(Interesting suggestion, though I’m not sure it’s the right approach. – promoted by eli_beckerman)
I just stumbled over this group, just after stumbling over Blue Mass Group, where I recently posted on how Mass might raise revenues now.
I was surprised to discover little support among BMG respondents for raising Mass revenues now.
While I see Mass education, police and fire as in desperate straits, others at BMG saw a Mass state revenue returning to the historical 15% of state GDP
as healthy.
I’m curious – Here at Green Mass Group, what do we think about the existing level of taxation?
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http://bluemassgroup.com/2012/…
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The idea of raising real estate sales taxes in Massachusetts raises ire as well. Many seem to feel threatened by rising home costs, yet do they feel threatened by degrading education, fire and police protection? Perhaps we feel safe in our homes, until costs rise, yet unsafe in our neighborhoods, as if we’re unattached to the events beyond our door. Are our homes certain protection from fire, from increasing crime (due to both worsening unemployment and worsening education)? Of course not. Much of the protection we enjoy in our homes is due to the efforts of the community within which our homes lie, including town, state and national communities.
Why is a median Massachusetts home worth about $350K while in Maine the median price is about $175K? It’s mostly location. What about location provides so much value? It is that location is location in regards to community: in other words the difference in value between the median house in MA and ME, or between MA and Bosnia or Korea is to a great extent due to the work of communities of people, often through their governments. And that community-provided-value, while it can taken advantage of by an individual’s real estate sale, can not be created by an individual acting alone, or a family acting alone. That value is due to the communities’ work, and as the representative of the community, the government has a moral claim to some of that community-provided value.
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News flash Brian, the education system in MA is ALWAYS in “desperate straits” and we’ve been throwing money at the problem for years.
I even heard Gov Patrick took a deal from the Feds to dumb down the education system in MA in exchange for federal money … it was like a double score.
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http://www.greenmassgroup.com/page/POSTING_POLICY
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I answered the poll saying “just right” because I’m really not sure that MA tax revenues are too low. I think the debate between tax hikes versus spending cuts, especially at the federal level, is part of a false narrative that plays perfectly into the two-party duopoly. It helps to carve out two clear-cut sides — either you are for “good” government, or you are against “bad” government. At the local level it’s a bit more complicated, but the same forces are at play. From the city and town level on up through state and federal governments, policy is set, for the most part, by the well-connected few, for their benefit. This means, in practice, that a good portion of government spending is actually skewed towards protecting the status quo and helping the rich accumulate more riches.
There is no doubt in my mind that real estate policy is a big driving force of the growing wealth divide. Those with an economic advantage multiply their advantage through the tax code. Policy is built around the notion of the “American dream” of home ownership. The real estate MARKET and the commoditization of housing, a basic human right, has transformed the debate into self-interested preservation of that individual dream for as many people as can hang onto it.
The problem is that the whole economic system, predicated on perpetual year-on-year economic growth, is fundamentally unsustainable and has already jumped the shark. I don’t think we can fix it with a narrowly-conceived tax hike, and I don’t think a real estate sales tax could get enough political traction on its own. A financial transaction tax, however, like the one John Nichols points out conservative Sarkozy has now proposed, is another story for popular support.
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We absolutely need the state to step up and provide a larger fraction of the funding needed for local public services like education and public safety. We absolutely need higher provided services like transportation, public and environmental health, and higher ed. And we absolutely have a tax system so profoundly and increasingly imbalanced that it fails to meet our needs even as it asks more and more from those who have less and less.
Given that, I understand the temptation to open the tap a little wider. Prop 2 1/2 requires state govenment to be a reservoir of support — an equal partner in paying for the services we as as public depend on as local wells run dry — but these days that reservoir more closely resembles a dried up lake.
That said, if you’re adding water in the form of new and ever more regressive taxes like the sales tax but the level in the tub still isn’t rising, it’s worth having a look to see if you’ve remembered to plug the drain.
You’re looking for an added $600 million in new taxes, but there’s some $2 billion in tax exemptions —what the state calls tax expenditures — for which not even our generous legislature can explain away in terms of alleged job creation, and which are granted no-strings attached. And a great deal more for which ‘job creation’ claims are an unenforceable and overpriced scam.
How about tens of millions for a pocketful of promises from Evergreen Solar? If our government wanted to give a boost to the solar industry, shouldn’t we have gotten panels instead of promises?
How about tens of millions to move Liberty Mutual across the street? How about countless more ‘job creation’ scams like that one, including the most recent proposal to divert $500 million in city and state tax money (collected and waived) to develop land for private slot machine parlors in Boston at Suffolk Downs? Weren’t we hearing how these were going to bring IN revenue (albeit by taxing hope and desperation)?
How about $150 million/yr for movie producers? Of the tax breaks they receive, 80% goes to pay salaries of out of state actors earning more than $1million/yr. They actually receive more tax breaks than they can manage to use, but no worries, they can sell them to insurance companies and banks!
How about $150 million/year for almost 20 years running in “single-sales-factor” corporate excise tax exemptions on property, salaries, and out of state sales for MA headquartered banks and investment firms selling mutual funds. Firms like Fidelity, Putnam, and State Street investments, busy cutting or shipping out of state up to half their jobs. Firms being paid by us to leave? Do they not need police and fire protection? Good schools, safe neighborhoods, clean parks and open libraries? Don’t they at least need good roads, bridges, and transit as they pack up and leave?
If you ask somebody why they have to pay taxes and don’t get the reply “heck if I know,” you’re going to hear “for the public services we all need and depend on. For, in your words, police and fire and education. They certainly won’t say “I pay taxes, and my business pays taxes, so some other business with more pull on Beacon Hill can doesn’t have to!” And rightly so.
I believe that public dollars should go to public services provided for the benefit of us all, and if we paid a little more attention to what we were giving away and throwing down the drain, there’d actually be more money for the services we thought we were paying for all along.
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According to the MA entry on the second table at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S…