. Annual revenues over the next decade averaged $102 billion above their 1980 level (in constant 1996 dollars).
Any increase in budget deficits was therefore the result of spending increases rather than tax cut-induced revenue decreases.
http://www.heritage.org/taxes/report/tax-cuts-increase-federal-revenues
To espouse the contrary is basically ignorant or deceptive.
Running on higher taxes and more welfare plus dollars for schools with no plan for how that improves education and no plan to curb illegal immigration.
This is probably not a winning platform in Arizona.
I watched while the Democrats celebrated the death of the Republican Party over the last 8 years, and they forgot to look in the mirror. Democrats are no longer happy with their party. They will split into liberal Republicans and Socialist/Communist/Marxist Democrats. But any way you slice it, they will be the minority. Hard working young people have figured out that once you tax all the rich, the rest of us are next. We must ignore the false promises and get spending under control.
Nothing but more empty promises won’t cut it.
Brian, you are correct. France went down the path recommended by Ken Groves above.
Since 1980, France has lost 3 billion hours of work, while the United States has gained 87 billion hours of work. The European Union countries had a GDP 30% higher than the US in 1980, today they have a GDP 20% lower.
Our problem now is that we have added a bunch of Obamacare taxes, a lot of state and city level taxes and another 20,000 pages to the Code of Federal regulations. Small company formation is hugely below the rate of the 80’s.
We are now Europe and there are very few jobs for our young adults.
Groves is saying that more of the poison is the cure. He believes Picketty when Picketty says that all modern industrial economies grow about the same. Since when is positive 87 billion equal to negative 3 billion?
Hebra Dolt:
It’s medication time! Quit posting and chat with your buddy JHuppent while the two of you wait in line for your methadone. The rest of us can take a breather and we are very appreciative of that.
uh… equal tax rate for everyone. The richer they are the more they spend they pay taxes. End of story