Would you hire a two time loser on burglar charges to keep an eye on your house while you are away on vacation? Umm, probably not. Would you go back to a repeat offender state legislature in Pennsylvania to create a program to replace the one they screwed up in the first place rather than just do away with it altogether? You most likely would if believed that government is the solution and what is needed is simply a different government solution.
The title of Matthew Jackson’s opinion piece, ‘State oversight isn’t the answer for distressed cities’ [[1]], in the Sunday Patriot News might lead one to think he was going to suggest something other than a government solution. After laying out a pretty good case against the “Municipalities Financial Recovery Act of 1987,” otherwise known as the Distressed Cities Act or Act 47, what he proposes to solve the problem of small and medium sized cities in central Pennsylvania facing declining tax revenues, loss of manufacturing jobs and blight are nothing more than “different” government solutions.
When Mr. Jackson proposes “… the creation of a bipartisan Core Communities Caucus, a first of its kind, to study and advance a legislative package of state development incentives and other reforms…” and follows that with an assertion that it must be “bi-partisan” because Pennsylvania is not a red or blue state but a “purple” one, something began to smell. I wondered if my Sunday paper had been printed on paper recycled from a local fish monger. A quick check of Mr. Jackson’s background information provided with the opinion piece cleared that up; a 2010 Pennsylvania Center for Progressive Leadership fellow.
Prominent in the Center for Progressive Leadership’s vision is “social justice” and in its values are “a moral economy”, “global cooperation” and other things one might want to hide behind an assertion that one’s proposal is “purple” for goodness sake. Coming right out and admitting you are proposing a program to redistribute wealth is probably a bad idea considering the November 2010 shellacking progressives took at the hands of constitutional conservatives.
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”- Albert Einstein
Among Mr. Jackson’s proposals are:
- Tax abatements to incentivize private development – more crony capitalism is not a good idea – Pennsylvania has already thrown enough money down that rat hole.
- Grants, low-interest loans, tax credits and other programs seeded by the state – sounds like more redistribution of wealth and if you want to get the state out of the municipality’s knickers this is not the way to do it… there are always strings attached to those things
- Revenue options and cost-cutting reforms – (a) perhaps if Pennsylvania did away with its corporate income tax (second highest among the 50 states) [[2]] and got serious about eliminating burdensome and needless regulations more business would stay/open up in Pennsylvania and be located on property tax bearing property within municipalities and (b) municipalities should be free to implement cost controls and reductions in programs unless the municipality is faced with a federal or state mandate to provide a service. If there are state or federal mandates involved most of them should either be eliminated or at least revised to do away with needless meddling in local government affairs.
Reducing taxes and eliminating needless regulations, reducing the size and scope of government, and allowing innovation and free market solutions to thrive are in the best economic interests of the citizens and the municipalities. One other thing to take into account is that there’s nothing wrong with a municipality having to scale back to some lesser form of government should the tax base and/or population shift require it.
The good citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania should be wary of solution bearers in purple cloaks. Underneath that purple cloak most likely beats the heart of a committed progressive.
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End Notes
[1] State oversight isn’t the answer for distressed cities http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2010/12/state_oversight_isnt_the_answe.html
[2] Rich States Poor States – ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index 3rd Edition http://www.alec.org/AM/PDF/tax/10RSPS/RSPS2010-Final.pdf
There has been a massive redistribution of wealth that has happened over the last 50 years…but from the middle class to the wealthiest 2%. They’re flying in million dollar private jets between their 6 homes, making money by betting public funds while middle class wages have been completely stagnant…and yet somehow…somehow…the idea of making them give back to the majority of Americans is what’s branded as “redistribution of wealth”. That makes no sense to me. As much as it hurts to me to say, I support more taxes on the rich in order to help ensure a thriving middle class…and if people want to call that redistribution of wealth fine, whatever, at least it will finally be going in the right direction.
Brandon,
That redistribution of wealth did not occur… that comes from an intentional and deceptive confusion of statistical categories and real people. The overwhelming majority of real people pass through a number of statistical categories over the course of their lives. That is, early in life a person will normally be in the lowest percentile in terms of income (Note: income and wealth are not the same thing) and overtime as they gain more experience and become more productive move up through a number of statistically higher income bands. Some may move back and forth between these bands and typically as you wind it down later in life you start heading back down through lower income bands. As it turns out I was reading about this very thing this morning (see Chapter 3 – Intellectuals and Economics in Intellectuals and Society by Dr. Thomas Sowell). He explains it so well and I would not do it justice.
You might also want to take a quick read of a very good little article that explains income and shifting through the brackets in a St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank – Inside The Vault, Spring 2010 – article titled “U.S. Income Inequality: It’s Not So Bad” at http://stlouisfed.org/publications/itv/articles/?id=1920. I came across this while researching for some articles I wrote concerning the state of the recession recovery referencing key economic charts maintained by the St. Louis Fed. Actually I have this Fed article on my ‘to do’ list for posts to this blog.
All of the statistical misinformation aside it comes down to a matter of property rights. Property rights are individual rights and you have no right to my property or anyone else’s property and the government has no rights (other than those surrendered to it by We the People) to any individual’s property (legally obtained property that is). It is the purpose of government to protect the rights of the individual. See James Madison on Property – http://www.ourfounderscompass.com/archives/537
Hi Rich,
That’s really interesting. You’ll have to give me some time to read through all those links.
In the meantime, what about the fact that the share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent. (http://extremeinequality.org/?page_id=8)? That’s a massive, massive shifting of wealth, right?
Brandon,
By all means read the references. As for wealth transfer, those statistics that are cited by your referenced organization are based on census data (statistical categories) versus Treasury Dept data (real people) to support a solution in search of a problem. Households and people are not the same thing.
From 1967 – 2005 household income only rose by 31% but during that same time period per capita income rose by 122%. The reason is quite simple. As the Census Bureau concluded beginning in 1966, the number of households began to increase at a rate greater than the number of people because of an increase in the number of unrelated people choosing to maintain their own household (e.g. young persons getting their own apartment). That growth in the number of households as defined by the census further continued to grow as a result in declining marriage rates combined with increasing divorce rates and as a result of the growing tendency toward unwed motherhood (Baby’s Daddy don’t live with Baby’s Momma).
Once again they are using income data, and purposely skewed income data at that, which is not wealth… income earned at a point in time, is not wealth. Even the Treasury data based on real people and reported income does not include many transfer payments (e.g. welfare, food stamps, fuel assistance, housing assistance, govt provided medical services, etc). Those are types of “income in kind” that amount to at least hundreds of billions, if not over a trillion, of tax dollars annually that are not included in those income statistics.
It’s not that wealth doesn’t shift around for individuals and statistical groups but there are those that play with the numbers to support a predetermined conclusion and conclude that the shift that they choose to “prove” is a bad thing.
Each private jet equals a butt load of employment for ordinary folks like us… building ‘em, maintaining ‘em, servicing ‘em when they take off and land, and so on. One should seek out “wealthy” people if employment is of interest as the poor are not hiring. At least I don’t recall ever having a job offer from a poor person.