Primary picks to make your vote count in 2008
Several readers have requested my primary picks. Here they are, from numerous angles and with a humorous twist.
If I were a super-conservative religious male (Christian, Muslim or otherwise) who believes that men are created in God’s image and women are lesser beings, I’d vote for Mike Huckabee. I’d sing hymns in my head while standing in line, and whisper “Amen” when I put my hand on the TV screen. On the way home, I would buy six months worth of groceries in anticipation of the 23% “Fair Tax” to come.
If I were a rich libertarian who wants to tell other Americans that their education and health care are none of my concern, I’d vote for Ron Paul. I would still have to stop for groceries on the way home. I would especially stock up on medicines, meats and other FDA-approved goods. There is no telling what toxins might be added once Ron Paul eliminates the FDA and gives us back our “health freedom.”
If I were the head of a powerful and corrupt corporation, I would vote for Mitt Romney. He’d be someone I could work with -- someone who understands that the bottom line is far more important than the lives of a few babies or the long-term health of women. Romney understands that government is just another form of business.
If I were a secretly gay conservative male bent on suppressing the lifestyles of openly gay liberal males, I’d vote for Rudy Giuliani. With his quick flip-flop from supporting Gay Pride to suddenly endorsing a marriage amendment, it is obvious he has no real scruples and will comply with whatever his handlers say on the matter. I’d try to remember to remove my lipstick before going the polls, and make sure my slip was not showing.
If I were a war-hawk with a T-shirt reading, “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out,” I’d vote for John McCain. I’d invest some money in Dyancorp and Halliburton. Then I’d send my son to Canada, knowing that McCain has stated he does not mind if the troops are in Iraq for a hundred, a thousand, a million or even ten million years.
If my greatest concern were the economy or healthcare – perhaps as a plant worker, a school teacher, a parent, an honest business owner or just a middle-class American struggling to pay the bills on time -- I would vote for a Democrat. Any Democrat I liked.
Then I would breathe a big sigh of relief, confident that if Democrats win the economy will soon improve and taxes will be held at bay. Democrats are historically much better at managing the national budget, and they don’t tax things like groceries and medical bills.
I’d go home with a smile on my face, knowing that soon our borders will be secure and the government will be targeting the corporations who bus in illegal workers – not raiding and breaking up families. I would feel relieved that our men and women in uniform will soon be coming home – with solid veteran’s benefits when they return. I’d take my family out to eat, hopeful that my candidate will win and the American economy will at last begin to recover from eight devastating years of Bush.
The differences between the top three Democratic candidates are slim. Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are all intelligent people with a solid history of serving Americans. I would be honored to cast my vote for any of them.
The differences between the Republican candidates are greater, and the chasm between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is gaping wider every day. Republicans want to kill, and Democrats want to heal. Republicans want to squeeze the life out of the American lower and middle class, while Democrats want to salvage the economy and strengthen the middle class. Most Republicans want to expand and escalate the war in the Middle East. Democrats want to bring ‘em home.
On February 5th, Georgia voters have the opportunity to make history. We can help put the first black person or the first woman on the national ballot. People of color are underrepresented in American government, as are women.
Women comprise the majority of voters, but only 16% of Congress. No female presidential candidate has ever before appeared on the national ballot for either major party.
Point this out to some Republicans and they will act like they’re vaguely sorry they didn’t think of it first. “It’s not that I’m against a woman president,” they’ll say, “just not THAT WOMAN.”
Very few can give a substantive reason for opposing Hillary Clinton. More common are knee-jerk reactions based on mischaracterizations or outright lies. Republicans frequently characterize Clinton as a super-divisive liberal, but anyone who follows her actual votes and agendas sees a very different picture. Clinton is a moderate.
Then there is the so-called “Clinton Body Count” that has been regurgitated from the 1990s and is re-circling the Internet. This piece of work claims to be a list of all the people who have died “mysteriously” because of their connections to the Clintons. The connection may be tenuous (such as Bill’s chiropractor’s mother, or a person who once lived in Arkansas) and the mysterious death usually is not mysterious at all. Nonetheless, it’s good fodder for fools who say “I got it in an email, so it must be true.”
Sadly, the United States is far behind the times in granting women full access to the government. Other countries have had women in the highest office as far back as the sixties. Great Britain has had Margaret Thatcher, India had Indira Ghandi, and Israel had Golda Meir. Pakistan, Turkey and Bangldesh are all Muslim countries that have placed women at the helm. This short list does not even touch on the extensive list of women who have ruled as royals, stretching from pre-history to modern times.
Who could have imagined that America would cross into the new millennium and journalists would still be asking, “Is America ready for a woman in the White House?”
We should ask ourselves how satisfied we are with the male who has been in office the last seven years. If we elect another man like Bush, we can expect four more years like the last seven.
Hardly anyone favors a candidate solely on sex or skin color. Such traits illicit more votes against than for. Yet there are many people who consider Clinton’s sex and Obama’s color an important part of who they are and how they will lead. All else being equal, many women (and indeed some men) prefer a female candidate. Likewise, many people consider Obama’s skin tone a perk rather than a liability.
What do you call it when a woman votes for Hillary Clinton because she’s female, or a black person prefers Obama because of the color of his skin? It’s called representation.
Jeannie Babb Taylor
www.JeannieBabbTaylor.com
Showing posts with label sales tax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sales tax. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Say no to the GREAT big tax
Georgia GOP House Speaker Glenn Richardson was upset when he saw his property tax bills, which totaled over $13,000. Richardson has a plan to avoid paying those taxes. He calls it the GREAT Plan, which stands for Georgia Repeals Every Ad Valorem Tax. (No one said he could spell.)
Currently the county collects ad valorem taxes on the value of our homes, cars, boats, barns, trailers and other big valuables. Those who drive a BMW and live in a mansion pay more than those who drive a Geo and own a 3-bedroom house. These taxes support our local government and schools.
Richardson’s proposal strips these funds from the county. Schools and local governments will have to go to Atlanta for every dime. The state will raise the funds through a sales tax on everything imaginable. Not only will we pay sales tax for fuel, clothes, cars and houses. We will also pay tax on bread, milk, medicine, and doctor visits.
The additional sales tax will cost Georgia businesses their competitive edge. Shops located near state lines will be impacted first. The revenue we currently enjoy from Tennessee, Alabama and Florida residents will evaporate.
Even Georgians will try not to buy here. No one wants to pay more when they can simply cross the state line (or log onto the Internet) to save money. People with means will buy everything from auto parts to clothing from out-of-state companies. The poor, who must buy locally, will be cut deepest by Richardson’s scheme.
As sales fall, the legislature must raise the tax rate to replace the lost revenue. As the tax rises, sales will fall more, and the tax must be raised higher – which will cause sales to fall even more, and so on. It’s a death spiral for the economy.
Even if the legislature holds the state sales tax at 4%, we end up paying a much higher tax because each item is taxed multiple times as it moves through manufacturing and distribution channels. You see, goods for resale will no longer be tax exempt.
The GREAT big tax deals Georgia manufacturers a devastating blow. Manufacturers who pay sales tax for raw materials and supplies cannot possibly compete with untaxed manufacturers in other states. Many will limp across state lines and reestablish business there – leaving behind empty buildings and thousands upon thousands of lost jobs.
Businesses that remain in Georgia will source their goods from manufacturers in other states, unless Richardson figures out how to tax interstate commerce. This will further boost the economy in surrounding states and further depress Georgia.
We can speculate that Richardson will issue exemptions to companies who have his favor. He is already wavering on whether raw materials will be taxed. Last week, Richardson announced that there would be a cap on sales tax charged for business-to-business transactions. The cap may be anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 per vendor. The caps will give large Georgia businesses an edge over their smaller competitors, since smaller businesses pay sales tax on every purchase.
Expect to see sales tax incentives offered to foreign manufacturers as enticement to locate in Georgia, selling out our heritage to other countries.
Lt. Governor Casey Cagle (a Republican who is actually conservative) opposes the hare-brained GREAT tax. “This is not a tax cut,” Cagle recently noted.
In fact, it is a tax increase. Richardson is already claiming that there will be a 10% surplus over current tax revenues. That means his plan is a 10% tax increase.
Cagle says, “It is a tax shift, as it has been represented. And so the question becomes now, who are you shifting the tax burden to?”
The GREAT big tax shifts the burden onto the elderly, renters, college students, and small and medium businesses. It provides relief for millionaire property owners like Richardson and for large businesses.
Under the current tax system, the elderly are exempt from the school tax, reducing their tax burden to less than a third. Under the GREAT big tax, there are no tax breaks for the elderly. They shoulder an unfair proportion of the taxes on prescriptions and doctor visits. They also pay taxes on bread, milk and lawn services.
Renters also bear an unfair burden. Renters currently pay property taxes through their rent. Although the GREAT tax supposedly eliminates property taxes, out-of-state renters will pay a property tax of up to $2,000. Richardson disingenuously calls it a “fee” rather than a tax.
The fee-payers may include thousands of college students. This will discourage out-of-state students from enrolling in our colleges. Since these students pay higher tuition rates, the loss of this income could devastate our colleges.
Cagle goes on, “And it appears, under the current proposal, that there would be winners and losers in that structure, but more importantly, potentially it would put Georgia in a competitive disadvantage for businesses versus other states. And that gives me great heartburn.”
Cagle says businesses tell him the GREAT plan will increase their tax burdens at least 25%, and as much as 62%. That’s a very steep rate of inflation which will be passed along to Georgia consumers.
When you penalize consumers for buying Georgia goods, they respond by spending less money in this state. The economy stagnates, and jobs are lost. Bankruptcy courts will be bloated. Houses will be foreclosed on every street. People with education and opportunity will leave Georgia to find work elsewhere – leaving behind only the richest Georgians, and a class of working poor. This is the vision some Republicans have for Georgia.
There is a better solution for rising property taxes. According to Alan Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, property taxes for local governments have been essentially flat (as a percentage of income) for the last fifteen years. There is one exception: school districts’ tax rates have grown rapidly.
The school tax increase goes right back to Republican policies. Over the past several years, Republicans have robbed Georgia schools of over $1.5 billion. In areas where education is valued, local school boards respond to the cuts by requiring more from local property owners. As Essig says, “The locals have been reacting to what the state has done.”
The solution to property tax growth is quite simple: Make the Republicans give the school money back to the schools. Every dollar our schools receive from the state budget is a dollar that we do not have to pay in property taxes.
The GREAT big tax is a potential disaster for the elderly, renters, small and medium businesses, Georgia colleges, and employees. The good news is: We can stop it! The GREAT big tax cannot be implemented without an amendment to the Georgia Constitution. Amendments require approval by two thirds of the General Assembly, and then a majority vote at the next election.
If our legislators are foolish enough to pass this amendment, Georgia citizens can still vote NO to the GREAT big tax – and then vote out the legislators who favored it.
Currently the county collects ad valorem taxes on the value of our homes, cars, boats, barns, trailers and other big valuables. Those who drive a BMW and live in a mansion pay more than those who drive a Geo and own a 3-bedroom house. These taxes support our local government and schools.
Richardson’s proposal strips these funds from the county. Schools and local governments will have to go to Atlanta for every dime. The state will raise the funds through a sales tax on everything imaginable. Not only will we pay sales tax for fuel, clothes, cars and houses. We will also pay tax on bread, milk, medicine, and doctor visits.
The additional sales tax will cost Georgia businesses their competitive edge. Shops located near state lines will be impacted first. The revenue we currently enjoy from Tennessee, Alabama and Florida residents will evaporate.
Even Georgians will try not to buy here. No one wants to pay more when they can simply cross the state line (or log onto the Internet) to save money. People with means will buy everything from auto parts to clothing from out-of-state companies. The poor, who must buy locally, will be cut deepest by Richardson’s scheme.
As sales fall, the legislature must raise the tax rate to replace the lost revenue. As the tax rises, sales will fall more, and the tax must be raised higher – which will cause sales to fall even more, and so on. It’s a death spiral for the economy.
Even if the legislature holds the state sales tax at 4%, we end up paying a much higher tax because each item is taxed multiple times as it moves through manufacturing and distribution channels. You see, goods for resale will no longer be tax exempt.
The GREAT big tax deals Georgia manufacturers a devastating blow. Manufacturers who pay sales tax for raw materials and supplies cannot possibly compete with untaxed manufacturers in other states. Many will limp across state lines and reestablish business there – leaving behind empty buildings and thousands upon thousands of lost jobs.
Businesses that remain in Georgia will source their goods from manufacturers in other states, unless Richardson figures out how to tax interstate commerce. This will further boost the economy in surrounding states and further depress Georgia.
We can speculate that Richardson will issue exemptions to companies who have his favor. He is already wavering on whether raw materials will be taxed. Last week, Richardson announced that there would be a cap on sales tax charged for business-to-business transactions. The cap may be anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 per vendor. The caps will give large Georgia businesses an edge over their smaller competitors, since smaller businesses pay sales tax on every purchase.
Expect to see sales tax incentives offered to foreign manufacturers as enticement to locate in Georgia, selling out our heritage to other countries.
Lt. Governor Casey Cagle (a Republican who is actually conservative) opposes the hare-brained GREAT tax. “This is not a tax cut,” Cagle recently noted.
In fact, it is a tax increase. Richardson is already claiming that there will be a 10% surplus over current tax revenues. That means his plan is a 10% tax increase.
Cagle says, “It is a tax shift, as it has been represented. And so the question becomes now, who are you shifting the tax burden to?”
The GREAT big tax shifts the burden onto the elderly, renters, college students, and small and medium businesses. It provides relief for millionaire property owners like Richardson and for large businesses.
Under the current tax system, the elderly are exempt from the school tax, reducing their tax burden to less than a third. Under the GREAT big tax, there are no tax breaks for the elderly. They shoulder an unfair proportion of the taxes on prescriptions and doctor visits. They also pay taxes on bread, milk and lawn services.
Renters also bear an unfair burden. Renters currently pay property taxes through their rent. Although the GREAT tax supposedly eliminates property taxes, out-of-state renters will pay a property tax of up to $2,000. Richardson disingenuously calls it a “fee” rather than a tax.
The fee-payers may include thousands of college students. This will discourage out-of-state students from enrolling in our colleges. Since these students pay higher tuition rates, the loss of this income could devastate our colleges.
Cagle goes on, “And it appears, under the current proposal, that there would be winners and losers in that structure, but more importantly, potentially it would put Georgia in a competitive disadvantage for businesses versus other states. And that gives me great heartburn.”
Cagle says businesses tell him the GREAT plan will increase their tax burdens at least 25%, and as much as 62%. That’s a very steep rate of inflation which will be passed along to Georgia consumers.
When you penalize consumers for buying Georgia goods, they respond by spending less money in this state. The economy stagnates, and jobs are lost. Bankruptcy courts will be bloated. Houses will be foreclosed on every street. People with education and opportunity will leave Georgia to find work elsewhere – leaving behind only the richest Georgians, and a class of working poor. This is the vision some Republicans have for Georgia.
There is a better solution for rising property taxes. According to Alan Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, property taxes for local governments have been essentially flat (as a percentage of income) for the last fifteen years. There is one exception: school districts’ tax rates have grown rapidly.
The school tax increase goes right back to Republican policies. Over the past several years, Republicans have robbed Georgia schools of over $1.5 billion. In areas where education is valued, local school boards respond to the cuts by requiring more from local property owners. As Essig says, “The locals have been reacting to what the state has done.”
The solution to property tax growth is quite simple: Make the Republicans give the school money back to the schools. Every dollar our schools receive from the state budget is a dollar that we do not have to pay in property taxes.
The GREAT big tax is a potential disaster for the elderly, renters, small and medium businesses, Georgia colleges, and employees. The good news is: We can stop it! The GREAT big tax cannot be implemented without an amendment to the Georgia Constitution. Amendments require approval by two thirds of the General Assembly, and then a majority vote at the next election.
If our legislators are foolish enough to pass this amendment, Georgia citizens can still vote NO to the GREAT big tax – and then vote out the legislators who favored it.
Monday, November 5, 2007
GREAT big sales tax, GREAT big power grab
Remember when Republicans were against big government? At least that’s what they said. Georgia GOP House Speaker Glenn Richardson is revising our tax system to centralize power into the hands of Big Government. This power grab will be funded by a high sales tax that will drive business out of Georgia, hike up the cost of living, and tax the daylights out of everything that breathes.
This week, I’ll explain how Richardson’s plan hurts taxpayers and local governments. Next week, we’ll look at the effect on Georgia businesses and unemployment.
Richardson calls it the GREAT Plan: Georgia’s Repeal of Every Ad valorem Tax. (The acronym should be GREAVT, but perhaps that sounded too much like grave or gravy.) He says he will make it illegal for counties to tax property, automobiles and boats. He says he will make up for lost county revenue with sales tax. Of course, that’s not mathematically possible without either raising the sales tax rate outright (which he claims he won’t do) or hiding additional sales taxes other places. By focusing on the repeal, Richardson hopes you won’t notice his funny math, and all the tax he’s adding elsewhere.
Richardson wants to expand the sales tax to cover anything that can be bought and sold, including services. Imagine paying sales tax for groceries, prescriptions, yard work, and even doctor visits.
But that’s still not enough revenue. In order to replace $9 billion in property taxes, Richardson must squeeze an extra $1,000 out of every man, woman and child in Georgia. At 4%, each Georgian would have to spend $25,000 in services per year. It just won’t work. Georgians only average $24,000 total spending per person. They can’t spend more on services alone than they spend altogether.
Rest assured, Richardson is not willing to give up one dollar of tax revenue. Georgia’s big government still has the same bills as before, and Richardson claims that local schools and municipalities will not be short-changed by the new system. All of the funds to operate Georgia will still come from taxes – that is, from us taxpayers.
Richardson has creative ways to extract these funds from you: multiple sales tax charges on every item. Currently the consumer pays sales tax just once, when an item is purchased at the store. Under the GREAT big tax, business-to-business transactions and raw materials will also be charged. Although he claims he will hold the line at 4%, the sales tax is much higher than that when you factor in the multiple instances of taxation before a product reaches the end user.
Imagine, for example, a loaf of bread. Under the GREAT big tax, bread and other groceries are no longer exempt from sales tax. Neither are raw materials or freight. The bakery will pay sales tax on the flour, the yeast, the packaging, and also the freight to get those goods to the bakery. Then the retail store will pay sales tax when purchasing the bread from the bakery. The same loaf of bread will get taxed at least three times. With most products, there are even more distribution and manufacturing layers.
All of this additional sales tax ends up tacked onto the final retail price – and taxed again at the checkout. Business-to-business taxes do not escalate in a straight line because of the tax on tax. When a product goes through several steps to reach the consumer (as nearly everything does), a so-called 4% sales tax may cost the consumer 20%.
Still other new taxes are concealed in the loaf of bread. What about the sales tax paid through the marketing firm who wrote the advertising campaign, and the sales tax paid through the newspaper who ran the ad? The store will also pay sales tax through the companies that clean its rugs and trim its lawn. All of these additional taxes end up in the price of a loaf of bread, where they are taxed yet again.
GOP House Speaker Glenn Richardson may not be trying to bankrupt consumers. His real goal is to take the reigns from local government. By eliminating property taxes, the Speaker can micro-manage every county.
Property taxes are paid to the county and used in the county. Property taxes support our local government and our county schools. Under the new plan, counties and municipalities lose the ability to set, collect, and disburse property tax monies. Instead, the lost revenue will be replaced with sales tax collected by the state. And guess who’s holding the purse strings? The Georgia House of Representatives, which Richardson rules with an iron fist.
In other words, Richardson wants to eliminate a tax which is locally controlled and replace it with a tax that he controls. The state gives up nothing, and gains control over everything. Counties, municipalities, and schools will have to go begging to the General Assembly for every dime. The goal of local elections will be finding Richardson cronies who can stay on the volatile Speaker’s sunny side.
The GREAT big sales tax does not eliminate programs like SPLOST which add local sales tax on top of state sales tax. In fact, Richardson wants to expand local option sales tax so that counties can use the money for maintenance and operation. Now, why would counties need operating funds if he were really going to make sure that local governments receive the same funds as before?
It is easy to see what will happen. As local governments and schools cower at Richardson’s feet begging for funds, they will be forced to cover shortfalls. Since property taxes will be illegal, local governments will demand even more local option sales tax on the top of the GREAT big sales tax. By this time consumers may not be able to afford a cup of coffee.
Understandably, local government officials all over Georgia oppose the plan. In fact, many of them dispute the figures. Tom Gehl, spokesman for the Georgia Municipal Association put it like this, “The speaker has a right to his own opinion, but he doesn’t have a right to his own math.”
Citizens should oppose the plan, too. We may not agree with every decision that our local officials make, but we elected them. They work right here in our county, where we can drop in to talk to them about problems, stand up to speak at a local public meeting, and tell our friends to help us boot them out if they do us wrong. That is more difficult to do with state officials who have a broad voter base, work in Atlanta and often operate beneath a veil of secrecy.
State Reps Ron Forster (Catoosa/Whitfield) and Martin Scott (Dade/Walker) seem to be caught in the Speaker’s spell. State Senator Jeff Mullis is more lucid, even citing the local control issue -- yet he also praises Richardson for introducing the proposal.
The GREAT big sales tax is a great big disaster looming in Georgia’s future. It will strip local sovereignty and put entirely too much political power in the hands on one man.
Stay tuned next week to learn how Richardson’s GREAT big tax will result in a mass exodus of Georgia jobs.
Jeannie Babb Taylor
This week, I’ll explain how Richardson’s plan hurts taxpayers and local governments. Next week, we’ll look at the effect on Georgia businesses and unemployment.
Richardson calls it the GREAT Plan: Georgia’s Repeal of Every Ad valorem Tax. (The acronym should be GREAVT, but perhaps that sounded too much like grave or gravy.) He says he will make it illegal for counties to tax property, automobiles and boats. He says he will make up for lost county revenue with sales tax. Of course, that’s not mathematically possible without either raising the sales tax rate outright (which he claims he won’t do) or hiding additional sales taxes other places. By focusing on the repeal, Richardson hopes you won’t notice his funny math, and all the tax he’s adding elsewhere.
Richardson wants to expand the sales tax to cover anything that can be bought and sold, including services. Imagine paying sales tax for groceries, prescriptions, yard work, and even doctor visits.
But that’s still not enough revenue. In order to replace $9 billion in property taxes, Richardson must squeeze an extra $1,000 out of every man, woman and child in Georgia. At 4%, each Georgian would have to spend $25,000 in services per year. It just won’t work. Georgians only average $24,000 total spending per person. They can’t spend more on services alone than they spend altogether.
Rest assured, Richardson is not willing to give up one dollar of tax revenue. Georgia’s big government still has the same bills as before, and Richardson claims that local schools and municipalities will not be short-changed by the new system. All of the funds to operate Georgia will still come from taxes – that is, from us taxpayers.
Richardson has creative ways to extract these funds from you: multiple sales tax charges on every item. Currently the consumer pays sales tax just once, when an item is purchased at the store. Under the GREAT big tax, business-to-business transactions and raw materials will also be charged. Although he claims he will hold the line at 4%, the sales tax is much higher than that when you factor in the multiple instances of taxation before a product reaches the end user.
Imagine, for example, a loaf of bread. Under the GREAT big tax, bread and other groceries are no longer exempt from sales tax. Neither are raw materials or freight. The bakery will pay sales tax on the flour, the yeast, the packaging, and also the freight to get those goods to the bakery. Then the retail store will pay sales tax when purchasing the bread from the bakery. The same loaf of bread will get taxed at least three times. With most products, there are even more distribution and manufacturing layers.
All of this additional sales tax ends up tacked onto the final retail price – and taxed again at the checkout. Business-to-business taxes do not escalate in a straight line because of the tax on tax. When a product goes through several steps to reach the consumer (as nearly everything does), a so-called 4% sales tax may cost the consumer 20%.
Still other new taxes are concealed in the loaf of bread. What about the sales tax paid through the marketing firm who wrote the advertising campaign, and the sales tax paid through the newspaper who ran the ad? The store will also pay sales tax through the companies that clean its rugs and trim its lawn. All of these additional taxes end up in the price of a loaf of bread, where they are taxed yet again.
GOP House Speaker Glenn Richardson may not be trying to bankrupt consumers. His real goal is to take the reigns from local government. By eliminating property taxes, the Speaker can micro-manage every county.
Property taxes are paid to the county and used in the county. Property taxes support our local government and our county schools. Under the new plan, counties and municipalities lose the ability to set, collect, and disburse property tax monies. Instead, the lost revenue will be replaced with sales tax collected by the state. And guess who’s holding the purse strings? The Georgia House of Representatives, which Richardson rules with an iron fist.
In other words, Richardson wants to eliminate a tax which is locally controlled and replace it with a tax that he controls. The state gives up nothing, and gains control over everything. Counties, municipalities, and schools will have to go begging to the General Assembly for every dime. The goal of local elections will be finding Richardson cronies who can stay on the volatile Speaker’s sunny side.
The GREAT big sales tax does not eliminate programs like SPLOST which add local sales tax on top of state sales tax. In fact, Richardson wants to expand local option sales tax so that counties can use the money for maintenance and operation. Now, why would counties need operating funds if he were really going to make sure that local governments receive the same funds as before?
It is easy to see what will happen. As local governments and schools cower at Richardson’s feet begging for funds, they will be forced to cover shortfalls. Since property taxes will be illegal, local governments will demand even more local option sales tax on the top of the GREAT big sales tax. By this time consumers may not be able to afford a cup of coffee.
Understandably, local government officials all over Georgia oppose the plan. In fact, many of them dispute the figures. Tom Gehl, spokesman for the Georgia Municipal Association put it like this, “The speaker has a right to his own opinion, but he doesn’t have a right to his own math.”
Citizens should oppose the plan, too. We may not agree with every decision that our local officials make, but we elected them. They work right here in our county, where we can drop in to talk to them about problems, stand up to speak at a local public meeting, and tell our friends to help us boot them out if they do us wrong. That is more difficult to do with state officials who have a broad voter base, work in Atlanta and often operate beneath a veil of secrecy.
State Reps Ron Forster (Catoosa/Whitfield) and Martin Scott (Dade/Walker) seem to be caught in the Speaker’s spell. State Senator Jeff Mullis is more lucid, even citing the local control issue -- yet he also praises Richardson for introducing the proposal.
The GREAT big sales tax is a great big disaster looming in Georgia’s future. It will strip local sovereignty and put entirely too much political power in the hands on one man.
Stay tuned next week to learn how Richardson’s GREAT big tax will result in a mass exodus of Georgia jobs.
Jeannie Babb Taylor
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Bad for Business
Bad for Business
Georgia Republicans are poised to reject any raise in state minimum wage, claiming that such an increase will hurt small businesses. Yet these same legislators are vying for a hefty increase in the state sales tax – a move that affects local businesses far worse than a minimum wage increase.
Inflation has eroded the real minimum wage to a level 30% below the 1968 minimum wage. Last legislative session 39 states at least entertained raising their minimum wages. Georgia alone attempted to drop the minimum wage. Our state senators passed a bill to cut young workers down to $4.25 an hour for their first 90 days of employment – a move that encourages retailers to install a revolving door of job instability.
Senator Jeff Mullis, who voted in favor of the cut, has recently hedged the issue by claiming he would favor an increase if it could be made “palatable to businesses.” In Georgia, the minimum wage law is already made palatable to businesses by exempting those with fewer than six employees or revenues under $40,000 per year. Georgia minimum wage law does not cover high school or college students, newspaper carriers, domestic employees, farm workers, or anyone who receives tips.
State Representative Ron Forster not only opposes a raise in minimum wage; he would like to eliminate the minimum wage altogether. Like many other Libertarians who call themselves Republicans, Forster claims minimum wage laws hurt small businesses, damage the economy, and cause job loss. This mantra is outdated and demonstrated faulty by years of empirical data. Employment grows 1-2% more quickly in states that have a higher minimum wage. Annual and average payroll growth is also faster in those states. Further, the number of small business establishments grows twice as fast in states with higher minimum wage standards. Businesses absorb wage increases through higher productivity, decreased turn-over costs, lower absenteeism, and improved worker morale. In fact, 75% of business owners in a Gallup survey said they would be unaffected by a minimum wage increase of 10%. Nearly half favored a minimum wage increase.
What happens when these supposedly pro-business legislators encounter the threat of a sales tax increase? On March 7th Senator Mullis told the Catoosa County News he would “wholly support the idea and the legislation” of a 1 cent sales tax increase. That’s a jump of 25%, coming from a legislator who promised in December that with Republicans in charge, we should expect “no new taxes.” (He forgot to preface the statement with “Read my lips.”) Mullis admits that the proposed sales tax increase represents billions of dollars of additional tax payments. Who will be footing the bill for this increase? Every Georgia citizen, rich or poor, will feel the impact.
Sales tax increases also hurt the small businesses Republicans claim they want to protect. Consider an area like Catoosa County. Currently we undercut Tennessee’s sales tax by 3 cents (closer to 2 cents when you consider local taxes.) Catoosa has enjoyed that tax advantage as an incentive for Tennessee consumers to spend billions of dollars in North Georgia. Despite Chattanooga’s wider range of offerings, Tennesseans will drive across the state line for that tax savings. As that tax difference levels off, local businesses can expect to lose both Tennessee customers and Georgia customers to Chattanooga.
Politicians who truly want to protect local businesses should stand against a sales tax increase. Use your weight to maintain a pro-growth business environment, not to step on the grocery bagger who is still subsisting on $5.15 per hour.
-- Jeannie Babb Taylor
Published March 20, 2007
Georgia Republicans are poised to reject any raise in state minimum wage, claiming that such an increase will hurt small businesses. Yet these same legislators are vying for a hefty increase in the state sales tax – a move that affects local businesses far worse than a minimum wage increase.
Inflation has eroded the real minimum wage to a level 30% below the 1968 minimum wage. Last legislative session 39 states at least entertained raising their minimum wages. Georgia alone attempted to drop the minimum wage. Our state senators passed a bill to cut young workers down to $4.25 an hour for their first 90 days of employment – a move that encourages retailers to install a revolving door of job instability.
Senator Jeff Mullis, who voted in favor of the cut, has recently hedged the issue by claiming he would favor an increase if it could be made “palatable to businesses.” In Georgia, the minimum wage law is already made palatable to businesses by exempting those with fewer than six employees or revenues under $40,000 per year. Georgia minimum wage law does not cover high school or college students, newspaper carriers, domestic employees, farm workers, or anyone who receives tips.
State Representative Ron Forster not only opposes a raise in minimum wage; he would like to eliminate the minimum wage altogether. Like many other Libertarians who call themselves Republicans, Forster claims minimum wage laws hurt small businesses, damage the economy, and cause job loss. This mantra is outdated and demonstrated faulty by years of empirical data. Employment grows 1-2% more quickly in states that have a higher minimum wage. Annual and average payroll growth is also faster in those states. Further, the number of small business establishments grows twice as fast in states with higher minimum wage standards. Businesses absorb wage increases through higher productivity, decreased turn-over costs, lower absenteeism, and improved worker morale. In fact, 75% of business owners in a Gallup survey said they would be unaffected by a minimum wage increase of 10%. Nearly half favored a minimum wage increase.
What happens when these supposedly pro-business legislators encounter the threat of a sales tax increase? On March 7th Senator Mullis told the Catoosa County News he would “wholly support the idea and the legislation” of a 1 cent sales tax increase. That’s a jump of 25%, coming from a legislator who promised in December that with Republicans in charge, we should expect “no new taxes.” (He forgot to preface the statement with “Read my lips.”) Mullis admits that the proposed sales tax increase represents billions of dollars of additional tax payments. Who will be footing the bill for this increase? Every Georgia citizen, rich or poor, will feel the impact.
Sales tax increases also hurt the small businesses Republicans claim they want to protect. Consider an area like Catoosa County. Currently we undercut Tennessee’s sales tax by 3 cents (closer to 2 cents when you consider local taxes.) Catoosa has enjoyed that tax advantage as an incentive for Tennessee consumers to spend billions of dollars in North Georgia. Despite Chattanooga’s wider range of offerings, Tennesseans will drive across the state line for that tax savings. As that tax difference levels off, local businesses can expect to lose both Tennessee customers and Georgia customers to Chattanooga.
Politicians who truly want to protect local businesses should stand against a sales tax increase. Use your weight to maintain a pro-growth business environment, not to step on the grocery bagger who is still subsisting on $5.15 per hour.
-- Jeannie Babb Taylor
Published March 20, 2007
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