Principal: Teachers making 'heart-wrenching' decisions to leave profession
Raleigh, N.C. — More than 600 teachers of the almost 9,000 employed by the Wake County Public School System left their jobs between July 1, 2013, and April 9, school leaders said Thursday.
“Teachers in Wake County have been leaving their jobs mid-year at a greater rate than in years past," Assistant Superintendent Doug Thilman said. "Given the flat pay scale over the past few years, the recent legislated removal of both career status and higher pay for teachers with graduate degrees, increased teacher turnover has been expected.”
At a leisurely lunch Thursday afternoon, Melissa Taylor cited the same financial pressures as the reason she left her job at Laurel Park Elementary School. Taylor's last day was March 17.
She gave her employers a month's notice and copied her letter of resignation to the local media. It used words like "absolute disrespect" and "heartbreaking."
"We are failing our students, our teachers and our future," she wrote.
Taylor, who has a master's degree, said after 13 years in the classroom, seven of them without a raise, she could no longer make ends meet.
"The opportunity came up for something else. To take a chance of not finding something at the end of the year was too big a chance," Taylor said.
So she made the heart-breaking decision to leave the career she loved. "I was told many times that I was born to be a teacher," she said.
Her leaving and her letter resonated through the education community.
"I had many teachers, not just from my school, but other schools just write me and thank me," she said.
Taylor took a job at a software company where she is able to cover her bills, take a lunch hour and no longer has a second job.
"I worked through my lunch every day when I was teaching," she said. "It was about 20 minutes."
Still, she loved teaching and cried when she left.
Thilman pointed out that it is common for teachers to leave their jobs as the traditional school year ends, but that spike has yet to occur this year. "We typically see a spike in teacher resignations in June and July," he said. "The data we have does not yet capture that increase."
Wake County has historically had a lower-than-average rate of teacher turnover compared to other districts in the state, leaders said, but that rate, about 12 percent in 2012-13, was expected to climb in 2013-14.
Jacqueline Jordan, principal at Underwood, listed teachers from her school who had left the profession because of the financial pinch.
"If we're losing teachers, what's happening in other communities around the state that do not have the same level of support from the county or the beautiful facilities?" Jordan asked.
That pinch has forced Tracy and Britt Morton, both teachers, to consider other options. They are moving to Georgia for better pay.
"We have go to make changes now," said Britt Morton, a teacher at Apex High School. "We can't wait. And that's why we are having to leave."
The Wake County Board of Education has proposed a budget which would seek an additional $39 million from county commissioners to fund an across-the-board raise of 3.5 percent for teachers and staff.
Wake schools’ average teacher salary is $45,512 while the national average is $56,383, the district said.
"We are not just begging the government for more money, we are talking about a critical shortage of teachers and a lack of respect for the profession of teachers," school board vice-chairman Tom Benton said.
Taylor now uses her freedom from teaching to give voice to those still in it.
"I feel I still have a fight. I'm not done fighting," she said.
An ongoing story here in NC. After the state couldn't give raises during the recession, the current republican legislature refused to give raises in the last session. Also tenure and pay grades based on teacher education were eliminated.
ReplyDeleteBut the state legislature decided to increase only starting teacher pay. Most of this was due to recent tax cuts that favored the wealthy more then the middle class. One of the nation's top school systems just two years ago is in disarray, thanks to Republican policies.
Looks like they ran out of OPM.
DeleteInteresting differences in states.
DeleteHere the state has nothing to say about pay. That is determined by each school district.
The Average teachers pay 57K a year. They dumped the teachers union 2 years ago. There was a 8% loss of teachers when the union was voted out. Today there is virtually no turnover, left than 2% a year, retirement etc.
98% graduation rate with 95% attending college as opposed to the city school graduation rate of 50%.
Author unknown:
ReplyDeleteTeachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year. It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do – babysit. We can get that for less than minimum wage.
That’s right. Let’s give them $3 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan– that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day…maybe 30? So that’s $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.
However, remember they only work 180 days a year. I am not going to pay them for any vacations.
LET’S SEE…That’s $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on. My calculator needs new batteries.)
What about those special education teachers and the ones with master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute — there’s something wrong here. There sure is.
The average teacher’s salary (nationwide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student– a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!)
WHAT A DEAL!
Pfunky I know you didn't write this but what is the glaring untruth to these calculations? 9 or 10 months is actually 270-300 days. 180 days is only 6 months. And I couldn't work for 277 dollars a day. I make twice that with a bit easier job, although I still am a babysitter. Of Adults.
DeleteJust offering perspective, Rick.
DeleteMy best friend's a teacher. She's been at the same school for 15 years now, a private school, so she's not on the taxpayer's dime. She just got a raise with her contract she signed for next year, she finally cracked the $50k per year salary mark, after 15 years of employment.
I know how hard these people work. I know that in the 9 months of her school year, she typically puts in about 12-15 hours per day. I know that if she needs a personal day, like to take her child to the doctor, that in itself requires almost a full day of planning to get things ready for her substitute. Yet she does it all without complaint, indeed she does it happily.
Her issues with the attacks on public employees in general and public school teacher specifically (she knows many) have nothing to do with her making an argument that teachers should be paid more and everything to do with the vilification of these folks as money-grubbing leaches looking to milk the taxpayer dry. It simply isn't true.
Nobody (at the Primary & Secondary level) goes into teaching to become rich. They do it because they love it and care about educating our kids - at least the ones who stick with it.
It irks her to no end when some pol suggests "performance-based" incentives to determine the level of their generally meager pay.
One, by what objective standard can some bean-counting bureaucrat determine if a teacher's good or bad? Testing is a horribly flawed bar for many reasons i'll skip cuz this post is already too long. Suffice it to say that those folks have no idea what it means to be teacher, let alone a good one.
And two, the "performance-based" ideas spring from an MBA/CEO profit first mentality completely incongruent with the point of why people become teachers. Again, no one goes into teaching to get rich. The offered "solution" just doesn't fit the "problem", and can actually undercut the purpose of teaching which is to educate our population. It's like using a sledge hammer to put together a jigsaw puzzle - it doesn't make sense.
I guess this is a really long-winded way of making the point that teachers are undervalued and what they do is completely misunderstood by most, especially policy-maker, yet they don't care about that.
Just don't make them into the scourge of society. They are from the being the problem - don't treat them as such.
Pfunky and this story of your friend exemplifies the problem. It took her 15 years to reach an economic level that most people who have received an education start at, at a minimum. We employ teachers to allow our children to gain knowledge that can only advance their future lives and give them a chance to be something. Yet public or private, we don't respect the difficulty of the job we have them do. It has to be a voluntary thing because the pay and respect is often lacking. We expect much but give little to the cause in most cases. Where does a lot of our money for education go? Bussing. We can see the middle school out our back door, (our could in the past until they built more houses behind us), it is no more then 1/4 to 1/3 a mile away. We can hear the kids, we can hear any announcements made outdoors. But all my children were eligible to be bussed to the school, when at the time they went they only had to walk across a farm field to get there. Same with the high school it is 2 miles away. When I went to school in the 60's-70's if you lived inside two miles your little ass walked to school and on rainy days your parents took you. We have become too soft on our kids and that's what makes them be dependent on parents and society well into their 20's.
Delete"I guess this is a really long-winded way of making the point that teachers are undervalued and what they do is completely misunderstood by most, especially policy-maker, yet they don't care about that. "
DeleteTeachers are like gay people, blacks and Mexicans, once you start to know some individually, it becomes hard to keep making blanket statements about them as just being part of some group of takers. I think there is a strong representation in this country of the attitude that it's not my problem that teaching a shitty, thankless job. We chose not to have kids, but I still feel it's in my best interest to pay enough in taxes to hire quality teachers to educate the children in this country.
The difference is location.
DeleteSome areas value their education system as it adds to the value of the community. Other just don't want to pay more.
One problem, the school district is just like government, they more you give them the more thy want. Instead of spending the money wisely, it's often wasted on more administration/overhead instead of improving the class room experience.
@Max
DeleteGood point, and you're right, it's not just the teachers or minority groups, it's all public employees.
I remember in 2011 after the midterms and when we were gearing up for the POTUS race, I was in a club and overheard 3 guys talking. They were white guys in their 30s, 2 were firemen, one was a cop - these were not tree-hugging hippie liberals, nor were they white collar MBA rich guys. These were hard-working conservative guys who concluded that they were gonna have to hold their nose and vote for Obama in 2012.
There reason was that they were totally taken aback buy the GOP attack on them being being public employees. They felt vilified and betrayed. One of the firefighters said, "A decade ago after 9-11, I was a hero. Now I'm the reason for the financial collapse? Fuck them. I just can't vote Republican this go around." Again, these were conservative white guys talking.
The whole public employees being "Takers" meme could really end up hurting the Pubs nationally as it may have already in 2012.
You think those guys feel snubbed, wait to we starting seeing what the ongoing cost of caring for this generation of veterans will cost. I guarantee, we are going to reach a point where it's going to be said that the VA needs to start facing cuts like everyone else.
Delete@ Louman for once we agree. location is everything. There are great school systems in this country and there are pitiful ones and it isn't always about money. But Louman this was in 2010 ranked by the website Great Schools as the #1 district in the country. Wake County Schools is the largest system in NC and the 16th largest in the country. It was born in 1976 with the merger of Raleigh City Schools and Wake County Public Schools. The Raleigh / Wake County area is very diverse economically and racially. The merger was incorporated to stymie the problem of white flight of students and funds into the suburbs, a problem all large cities have had in the past.
DeleteToday the system has fallen into disarray. What has changed? #1 Wake County Schools solved it's social-cultural- economic diversity problem by having an open choice enrollment policy. That was ended in 2011 by a conservative school board lead by tea party advocate John Tedesco who lead the charge to move the district to the community based schools program that is in effect today. And long tome superintendent Terry Tata was asked to leave. Since then it has been all downhill. This is where the location comes in Lou. The schools in Cary, Apex, Wakefield, Leesville continue to be among the best in the nation. The other 20 high schools not so much, although inner city Broughton and Millbrook are still doing okay, and are probably the two most culturally diverse in the system. The towns mentioned above well you guessed it the are also the most affluent in the area. The High schools of south Raleigh and eastern Wake County have faired the worst. Garner High has become one of the worst in the nation although they remain a top team in football if that's what matters to ya. Southeast Raleigh has been closed and the students sent to various other schools and magnet schools. East Wake H S has been turned into a series of magnet and specialty schools. One of the lower ranking schools Knightdale HS is a mystery. It is one of the lowest ranking in the district but is in a pretty solid middle class town. So now one asks does location matter. More then location is parental and community involvement. If parents aren't involved in the process then the educational standards expected are not going to become reality. And economics has traditionally been a huge determination of parental involvement. The higher the class the more the parent cares, the higher the income the more involved they become.
And why is that so? I don't know. But in the case of the Wake County Schools the switch from the diversity policy to community based schools has been obviously detrimental. Under the diversity based system there was much more parental involvement in a greater number of schools.
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/north-carolina/districts/wake-county-public-school-system
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7605793
http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/moving/slideshows/2287-top-public-schools-large-cities.gs?content=2287
The entire state of Colorado has open enrollment, the receiving district decides if they can take a student (space). The state gives the school districts a fixed amount for each student enrolled in the district.
DeleteIt was passed by a Republican house and senate signed by a republican governor. Today the democrats running the house, senate and the lost governor Hick are focused on the important things like POT.
The moron running the state tried to raise state income taxes in 12 by 900 billion a year, the tax payers slapped him down. As part of the law he wanted passed was a change in school district funding giving schools that have a lower amount to spend more state funding those with higher local taxes less. The results would be an end to open enrollment as school districts receiving less in state funding per student would not accept out of district students.
The morons put into place a large magazine ban including all in existence. The law enforcement in the state local to state said it was unenforceable unless they could search each home. The manufacturer of magazines had a manufacturing facility in northern Colorado, the Dems helped them pack and move the company to Wyoming. A friendlier place to do business as Colorado doesn't want that kind of work. Yes that was the democrats. This year they will lose control of the House and senate and hopefully we will rid ourselves of the Hick.
See bad politicians come in both colors, red and blue.
"See bad politicians come in both colors, red and blue."
DeleteNo, just blue. ;>
For every bad democrat, we have a bad republican, sure it's not that way in Nevada as you have Harry Reid.
DeleteIt's unique to Colorado as we were a Red state now a Blue state. Hopefully people have learned their lesson and dump the current batch of politicians. Probably won't happen. 3 years to go and I am out of here.
Only the private sector should suffer during recessions!
ReplyDeleteOh wait, the recession is over. How could I forget that?
The zero sum Obamanomics sure are tough on the working class. Just imagine if the recession hadn't ended. At least the teachers are supplied with birth control by their school systems.
DeleteLooks like home schooling might catch on. Lot's of these teachers will be staying home with their kids.
William you are an idiot. You gripe about America today but want to ignore the problems that make our country what it is. There is more to raising a society then freedom to bear arms and unlimited cash to politicians. Let's just move the country back to about 1805. Guess that would make you happy.
DeletePerhaps you missed the goings on of the past twenty years or so. The distribution of information is virtually free and available to anyone with an Internet hookup. All this thanks to Al Gore, let's give credit where credit is due.
DeleteIn the meantime we remained mired in a ninetieth century primary and secondary schooling system. Teachers unions scream bloody murder when budgets are held steady, no less than when layer after layer of administrative fat is lopped off their backsides.
Perhaps if we stopped teaching little Johnnie about lesbianism in second grade we could begin to focus on a modern system of imparting relevant knowledge while compensating those imparting that knowledge appropriately.
"I was told many times that I was born to be a teacher," she said.
ReplyDeleteThat's not a complement.
Where in the world do babysitters get paid only $3 an hour?
Daycare is cheapest because of economy of scale and that runs about $8 an hour.
I was paid $10 an hour to babysit and that was a long time ago.
Any teacher that is teaching common core is overpaid.
America, States and Counties can't continue to live by issuing debt. Time to tighten the belt. Or tax the bottom 50% of America who only pay 2% of income taxes.Take your pick. Taxing the upper 50% will just turn into a vicious circle where the economy slows and less money comes in, taxes go up to cover the shortfall and economy slows more.
RIGHT NOW. The world central banks have totally distorted the world financial system and a collapse is right around the corner.
Every state has a state law that mandates they balance the budget. Local governments have the same requirement. The only government entity that doesn't balance their budget if the Federal Government. In some states like mine, the state cannot issue debt with out a vote from the people.
DeleteSome states it's the legislature.
Your para in the middle, Boomer, looks so good on paper. Why don't the bottom 50% pay taxes? It's because they don't make enough money to do so. In my personal experience, when the money I made from working fell, so did my standard of living, at lest until I moved here to Vegas after the bottom fell out. Taxes have been inconsequential to me. When I made six figures, I paid a shitload more in taxes and I still had a lot more money than I do today making close to only a third of what I used to make.
Deletesomeday, I would like to read actual concrete data that shows some kind of link supporting the belief that an increase or decrease of 5% when top rates are 30% makes a difference versus when they are 70%. Right now, I earn less, spend less and save less. When I made what I used to, it was the exact opposite but the cut I got going from Clinton to Bush made zero impact in my life.
When I made more, I was of course, obsessed with how much went to taxes each pay check. My taxes could have been ten percent and I still would have bitched about how I was getting raked to pay for slackers.
Max,
DeleteAn honest question, in 2012 Obama signed the Bush tax decreases into law making them permanent. Did the 10 million middle class tax payers removed from the tax rolls really need to be removed and really could not afford to pay Federal Income tax?
Do we really need the mortgage deduction?
Do we really need the healthcare write off after the 10%.
What we really need is tax reform, eliminate all deductions and pay the tax. Unfortunately it would last until the next congress as they begin the process of buying votes.
Your last sentence there says it all. We played this game when Reagan was POTUS and eventually undid all of it. I don't believe we need a mortgage deduction when interest rates are where they are, but I don't own a home. Did those ten million need to be removed? Probably not. Would keeping them on have made any meaningful change in our in our debt? I say also probably not, but it probably would have brought some sense of justice to those who do pay taxes who believe that living in poverty on food stamps is a picnic.
DeleteThere is no perfect tax policy. We could go to a consumption tax, eliminate corporate taxes altogether and some segment of our population would still bitch and complain. My utopian vision is that the people we elect should be striving to help create an environment where philosophical and economical freedom are enjoyed by as many people as possible. Currently, I believe we are instead striving for ideological purity that means nothing in the real world. Provided the hacks don't slash and burn too sharply too quickly, we will continue to limp along we are. People will slowly pay down debt. The economy will be a steaming pile of shit because both goverenment and private investment will be removed. No middle class gains will occur, but we aren't interested in that.
Do you honestly thing the people that were removed from the tax rolls are on welfare?? Really doesn't matter as they will have a break for a few years then they along with many other will join the party of tax payers as the debt becomes more of an issue. So far the Fed has been able to keep it under control by purchasing treasuries however even they have limits. Ten the real party begins.
DeleteYou are correct we will limp along. As long as the tax code for business remains the same, why bring the money to the US to invest or distribute to share holders, instead invest it overseas. Our overly complex and intricate tax code is one to behold and when business finds a way to pay less in taxes they are chastised by the fair share crowd. When the fair share crowd find ways to not pay taxes, it's a deduction. The irony.
I'm with you on the dream however we will continue to see the extreme left, the extreme right and the extreme pendulum swings as people continue to be disenchanted. The interesting thing as people bitch about minimum wage being stagnant and then say. legalize those that shouldn't be here. Have more H1B visa. The same people scream about the good paying jobs being off shored while shopping the lowest price made in _____ instead of the USA.
We are not interested in Middle class gains as we continue down the same path of free trade agreements. New foreign auto factories in the south paying 14 bucks an hour vs. the Detroit jobs that paid much more. Americans buy the Toyota claiming it's made in America (14 bucks an hour) avoid the American made so more parts are off shored, assembled in Mexico. We have build quite a utopian dream over the last 40 years and continue down this path.
Pretty discouraging.
Only one disagreement. We did a tax holiday for corporations and it accomplished nothing that was promised.
Deletehttp://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203633104576623771022129888
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2270
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/10/would-another-repatriation-tax-holiday-create-jobs
Respectfully, something I have always disagreed with is trickle down economics. Even the heritage link makes the claim there is no shortage of capital and companies are not going to go on an investment rampage just because taxes are lower. The stated corporate tax rate is higher than the one that is actually paid. The vast majority of arguments I hear for reducing corporate taxes are intellectually dishonest. They talk about how high the stated rate is without really acknowledging that this is not the rate that large corporations actually pay. Despite the fact that I personally find many corporate tax arguments (from both sides) to be specious, I actually would support ending all corporate taxation if we took away the concept of personhood for corporations and additionally took away their right to hire lobbying firms. But this won't happen.
In my lifetime, I have heard endless proclamations about what lower taxation would bring and most of them have proven false. At the least, the correlations over the long term have defied predictions. We didn't stunningly grow our economy under lower taxes after Bush II and the world did not remotely end under Clinton. It's not that simple of course, but I've never seen convincing, long term macro evidence that trickle down economics are anything more than the Voodoo Economics that Papa Bush rightly called them.
Im less invested in the idea of what is the perfect rate. What I've seen in life is that no one wants to pay taxes and from ranchers in Nevada to welfare mommas in Chicago, there is always a polarized extreme example used to justify a tax argument. I think we spend to much on shit that brings us no return (left and right programs) while we simultaneously CURRENTLY undertax the very wealthiest in our country while we also debase our dollar to keep their invested wealth inflated. A full tax code redux would help a lot, but in our current partisan government, this is not possible. The only effective tool that exists to raise the percent of taxes knowing full well that this will not be the rate is paid. I don't like it either because an average slob like me who doesn't own a home and who doesn't max out on payroll taxes will feel even a 5% increase more than a wealthy person will feel 15%. But as a realist, I acknowledge that the real solution is not possible and instead look at what could be done.
This is not meant to be personal Max but you have stated that you have no children and don't own a home.You are also training for upgraded employment, which I find exemplary for someone your age. Forgive me if I digested all or any of that incorrectly.
DeleteLet's use someone "like you" as an example verses someone who happens to support five children, owns a home, and pays property taxes in a high taxed State. I know many people in this situation.
OK now, Just saying in general, nothing personal. Overall the person with the increased monetary responsibilities would have to make a whole lot more money. To earn an increased income in general that person would have to perform work that has a related value in the market place. We are of course excluding those who were fortunate enough to gain large inheritances.
Again, in general, those that command larger value in the market place may in general statistically have greater intelligence. At least the type of intelligence that creates monetary value. If this is the case they may also be capable of making better investment decisions to support their increased obligations.
Now let me ask, if this is possibly the case, then wouldn't those smarter people do a better job than lower income people, in the case of redistribution, and government overseers, in the case of higher taxes, of investing their own money? Therefore increasing the value of that invested capital, and therefore increasing the total wealth of the nation?
Wouldn't this increased monetary value "trickle down" to the entire nations economy? Smart people earning and investing to support their own lifestyles enhancing the nations GDP. Does this make sense?
Just sayin' Nothing personal.
No offense taken and this is a quite reasonable post. You have nailed down the elegant picture of trickle economics and of course there is a kernal (wow, I haven't thought about that name for awhile) of truth to what you are saying. If wealthy individuals are taxed at lower rates, I have no doubt their wealth will grow and I suppose, you could say the wealth of the nation grows. However, if that wealth simply becomes concentrated in fewer hands like it has and if there is no real growth of industry or wages, which has also happened, I see it as simply becoming a different form of redistribution. But that's not the whole story.
DeleteTo me, I think it's a matter of degree. We've seen a situation where just a tiny slice of the country has truly become engorged with wealth.By a textbook definition, any money that is put into the stockmarket or bond market is investment. My definition is different in that I only acknowledge capital that is put to work to CREATE something other than just more wealth as being investment. We've now had situations where the wealth of the nation grew for all classes and we've had situations where the wealth of the nation only grew for a small segment. We had a good ten years of lower taxation starting in 2000. What did it bring us? 9/11 and a bunch of other shit happened, but this didn't stop the investor class from doing stunningly well. The FED was part of that rip off, but I think we all pretty much feel the same way about them.
Here's where I admit my culpability to the problem. My wife and I live relatively frugal here in Vegas. We go out to eat a fair amount, but we live well within out means. Before I took the hospice job, I was making about 80K at the hospital, and my wife was't working because frankly, she didn't have to. But, filing jointly lowered my taxes quite a bit. Additionally, coming close to maxing out my 401K contributions lowered my taxes as well and the "investment" in my 401K has grown quite nicely. I'm living quite comfortably in a shithole of a city where people are pretty stupid, drive like idiots and have very few economic prospects available to them despite the lack of taxation. Aside from volunteering at a clinic for the poor, I've done nothing to make this city a better place, and when I finish my degree, I will take the knowledge that I earned and leave. Because this is low tax state that is post bubble, I'm able to live much better than I can elsewhere while quite a few around me are "trapped" because they got sucked into a bubble mentality. My attitude is multiplied exponentially by the wealthy in this country. At least, that is my take. My intellectual and financial wealth has grown here and at best, the patients I currently take care of benefit from that, but Vegas itself will basically be the same smoldering dump it is now when I leave.
Now I'm going TS on you, but I just wanted to say one other thing. One of the best examples of what I believe is represented in Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth". I had only recently seen that essay, but I felt like it just nailed so much of what I believe. In his view, taxes should be very low and the intelligent creators of wealth should be allowed to be rewarded for their intelligence and their work. But, he still viewed that wealth as belonging to society and that the rich had an obligation to steward that wealth and to reinvest that money into the community from which it came. He absolutely believed the rich should be allowed to take care of their families, but after that, it was on them to create useful things for the community. If the wealthy had this attitude, I would have little problem with keeping taxes lower and in fact, I think this would accomplish much of what tea party types want in terms of decentralizing the power of the federal government. Instead of investing in communities, I believe the wealthy, as a group, are simply investing in election campaigns to elect pawns who will do whatever they are told to do. The results speak for themselves.
DeleteMax, what happened with the repatriated capital at low interest rates? Much was returned to the US.
DeleteUses: Stock dividends, taxes were collected, money spent in the economy.
Companies purchased other companies. Gains in efficiencies. Downside jobs may have been lost.
Companies repurchased their stock, upside stock values maintained or went higher.
Some invested in business in America.
How is any of that bad?
The governments stand, we lost billion in taxes.
My thought, they lost nothing as the money would never be returned under the current taxation system and invested overseas as your seeing today.
As to under taxing the wealthy. Is 60% not enough as they pay in California? Maybe when you hit a certain rate they will take my attitude and say screw you, I'll live with a little less and pay far less. This argument will go on forever where some think the government has a right to more than half your income.
The interesting thing I often reflect on is:
1. People make choices.
Go to college. Pay for it yourself.
Masters degree. Pay for it yourself.
Working long unpaid hours to build experience.
Delay family and children to build the career.
Move up, rewarded financially.
Choose to go to work out of high school.
Get Married early.
Have children early.
Struggle making the bills. paying for a house.
Demand others pay more as they have more than you.
People demand you pay more for sacrificing.
Max as a point of interest:
DeleteIn the budget proposal he presented to Congress last month, President Barack Obama called for what would be the highest level of sustained taxation ever imposed on the American people, according to the analysis published last week by the Congressional Budget Office.
Under Obama’s proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP.
America has never been subjected to a ten-year stretch of taxation at that level.
In the twelve fiscal years preceding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (1930 through 1941), federal taxation averaged 5.3 percent of GDP.
DeleteIn the five fiscal years encompassing U.S. involvement in World War II (1942 through 1946), federal taxation averaged 16.1 percent of GDP.
In the fiscal years since World War II (1947 through 2013), federal taxation has averaged 17.1 percent of GDP.
In the period from fiscal 1992 through 2001, federal taxes averaged 18.3 percent of GDP. But in the last four years of that period (1998 through 2001), the federal budget was in balance.
In the twelve fiscal years from 2002 through 2013, federal taxes averaged 16.1 percent of GDP—the same that they averaged during World War II. However, the federal government ran deficits in each of those twelve years.
In all ten years from 2015 through 2024, under Obama's proposal, federal taxes would be higher than 18.3 percent of GDP. During the period of 1992 through 2011, there were only five straight years (1997-2001) when federal taxes were higher than 18.3 percent of GDP.
Under Obama’s budget proposal, according to the CBO, the budget will never balance. But over the next ten years, the federal government would add $7.183 trillion to its debt held by the public.
"How is any of that bad?"
ReplyDeleteIt didn't do what was promised it would do. It simply created a situation where companies were able to dodge tax and ultimately kept the majority of the money out of the economy. You are correct that the argument will go on forever, for some taxes are never high enough on the wealthy, for others the taxes are never fair and low enough. Taxation should match spending and spending should be a reflection of where the priorities of the country lie, which again, is something that will never satisfy anyone. Rather than going from extreme to extreme, I'd like to see more middle ground.
To the rest, it sounds similar to me to arguments about the corporate tax rate. True, our corporate tax rate is the highest in the world, but the biggest and richest of corporations do not pay anywhere near that rate. Technically true, but completely false in function. What I really wonder about here is what are we really talking about. Are we looking at the real taxes that were actually paid as a percentage of GDP, or are we using the stated rate that should be paid before all the deductions are taken into account? Also, I wonder what the relevance of this ratio is. If GDP was shrinking as taxes were going up, that might interest me. What I take away from what you posted here is that over time, spending has gone up and in periods where we paid our bills, taxes were a higher percentage of GDP and lower when we ran bigger deficits. It hasn't impacted our ability to borrow money at zero percent. Mind you, I don't think this is anything good, I"m just looking for cause and effect relevance.
To your bit about choices, I have more agreement than not. I have pretty much followed the scenario of your first para, I paid out of pocket for my education and by the time I am done with this degree, I'm pretty sure I will have paid about 100K in education costs and I think it's fair that as a practitioner, I should make more than 100k. I don't begrudge anyone with that attitude. That said, I have some disagreement with the second para. At one time, the country thrived while millions did exactly that. Instead of going to college, they entered the workforce and started to raise families which is exactly what society expected them to do. For the benefit of a relatively smaller group, we packaged and shipped those livelyhoods away while simultaneously adopted the Sheldon Adelson attitude that if you aren't rich, it's because you're an idiot and you deserve to live shitty. This is not to say that the middle class hasn't been stupid for getting addicted to living well from consuming cheap shit made in China, but a major shift in thinking has occurred.
Who promised it would do specific things?
ReplyDelete1. Some was paid back to the stock holders, not a bad thing.
2. Some was used to buy back stock bolstering the bottom line, not a bad thing.
3. Some was used to acquire other companies. That brings synergies and efficiencies to the business. The down side, jobs may be lost.
4. Some was sued for business expansion.
All in all, the money was returned to the US and used in one form or another in the US. Is it better to leave it overseas to be invested there? The way some look at it is that the taxpayers lost billions in tax revenues. The way I see it is the money would have never returned to the US and nothing was lost. A perspective.
The age old problem is everyone assumes all government spending is good government spending. When was the last time government cleaned house? Consolidated programs to gain efficiencies? The last time government cleaned out old outdated programs and departments that bring little to the taxpayer. My age old example, why do we need Radio free Europe? Government should serve the people not the government and certainly not government employees. Today it doesn't.
As far as corporate taxes, want higher taxes on corporations? Look for higher prices on everything you consume. Taxes are a cost of doing business. The pass the cost to the consumer as it like labor, materials, expense is built into everything we consume. To claim business should pay higher taxes is saying everyone needs to pay more for products and services. Not to mention the economic disadvantage it brings to US products vs. imported products.
I hear you o the 100K. My boll for Em's 4 years will probably exceed 125K. Masters look for more. Good thing I took route 1 saved a boatload of money (unintentionally) which pays for her college without a burden to everyday life.
Yes we have had a major shift in thinking. Partly brought along by the entitlement attitude. Niece and her husband both completed their law degrees with loans without working 1 day or saving money to partially pay for it. they are looking for a freebie from the Government for 400K in loans. Not even paying the interest payments. Probably the only point is, what have those that were displaced by imports doe to move their career forward or are they expecting the government to fix it. Most expect the government to fix it.
The Walmart mentality. I want it now.
From the heritage link "A proposal for another repatriation tax holiday—reducing U.S. tax owed by U.S. companies on the accumulated earnings of their foreign subsidiaries for one year—is gaining congressional support. Keeping taxes low is a sound goal, but as with any policy the details matter. Congress passed a similar tax holiday in 2004, and produced the expected immediate results—the return of a significant amount of foreign earnings to the United States. This demonstrated, once again, the responsiveness of taxpayers, in this case multinational businesses, to changes in tax policies. However, the evidence is clear that these repatriations did not produce the hoped-for subsequent surge in domestic investment."
ReplyDeleteI don't really look at the issue in terms of the government lost X in revenues. Instead, I see it like this - despite the fact that multinationals already don't pay the full tax rate, they set up sham "offices" in offshore islands that serve absolutely no purpose but to dodge taxes. It's a mailbox, no company business is conducted there, no products are made there, but because the "office" is there, money can be funneled through there and taxes dodged. This is just one example of the countless scams that are set up to arbitrage the tax code and not pay taxes. If you want to quibble with me on the rate, that is one thing, the absolute figure is not my thing. What is my thing is being fed a constant stream of bullshit that if we take away taxes, we will see this tsunami of investment. I'm sorry, I don't see what upside occurred when money that was hid to dodge taxes was brought back home under a plan that allowed them to keep the money and still not pay taxes on it. It's good for America that the only thing that happened was that stocks rose and jobs were lost? Again and with respect, that isn't meaningful to me.
Taxes are a cost of doing business, and like in every other situation, Americans at every level of stature want something for nothing. Companies want roads, educated labor, protection of their patents and sound banks to put their money in. Basically, they want a vast market place that they don't want to pay any upkeep for, kinda like having a building to sell goods in without paying rent. Consumers want to buy gobs of cheap shit from China but still keep their high paying union jobs. Warmongers want us to keep spending more on our military then 10 or 15 other nations combined but still have low taxes which they believe we could have if only we just took food stamps away from the slackers. It goes on and on. Just as you are probably tired of hearing about liberal dreams of saving the world through higher taxation, I am tired of hearing doomsday predictions that will occur if we so much as raise any level tax 1%. IF corporations are people too, why shouldn't they pay tax? I want one or the other. No tax, no personhood and no right to lobby. If they get personhood and the right to buy government, then pay the F'n taxes like everyone else. SOME of the cost will be passed on, but competition will prevent the complete pass though. I think that's reality.
Entitlement has unfortunately become an American value.
https://www.wcpss.net/careers/salary-schedules/teachers/a-board.html
ReplyDeleteNotice that they do not mention how much they do make and the average income for that area? Well the teachers do very well in comparison to others. Oh boo-hoo they actually have to work for a living just like everyone else. Times are tough and MANY people out there are looking for work and many more are looking for a second job just to make ends meet. Now, why is it that teachers are placed so high up on a pedestal that they should not have to live in the real world?