Give it Back! Getting New York’s Wealthiest to Pay Their Fair Share
by Advocate Staff
From the Editor
“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.” –Thomas Jefferson
“Hey baby, nobody suffers like the poor!” –Charles Bukowski
I know it’s difficult, especially for the majority of GC students facing several years of fruitless job searches and adjunct lecturing in pursuit of that coveted $55,000 a year tenure track gig; but take a minute and imagine what it would be like to make $200,000 a year. For most of us this number must seem outrageously large: four or five times our current yearly wages and a lot more than even the most well paid and distinguished professor makes at CUNY; but nonetheless, give it a shot.
How would your life be different? Would you finally be able to afford your own apartment instead of giving your money to a landlord or living with roommates? Would you finally feel secure enough to let your spouse take time off from work to have a child, and would you take comfort in the fact that your child would grow up in a safe and healthy environment? Would you be able to set aside a college fund and make sure that they received the best education and health care available? Would you take vacations in Europe or the Caribbean, eat at more of the great restaurants New York has to offer, or become a subscriber to the Metropolitan Opera? Of course you could do any or all of these things if you made $200,000 a year. In fact with a lifetime of that kind of income you could easily retire in your early sixties and spend a significant part of your adult life doing whatever you liked, volunteering your time in a meaningful way that helped make the world a better place. Indeed, let’s face it, regardless of what you might think about the rich or how much you believe, like Roger Waters, that money “is the root of all evil today,” life would be pretty good if you made just that much money wouldn’t it?
Now imagine if you were making $250,000 or $300,000 or even $3million; would those extra dollars really make you any happier? Would more vacations or a more expensive house really make your life any more fulfilling? Perhaps for some of you they would, but the fact is that even a moderate amount of income, much less than $250,000 can sustain great happiness. As Harvard University psychologist Daniel Gilbert writes in his book Stumbling on Happiness: “Americans who earn $50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year…but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year.” In other words, regardless of the actual dollar amounts, Gilbert’s findings make it clear that after a certain level of basic comfort and security, more wealth does not mean more happiness. The sad part is that even that basic level of comfort and security is becoming more and more difficult to attain, as fewer and fewer people control larger amounts of the nation’s wealth.
So if many of us would be delighted to make even a mere $150,000 a year, and the facts indicate that much more than that doesn’t really seem to make anyone any happier, why does the New York State income tax system insist on taking the same percentage of income from those who have little or nothing to spare as it does from those who already have more than enough, and according to Gilbert would suffer nothing should they take home a little less each year? Why is it that, given the state’s record breaking budget deficit, the governor, rather than increasing taxes on those who already have everything they need, is instead proposing to raise costs and slash services for those who can least afford to pay more or to go with less?
Not only does Governor Paterson want to slash Medicaid, which obviously affects only those without adequate health insurance (i.e. the poor) but as we have all heard, he is also planning to increase tuition at CUNY and SUNY campuses by a total of $600 per year. Since many of you reading this are no doubt trying to piece together a meager living teaching CUNY students, I don’t have to tell you how little they already have and how hard they work just to stay on top of their tuition bills, much less their course reading and homework. Add to this Paterson’s proposals to slash the MTA budget, which will likely result in significant cuts in service as well as a potential fare increase, and it’s not hard to see the economic war that is being waged on the working poor of New York. While the poor are being asked to pay more and to get by with less in almost every aspect of their daily lives, those making well above $250,000 a year are being asked to sacrifice absolutely nothing.
Currently the New York State tax on income over $40,000 is 6.85%. That rate applies not only to those making $40,000 a year but to everyone making more than that marginally livable wage, regardless of how many millions of dollars they bring home each year. That means that many of us are probably paying exactly the same percentage of taxes as our esteemed Chancellor Goldstein, who makes $540,000 a year in wages and perks and has largely bent over backwards to accommodate the governor’s proposals for tuition hikes, while at the same time giving himself several significant raises. Indeed, since the late ‘70s New York State has reduced income taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers by more than 50 percent, while simultaneously slashing services, raising public college and university tuition, and eliminating vital city and state programs. It is precisely this trend: giving tax breaks to the rich, and not the oft-touted economic burden of providing services to the poor that has created the enormous deficit the state now faces. Indeed, as other commentators have aptly noted, this fiscal crisis is very specifically a crisis of revenue, not spending, and to try to solve it by further cutting spending while refusing to increase revenue only goes to show how little our state representatives actually care about the living conditions of the majority of their constituency.
Thankfully, there is a growing number of citizens, unions, and grassroots political organizations who are pushing for a more reasonable and moral solution to the current state budget crisis, one that seeks to distribute the burden of that crisis in a more equitable way. The Working Families Party in conjunction with several state and municipal unions have proposed what they are calling a Fair Share Tax Reform bill. Introduced in the New York State Senate by Senator Eric Schniederman, the Fair Share Tax Reform Bill proposes a modest increase in taxes on those New Yorkers making above $250,000. The bill, which is gaining momentum in the state legislature (Thanks in part to the determined efforts of ordinary citizens and grassroots organizations), would raise the state tax rate on those making more than $250,000 from 6.85 percent to 8.25 percent. Likewise those making more than half a million a year would see their state tax rise to 8.97 percent, while those making more than a million dollars a year would be asked to pay 10.3 percent.
Even at the highest tax bracket proposed in the Fair Share Tax Reform Bill, this is a total increase of only 3.45 percent. That 3.45 percent, however, would, according to Fiscal Policy Institute of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, generate as much as $6 billion a year for New York State. Furthermore, these increases would affect only a small portion of New Yorkers, (only the wealthiest 3.25 percent, according to The Working Families Party) and the few who would actually be affected are, let’s face it, uniquely situated to withstand a small decrease in their annual income.
Although there seems to be a growing consensus in the legislature that some kind of progressive tax reform is necessary, opponents of the Fair Share Tax Reform are gearing up to seek major compromises to the bill that would force more of the burden for the budget deficit onto poor working families. As the April 1 deadline for the next New York State budget quickly approaches, now is the time to take action. Contact your state senator and congressperson: send them a handwritten letter, send them a fax, or call them on the phone, and insist that they fully support, without compromise, the Fair Share Tax Reform package currently being considered by the state legislature. Even as the poorest Americans have become increasingly poor, the small minority of wealthy Americans have benefitted from decades of government giveaways. Now’s the time to take it back; The Fair Share Tax Reform Bill is a good first step in that direction.
