By Chris Lilienthal, Third and State

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering legislation that will give tax breaks to those who purchase private and corporate aircrafts

After making deep cuts to schools, early childhood education, and health and human services, Pennsylvania lawmakers are now considering new tax breaks that will largely benefit a small number of higher-income earners.

Last week, the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation that would create a new loophole in the state inheritance tax. It allows business owners to bequeath business assets tax-free to their heirs — an advantage unavailable to most hardworking Pennsylvanians who inherit a family home or car.

Over in the House, the Finance Committee voted 18-16 on Wednesday to approve a bill that would exempt sales tax on the purchase of private and corporate aircraft, jet parts, and aircraft maintenance and repair. A car or truck purchase will still be subject to sales tax, but those in the market for a private jet will get a tax break.

Finally, the House Commerce Committee is voting today on legislation that would reward investors in Pennsylvania start-up companies with a new tax credit that they can take even if they owe no state taxes. To qualify for the credit, the investor must have a net worth of $1 million or income above $200,000 a year.

Each bill, estimated to cost millions annually, could come up for votes before the House and Senate in the coming weeks. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has more on all three bills here.

These bills come on top of Governor Corbett’s proposal to enact a new round of tax cuts beginning in 2015 that will ultimately cost hundreds of millions from the state treasury and put profitable corporations first in line when future budgets are negotiated. It would be the latest in a series of costly special tax breaks over the decade that have undermined Pennsylvania’s ability to invest in schools and other vital services.

Pennsylvania can continue to fund special tax breaks like these or we can invest again in our children and our economic future — but increasingly we can’t do both. Unaccountable tax cuts undermine success in the classroom and growth in our communities, and they shift costs onto school districts, local governments, and property taxpayers.

Pennsylvania needs real tax reform that closes loopholes, ends special tax breaks, and levels the playing field for everyone. Only then can we enact a state budget that returns to tried-and-true investments in education and the services that promote long-term economic growth.

By Chris Lilienthal, Third and State

Advocates delivered half a pie to every Pennsylvania legislator Tuesday. Why half a pie?

To remind them that a decade of large tax cuts for businesses has left schools, health care services, and local communities with a smaller share of the state budget pie.

Tax cuts enacted since 1999 have drained close to $3 billion this year alone from state coffers. The cost of the tax cuts has more than tripled since 2002, with little to show for it. Too often, these tax cuts are put in place with very little accountability or obligation for companies to create jobs. In fact, Pennsylvania ranked 27th in job growth in 1999-2000 but fell to 34th in 2011-12.

Budget cuts fueled by large business tax cuts also pass the buck to school districts and local governments – and onto local taxpayers.

Governor Corbett is now proposing a new round of tax cuts for 2015 and beyond that will cost as much as an additional $1 billion. The proposal includes no plan to close tax loopholes that allow companies to hide profits and avoid paying their share of taxes.

Pennsylvania needs a budget that returns to tried-and-true investments in education and the public infrastructure that promotes long-term economic growth. After a long economic downturn, that is the path to more jobs, stronger communities, and a brighter future for our children.

We can fund corporate tax cuts or we can fund our children’s schools, but increasingly we can’t do both. Giving larger slices of the pie to profitable corporations means less money in the classroom, fewer early childhood programs, and less support for local services.

Pennsylvania needs real tax reform that levels the playing field for businesses that play by the rules, and stops giving away dollars that are essential to helping our children and families succeed. Only then will we be able to invest in a world-class public education and the community assets that build a stronger economy.

Photo by Mr. T in DC released under Creative Commons License

Would billionaires spend millions to influence your vote if it had no value

By Sharon Ward, Third and States

Three national organizations offered a scathing criticism of policies endorsed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, in a conference call with reporters last week. Their findings strike a stake in the heart of ALEC claims that its view of the world — lower taxes, fewer workplace protections, and diminished public investments — is good for the public.

Pennsylvania state lawmakers who look to ALEC for guidance on economic policy should stand up and take notice.

Iowa Policy Project research director Peter Fisher discussed a recent report he co-authored with researchers from Good Jobs First, concluding that the tax, budget, and economic prescriptions put forth by ALEC simply don’t work.

Selling Snake Oil to the States took a look at ALEC’s annual Rich States, Poor States report, which ranks states based on their “economic outlooks” as defined by ALEC. The factors should come as no surprise: states with low taxes and right-to-work laws rank high by ALEC; those with progressive taxes, corporate income taxes, and worker protections rank far behind.

Fisher compared the ALEC rankings with actual state performance on real economic indicators over a four-year period. Do ALEC’s policy prescriptions improve state economies? The answer is no.

Between 2007 and 2011, researchers found no relationship between a high ALEC ranking and employment. They did find a correlation on personal incomes and poverty rates among states ranked high by ALEC, but it was a negative one — the better a state fared on the ALEC scale, the worse it did in real life. As Fisher said during the conference call:

It should be hardly surprising that policies to keep wages low have the effect of lowering the state’s income. … The ALEC policy prescriptions for states will not lead to growth and prosperity but to further inequality and lower incomes.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities examined sweeping tax and budget policies that ALEC is currently lobbying for in the states. The policies largely encompass deep tax cuts for wealthy individuals, investors, and corporations that will leave middle- and lower-income families paying more.

Both reports note that the ALEC agenda promotes low wage growth for families, fewer workplace protections, and strategies to starve public investments in education, health care, and other priorities — all of which reputable economists agree are critical to job creation and economic growth.

It is an article of faith among Pennsylvania lawmakers that ALEC policies are good for the economy. These reports provide clear and convincing evidence to the contrary: the arguments that the ALEC agenda are good for real people are nothing but snake oil. The policies are good for the businesses that pour millions into ALEC to promote this agenda.

Governor Tom Corbett has hidden large expensive new tax cuts to profitable corporations in his budget proposal released this month. This and other ALEC agenda items won’t create jobs, but they will lead to greater inequality, slower income growth, and continued starvation of our public schools, transit systems, and other priorities.

By Stephen Herzenberg, Third and State

The Australian minimum wage this year is $15.96 per hour. I know this mostly because my daughter lives in Melbourne these days (not forever, I hope). When she arrived there 18 months ago, she got a job at a minimum-wage restaurant. She earned enough to cover her rent and other expenses.

What brought the idea of a much higher minimum wage to mind is a blog post from Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research. Dean estimates that the U.S. minimum wage today would be $16.54 per hour if it had kept pace with U.S. productivity growth since 1947.

For those with knowledge of economic history (both of us), a minimum wage that increases its buying power every year does not seem far fetched, even in the good old United States. The U.S. minimum wage DID increase with productivity growth from 1948 to 1968. This linkage (see Dean’s chart below) resulted from the combined impact of two mechanisms: manufacturing wages kept pace with productivity growth thanks to collective bargaining in mass manufacturing (starting with the famous auto industry “Treaty of Detroit” in 1948); and Congress periodically increased the minimum wage to bring it back up to 50% of the average manufacturing wage.

Click on the chart above for a larger view

If you think about it for a second, a minimum wage that keeps pace with inflation is a fairly pathetic aspiration. It means that our lowest-wage workers get to have their living standards stay the same forever, even as the economic pie keeps growing with increases in productivity.

Wages — and minimum wages — that keep pace with productivity growth express a different and completely practical aspiration: the idea that workers at all levels should share in the expanding economic pie. Fair reward for hard work. Even sounds like a fundamental American value. Let’s get back to it. If we did, Charlotte might even come home.

By Chris Lilienthal, Third and State

Working families in Pennsylvania pay a far higher share of their income in state and local taxes than the state’s wealthiest earners, according to a new study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

Pennsylvania’s tax system scored so poorly that it made the list of the “Terrible 10” most regressive tax states in the nation.

The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC) co-released the report, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, with ITEP. PBPC Director Sharon Ward made the point in a press release that “No one would deliberately design a tax system where low-income working families pay the greatest share of their income in taxes, but that is exactly the type of upside-down tax system we have in Pennsylvania.”

Middle-income families in Pennsylvania pay more than double the share of their income in taxes than the very wealthiest Pennsylvanians, while low-income families pay nearly three times as much as top earners, the report found. Get more details on the report, including a Pennsylvania fact sheet, here.

Families who qualify for state personal income tax forgiveness still pay large shares of their earnings in sales, local income and property taxes, the report found. At the same time, wealthy taxpayers benefit greatly from tax laws that allow them to write off property and income taxes from their federal taxes. This is, at best, a modest benefit for middle-class families and no benefit to very low-income earners.

Pennsylvania’s flat income tax contributes to its regressive tax ranking. Without a graduated tax rate that rise on more affluent earners, the state’s income tax does little to offset more regressive sales and property taxes.

That’s why Pennsylvania should amend the state Constitution to enact a graduated personal income tax. Even without a constitutional change, the state could set a higher income tax rate on investment income, which goes primarily to wealthy Pennsylvanians, without raising the rate on wage earners.

By Sharon Ward, Third and State

There is growing bipartisan agreement that the optional expansion of Medicaid provided by the Affordable Care Act is too good an opportunity to pass up.

This month, the Governors of Arizona and North Dakota, both Republicans, announced their intention to opt-in to the Medicaid expansion, joining their counterparts in Nevada and New Mexico. To date, 14 states have decided to expand Medicaid in 2014, and another seven are leaning toward expansion. Pennsylvania remains among the 21 undecided states.

By agreeing to expand our Medicaid program just slightly beyond what Arizona voters have twice mandated, we will:

• Protect rural and safety-net hospitals from being pushed to the brink by their
growing costs in caring for the uninsured;
• Take advantage of the enormous economic benefits — inject $2 billion into our
economy — save and create thousands of jobs; and,
• Provide health care to hundreds of thousands of low-income Arizonans.

Saying ‘no’ to this plan would not save these federal dollars from being spent or direct them to deficit reduction. No, Arizona’s tax dollars would simply be passed to another state — generating jobs and providing health care for citizens in California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico or any other expansion state … With this move, we will secure a federal revenue stream to cover the costs of the uninsured who already show up in our doctor’s offices and emergency rooms … Weigh the evidence and do the math. With the realities facing us, taking advantage of this federal assistance is the strategic way to reduce Medicaid pressure on the State budget. We can prevent health care expenses from eroding core services such as education and public safety, and improve Arizona’s ability to compete in the years ahead. I’m committed to doing this, and I want you on my side. Let’s work together in an atmosphere of respect and do what is BEST for Arizona.

For Pennsylvania, the expansion of Medicaid is projected to bring in $17 billion in new federal investments by 2019, while expanding coverage to between 482,000 and 683,000 uninsured adults.

When Governor Corbett gives his budget address on February 5, he will offer a glimpse into the state’s plans to take advantage of this opportunity. Opting-in will create jobs, strengthen our health care system and provide health coverage to working parents, veterans, and seniors.

Governor Corbett and the Pennsylvania General Assembly should consider the benefits and savings that come with a Pennsylvania Medicaid expansion as well as the price of forgoing this opportunity — fewer jobs, a weakened health care delivery system and hardworking people without affordable insurance.

By Stephen Herzenberg, Third and State

Weakening unions could be trouble for the middle class.

There’s a good deal of crowing in conservative circles this week about the new 2012 numbers on union membership. Union membership nationally fell by about 400,000, to 14.4 million. Union membership in Pennsylvania declined 45,000, including 59,000 in the private sector.

Of course, for anyone who cares about, say, the American Dream, democracy, and rising living standards, the newest numbers are bad news. A simple chart put together by the Center for American Progress shows that unions are vital to the middle class. As unions have weakened, so has the share of income going to middle-income workers — and the gap between the 1% and the 99% has mushroomed.

As this blog has noted, inequality undermines not only economic opportunity, but it also slows economic growth and makes our democracy less responsive to typical families and the public good (and too responsive to rich special interests).

One silver lining in the new numbers is the great variation that exists across states. Unions are growing in some places. Another silver lining is that the weaker unions get, the more evidence we get that this is a bad thing. Evidence such as the fact that the top 1% of the population took home 93% of the increase in income in the United States in the last year for which we have data. And evidence such as the skills shortage in U.S. manufacturing: surprise, surprise, if you pay workers poorly and don’t invest in them, you can’t attract and retain the factory talent you need.

Fifteen years ago, we outlined why America needs “new unions for a new economy” — and noted that we couldn’t see how to restore widely shared prosperity without a revival of unionism. The evidence for our position grows with each day.

But beneath the overall numbers, even in Pennsylvania and even in manufacturing, there are signs of revival. Take, for example, a unionized Schott Glass plant near Scranton, which is pioneering a new labor-management apprenticeship program.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of unions’ death are greatly exaggerated.