The following are scatter plots of 51 points (each point represents the data of an individual State, the District of Columbia being included in this set.)
As we see in the first graph, there is no correlation between the Increase in the Gross State Product and the State/Local Tax Rate.
This data indicates that the tax rate (10% +/- 2%) has a very little effect upon the growth of a state’s economy. It looks like Massachusetts is slightly southwest of the centroid. Let’s be a more productive people! Oh wait, it seems that we are a little more productive than the average. In the next chart, we see that most states ‘produce’ about $37.6k per capita per year.
Alas, we are all severely outclassed by the lobbyists in DC and the corporate lawyers in Delaware. Man are those guys productive, or what! Next is some data that does correlate pretty well.
What do I take away from this? More people need more stuff, or is it more stuff is made by more people. Lastly, which states are growing (in population, or equivalently, in gross state product) and where do they sit on the tax scale?
It looks like many states are growing just fine with a 10% (+/-1%) rate. Our rate is right on the mark, guess again Ms. Healey.
Sources:
And, thanks to MFW for the helpful hints.
In terms of state-local tax burden, Massachusetts is 28th in the nation(with 1st being the most burdensome, 50th the least), according to the conservative Tax Foundation. That certainly deflates any arguments that Massachusetts state taxes are keeping it from being competitive, since there are 27 states whose state taxes are more cumbersome.
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What I’d really be interested in seeing is a graph or other illustration of the shift in tax burden from the state level onto the local level in the form of property taxes. That would truly illustrate the “success” of the Romney/Healey administration.
For what it’s worth, according to numbers released by the US Census Bureau on May 31, Massachusetts has now fallen to 44th in Total State and Local Tax Burden as a percentage of income.
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Portsmouth (NH) Herald 6/4/06:
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/06052006/news/106326.htm
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Census Bureau Data (If anyone wants to crunch it):
http://www.census.gov/govs/statetax/05staxrank.html
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/income04/statemhi.html
Good find (newspaper article), but if you want to be a card-carrying member of our reality-based community, might I suggest you not use “tax” and “burden” in the same sentence?
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Ask the people of Springfield what their “burden” is and they’ll probably tell you of a crumbling school system and a neglected infrastructure.
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Is this really what we think of our children and our future that we are so miserly as to be 44th! in terms of spending on our services? No wonder people are leaving the state!
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btw, I don’t have time to poke around right now, but the links you supplied don’t lead to the data needed to make the calculation referenced in the article — the first one is good, but the second one leads to median — not total — income. You’re on the right track though, and it probably wouldn’t take much effort to find — but I gotta hit the road in a few minutes…
Unfortunately, you need a separate place to host the image – you can’t do it directly on BMG. You can set up a free geocities account at Yahoo that will allow you to upload images. Then once you’ve uploaded the image, get its URL and insert the following html tag in your post where you want the image to appear (remove the spaces after the “<” and before the “>”):
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< img src=”INSERT IMAGE’S URL HERE” >
I think you can also center it thusly:
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< align=center >
< img src=”http://www.mfw.us/politics/patrick/DLP%20in%20Lee%2025%20June%2006%200064.JPG” >
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Again, remove spaces at beginning and end.
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This is a pic of me telling people at our event in Lee yesterday how they can support the Deval Patrick campaign.
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The centering is a bit more complex than I let on. Also, the image in my previous comment was 600 pixels wide (which causes the page to expand beyond my screen resolution)– this one is 400, which works better on this blog:
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< img src=”http://www.mfw.us/politics/patrick/example.JPG” >
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Oh my goodness, you look just like a lefty!!! I can just hear your droning on about how Deval will save us all. Just look at Deval posing, he looks just like Alexander or Caesar, all he is missing is the laurel wreath.
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Did you tell the voters you were addressing that Deval will shake down the evil multi-national companies for us just like he did for himself after he had left his post in the Clinton administration?
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To me Deval is just another in a long line of race hustlers. He is an empty (but nice) suit. I cannot fathom how you Democrats back stiff after stiff. You could not beat a drunken Weld, a gambling addicted Celucci or a Morman (for God’s sake) Romney. Deval has no chance against Muffy, none whatsoever!!! You can take that one to the bank.
I wish there were some sort of caption contest for this one. Sounds like it was a good event MFW.
Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and Maine are comparatively more burdensome than Massachusetts, with Maine being the most burdensome in the nation, again according to the conservative Tax Foundation. The only one of our neighboring states that is lower is “live free and die” New Hampshire itself.
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Take that, Healey. Massachusetts is more competitive by the state tax burden standard and it has public services and infrastructure on a level not matched by the our neighbors. Perhaps if she and Mitt spent more time promoting what this state has to offer instead of tearing it down, they could’ve done more.
in 2002 we were ranked # 34, the romney/healey team manageds to move us closer to the # 1 spot.
Now that’s an accomplishment!
they should be proud of
photobucket.com to host images. They are fast and easy and even create the link html for your images…
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Regarding taxes. I’ll be curious to see how the Globe presents Healy’s talking point. Will they repeat it or will they debunk it?
Fine, do the research; see what good it will do. Liberals (and I include myself in that) walking about with our facts and pie charts telling the truth about Healey’s liesâa lot of good that will do.
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Even if we put those figures in a TV commercial, that snoring sound is the voters falling asleep. Compared to a commercial of a moving van and a zoom into a young couple (actors of course) saying they are moving out of Massachusetts because “taxes” are to high–if only Kerry Healey was elected, she’ll fight to lower our taxes so we can stay and little Johnny (enter child actor) can play with his cousins (tear wells up, bring up violin music).
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Countering crap like that with facts wonât work. No we need good TV creative to counter the emotionalism that Healey’s crew will spew.
“Romney and Healey promised to cut $2 billion out of the state budget…”
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(Cue gloomy music, cut to school doors being closed and chained)
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“They promise to cut your income taxes further…”
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(Cut to young people getting handcuffed by cops)
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“They promise that the state can run better, cheaper”
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(Cut to packed emergency room, with plenty of old people, add blood and severed limbs for effect)
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“Can you afford more Romney/Healey promises?”
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(Cut to property tax bill with HUGE increase)
(Fade to black)
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Vote for [Primary Winner Here]. You can’t afford not to.
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Hey, I don’t do this stuff for a living. Just having some fun. Yours is good, Frank, and point well made.
that in 2001 our state’s tax revenue was about 18 billion dollars. Does anyone know what the final projection for fy 06 is?
David,
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Excellent post! Sorry I messed up in trying to be helpful about the pix — hope you can make heads or tails out of what David and I did.
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On the tax front, you are absolutely right to rally us against the “old whipping horse” of taxes. Taxes and being competitive have little to do with each other in the first place (businesses are hardly likely to want to locate in a low-tax area that has an uneducated workforce with crumbling infrastructure). Beyond that, of course, are the facts in the case, as you and others point out. Massachusetts is hardly “uncompetitive!”
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Also, I think we have to count the non-tax items that contribute to our burden. Healthcare, for example. [Disclaimer: the following claims are from my memory, I don’t have time to go look for cites.] Massachusetts spends more per capita on healthcare than any other state in the nation, which in turn spends more than any other nation on the face of the earth. The result? Nivana? Not hardly. You know the story.
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So, if increasing our taxes will decrease the amount we spend on healthcare (as in, say, establishing a state-run clearing-house for payments, on the Medicare model, [nearly] eliminating the costly administrative budget that currently consumes something like 40% of our healthcare budget [as opposed to 3% or so for Medicare, as I understand it], then won’t that make a more business-friendly environment?
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In other words, this one-dimensional view of the world, that the level of taxes totally defines our level of social welfare, is totally ludicrous, and the the Repuglicans need to be called out on that [as you have done]!
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So, thanks again for raising the issue.
The quote:
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Because the standard of living is quite high, wages are higher per capita and the federal tax rate is higher relative to all other states. In total tax burden as a rate of per capita income, Massachusetts is the 6th highest in the US.
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Mass per capita is second only to CT: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104652.html
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Said differently, comparing NC to MA simply for example, (and using taxfoundation.org stats), the average tarheel earns $30,553 and pays $10,220 in total tax.
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The Mass worker earns $44,289 and pays $16,427.
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Respectively, the NC and MA guy takes away $20,333 and $27,862.
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Right? So the average MA guy takes away an extra $7,500. But then, look at the standard of living, the biggest piece of which is housing.
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The price of a house in Boston: median of $390,000. The MA state wide price is, I recall, about $311,000.
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In NC, the Median price in the largest city of Charlotte is $174,000. (stats from realtor.org)
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Let’s assume the average guy mortgages the house at 7%. That means the MA guy pays an extra $9,590 (the diff between $311K and $174K). So, after tax and after housing the MA guy earning $44 has less money after paying his tax and mortgage payment. (And THAT’S taking into consideration the interest expense deduction because it’s reflected in the total per capita tax burden.)
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So, Ms. Healey nor any MA politico, can do very much about housing or interest rates, but they can do something about the state tax load. And advocating reduction isn’t a bad idea.
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Certainly it is debateable and certainly not a damn lie.
It’s all well and good to yammer about taxes, but the GOP doesn’t seem to — or want to — recognize that we get valuable services for these taxes, and that cuts in one will result in cuts in the other.
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And I, for one, refuse to let this state be run like the Federal government’s being run. You wanna cut taxes, you gotta propose programs to cut. No deficit spending.
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So: which $2K per person of programs (the end result of your difference between MA and NC) are you proposing we slash?
Someone know where I can find a list of state funded programs? I’m sure I can find something to cut.
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How about letting Romney merge the Turnpike Authority and the Highway Department like he’s been trying to do for years?
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The fact is the taxpayers voted to roll back taxes to 5% and our legislature hasn’t held its end of the bargain by making the necessary changes to implement it.
i’d look into cutting tax incentives for multi million dollar companies.
I’m quite keen that the state (and fed) must cut taxes (or at least not raise them) AND cut spending.
–That your state is number 6 in total tax burden isn’t something to be proud of.
–That MA has a state estate tax is causing some significant movement from MA to no estate tax states like NC and Florida.
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Take a look at just a few of the “stimulus” pork in the latest bill, some of which was vetoed by the Governor:
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-The Victorian Street lighting in Melrose ($200,000)
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-A gazebo in Braintree ($100,000).
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-Study for the internal combustion engine. $4 million.
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-Money for the Hyannis Athletic Association (To inprove the view of the Windmills?)
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-A million bucks for Old Sturbridge Village.
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Other expensive stuff to think about cutting? Certainly, not popular but:
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— The Quinn Bill;
— Teachers’ salaries are quite high; Ma students are very average. Slow down the pay raises.
— Medicaid. Chase the “pre-coverage transfers” of wealth from the recipient to the donees. Very little oversight now. The state should resume its assets test for eligibility.
— UMASS. What a deal! $9K for tuition.
— A small thing, but: Adopted children receive free tuition. A kind gesture for sure, but shouldn’t there be some means testing?
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Of course, reasonable men may disagree but you ask.
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The problem, as usual, is that elected officials are sent to the capitol with one task: to bring back stuff to their electors. There’s little incentive to examine old programs and no incentive to slow spending.
I am sure that the examples of wasted money in the budget are many indeed. They survive in the budget because no one reads it. Is the budget available online, so that smart people like the ones on this site can pick through it?
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I would be far more content with the argument made in this thread: We NEED to keep taxes elevated in order to fund teachers, police, roads, goodness, and apple pie– if I knew that egregious wastes of money weren’t built into the budget.
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I’d be far more comfortable with “We NEED to keep taxes elevated” as a campaign strategy if I didn’t know that the Healy campaign would trot out a series of these egregious wastes of money.
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As it stands, it seems to me like the Democratic response to the “They will raise your taxes” attack will be a series of spreadsheets and plot graphs demonstrating that paying more in tax raises makes you richer.
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Then, in mid-November, the discussion will be:
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“Why were the voters not smart enough to vote for our candidate? Maybe they are stupid/bigoted/sexist/____ist. What can we do to make these insufferable dolts vote with us? I dunno. Maybe it is the “frame” we used to discuss the issues. Yeah, we need better frames.”
I don’t think anybody denied the existence of pork. But I think you’ll have to cut more than just these programs to achieve your apparently-desired $2K/person.
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There are over 5 million people in this state.
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$200K for Melrose == $0.04/person.
$100K for Braintree == $0.02/person.
$4M for internal combustion == $0.80/person.
$1M for Sturbridge == $0.20/person.
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I’m too lazy to look up numbers for the other things you mentioned, but right there is $1.06/person. Only $1998.94 to go…
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I don’t really mean to be snide; what I’m really trying to get across is that cutting taxes by this much means cutting a lot. $2K/person for 5 million people is 10 billion dollars.
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Even the 0.3% income tax rollback, assuming the cites of $200/person are accurate, means a difference of 1 billion dollars to the state’s budget.
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That’s a lot of cutbacks…
If you’re going to supply exact numbers, please provide links.
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comes from your source, The Tax Foundation
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Elsewhere on their site, the federal tax payment per capita in Mass is shown to be $8,261 in 2004.
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All that said, the use of per capita (average) figures is very misleading. To top it off, you mix in the median house price (no source given).
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At least you admit that our standard of living here in the Bay State is very high. So your conclusion is that we should cut taxes so that we can lower our standard of living? I don’t think so!
AS I SAID, Mass is 6th in TOTAL tax burden per person:
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http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.html
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AS I SAID, median house price info comes from realtor.org. Not that hard to find on their site, but here ya go:
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http://www.realtor.org/Research.nsf/files/REL06Q1T.pdf/$FILE/REL06Q1T.pdf
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And to clarify, cutting taxes gives the consumer more money, not less and therefore raises, not lowers standard of living.
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The TOTAL tax burden is high because we have more professional workers with high salaries here. If they all went to NC doing the same work the total tax burden would go up there.
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It’s not a fault of MA tax policy that we have more high wage workers. I mean, really think about that.
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And as far as “cutting taxes gives the consumer more money, not less and therefore raises, not lowers standard of living” argument, that’s just dumb. Cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget cuts teachers, policemen, repair for roads, aid to towns, healthcare subsidies, etc.
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Are you really telling me that my 12 bucks a month in tax break increases my “standard of living” more than it is reduced by the fact that my community can’t afford things that I think we need?
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Tax cutting is just religion for you conservatives. It is based not on fact, analysis, or reason. It is so self-evidently true to you that you can’t construct a cogent argument, just the same rhetoric.
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Actually, not. If all were to go to NC, they’d take a pay cut because of 1) the existing lower pay scales in NC and 2) the excess supply would force wages further down. Tax burden certainly wouldn’t increase.
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But, I did list some specific items which should be looked at in the Mass budget with thoughts toward cutting them and would be more interested in your specific thoughts on why the state budget with respect to these items shouldn’t be reduced:
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–Quinn bill payments;
–Medicaid asset eligibility testing and greater oversight on asset shifting prior to qualification;
–UMASS (FYI, the tuition if about $9500 with 60% of the students leaving UMASS with $16,000 of debt);
–Free tuition to adoptees;
–Braintree gazebo;
–Old Sturbridge Village million;
–Study the combustion engine 4.0 million
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ciao,
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gary
Just a little background on the “study the combustion engine” item. There was a man named Carmelo Scuderi from West Springfield who worked all his life to come up with a different design for the internal combustion engine. He died before his work was complete, but this is more than medicine salesmanship — the design apparently has merit.
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Here’s an article I found on it:
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http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2006/03/06/212475.html
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If it pans out, it could “allow diesel and gasoline automobiles, commercial vehicles and other applications powered by internal combustion engines to be 60 percent fuel efficient (compared to today’s 33 percent), reduce toxic emissions by 80 percent, while making it easier and less expensive to incorporate the technology into today’s automobile manufacturing process.
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Now it’s certainly fine to debate whether the state should be kicking in $4m to this company’s funding, but I just wanted to give this issue a little more life than the “some bogus study” treatment it was getting.
We’re trying to have an informed “reality-based” discussion here.
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A good start (especially for us reality-based folks on the left) is to stop using the phrase “tax burden” — taxes are not a burden but the vehicle we use to fund the things we choose to have our government do.
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Also, “standard of living” does not refer solely (or even mainly) to how much cash you have in your pocket. It also has a lot to do with the air you breathe, the safety of our streets, the quality of our schools, and a whole host of things that have little or nothing to do with the level of your take-home pay.
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Thank you for the links, which helps me understand where you’re coming from. Again, I wish to point out that mixing per capita income figures with median housing prices is the old apples and oranges comparison. There’s a better way.
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Here is a chart I prepared about 6 months ago (so it’s not too out of date) for a different discussion (having to do with the financial markets, not politics), but I didn’t know I’d want to talk about North Carolina, so that’s not on here:
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I do have the data for the Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, NC-SC Metropolitan Statistical Area, however, and it would show a most recent reading of 152.21, well above the Boston number of 84.38 or the national average of 120.48.
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Source: Moody’s Economy.com
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So, it appears that Boston is one of the most affordable areas in the country in which to live, and the reason, as mentioned by at least one other poster, is the high salaries paid here. So why the myth that people are leaving the state in droves because of high housing prices? Purely anecdotal. I don’t pretend to understand the complexities of the situation, but I suspect it has a lot more to do with job opportunities than with housing costs. Topic for another discussion…
You state that:
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And conclude that:
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But, isn’t your statistic calculated by dividing median income by median housing? (the graph says “Median income as a percent of Median Housing”)
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Isn’t a bigger number better?
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So, 152.21 (NC) is good; 120.48 (National) less good; and 84.38 (Boston) stinkin up the place?
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Just sayin’
That’s what I get for using a 6-month-old chart without paying attention.
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Boston is the 35th-most expensive MSA on the list of 379 (not weighted for population). Charlotte is #145.
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Nearly all of the MSAs that are ranked higher (more expensive) than Boston are in CA or NY, with a smattering of FL, HI, and NV.
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Springfield (MA) ranks 113th. (Believe it or don’t, not everyone in MA lives in Boston.)
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Now that my memory has been prodded, I remember that the original point of my chart was that although housing costs were high (and in some cases rising) in some areas, mostly on the coasts (like Boston), large areas of the country (like the inland cities of Pittsfield, Albany, and Hartford) had actually seen an increase in the affordability of housing. Also, the national trend has been fairly flat over the past 15 years or so.
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And Boston, although clearly worse off than during the mid-90s, is really no worse off than it was 20 years ago.
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So, I apologize for flipping the numbers, but my conclusion is still one I stick by — the cost (affordability) of housing is not enoough, in and of itself, to explain why people would want to move to North Carolina. By that standard, they might just as easily choose to move to Springfield or Pittsfield.
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Maybe it’s the weather? the job choices? the educational system? It certainly ain’t taxes, imho.
Part of the problem is that press coverage of these issues tends to use very broad strokes rather than careful analysis. People fall into pretty easy logical traps when they look at the situation in a place like Massachusetts:
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Housing costs are high in Boston >>> People don’t like high housing costs>>> People are leaving the state>>> People must be leaving because of housing costs.
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The syllogism might make sense, but that doesn’t mean its accurate. To some extent, housing prices are high in Boston because people want to live there and those people are increasingly those who can afford (or nearly afford) to pay high prices. I imagine that some of the problems that Massachusetts faces are cumulative ones: job opportunities (impacted by economic development policy and infrastructure), educational systems, weather, all the things you mention and then some. However, it is much easier for the 5 o’clock news to run a story on the housing crunch dovetailed with statistics about people fleeing Boston.
The loss of population is a hugely complex issue.
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Perhaps part of it is that Massachusetts employers are more scupulous than most about paying above-board wages.
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Perhaps our educational system is failing us (that’s certainly true in key areas, like Springfield).
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In any case, I suspect that housing costs (except at the low end) are not a big factor.
If you remove a dollar of services by cutting a dollar of taxes, you have not necessarily given the taxpayer anything. Taxes are not shot into space. They are applied to services.
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The Republicans in Hingham who make this argument (I know some of them) never want to cut services for HINGHAM. They want to cut services to Springfield. Or Malden. What a surprise.
my federal taxes were cut, i think I get an extra 300 per year. My property tacex went up 236 this year alone, my heating costs have risen almost 800 over the past heating season. So my property isnt bigger, better or improved no new services in town in matter of fact the roads suck. Im not warmer in matter of fact I lowered the theromstats so I am cooler. How did that tax cut rais emy standard of living, oh and my automobile gas expens don;t even go there.
I pay federal taxes because I actually make money. As far as I can tell, the only recourse that the governor has to lower federal taxes is to take actions that will lower our incomes. Is this really such a great idea?
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“Hey, I’m running to cut your incomes to lower YOUR taxes!”
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Even with property taxes, sales tax, and income tax, the big kicker for Massachusetts is that we have to pay more because our federal income tax puts us in a higher bracket. Unless the governor can do something about putting us in standard-of-living dependent federal tax brackets, we’re always going to be near the top of the heap in tax burden.
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Actually, the fact that we’re 2nd in per capita income and 6th in overall tax burden would seem to suggest that our state is doing a good job of having us pay fewer taxes than average. If we were paying as much as the average state, shouldn’t we be second in tax burden as well?
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I admit that I’m a fan of lowering the income tax to 5.0% in theory, but I’m honestly at a loss as to how to take the 100 million-ish out of the budget. Anybody can find 5-10 million in pet projects. But getting up to the 80-100 million mark that it would actually take to lower the income tax is a bit more difficult.
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But we’re not being taxed out of Massachusetts. When you ask people why they’re leaving, it’s always one answer: HOUSING. Hiding behind taxes might work politically, but it’s not going to get us anywhere as a state. If we just blame it all on taxes, we’re just going to continue to lose people no matter who gets elected governor. The real answer is to figure out what needs to be done to encourage housing starts or provide affordable housing to the young educated working populations that attract businesses. And as a current Deval Patrick supporter, I’d say flat out that I would change my vote in a heartbeat to a candidate whose answer to this problem ended up being head and shoulders over anyone else’s because I think it is the most vital challenge that we face. Taxes might win the election, but housing will win for Massachusetts.
My long, rambling point was that the guy in NC making $30K is better off than the MA guy making $44K and he’s better off mainly because of housing, but he’s also better off because the NC guy pays less tax.
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He’s earning less and is in a lower Federal bracket, but has more buying power in the cheaper housing market.
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I think that the politcian can’t do anything about MA housing prices, but he/she can influence (state)tax and I think there are some problems in the budget that aren’t being addressed.
Glad we figured out how to get them out there. The quality of this forum just went up. Thanks for initiating that exploration.
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Not only that, but your charts are interesting. DC certainly is an outlier in a lot of ways; but we already knew that!
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The reason there’s such a strong correlation in your third chart is that you’re looking at total (not per capita) growth — intuitively, you’d expect a growing population to produce more, so you’ve more or less confirmed common sense. Might be more interesting to look at the per capital data (for the first chart, too).
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To the poster who asked if budget data is on-line, yes it is, in a lot of formats. One of the better sources is
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Poke around here for information and policy papers.
Sad that we’re having this discussion, when the myth of high tax Massachusetts has been debunked so many times, and also the myth that low taxes “create” prosperity. When I was in business school (1981 at MIT) I read the Boston Federal Reserve report that showed that Massachusetts ranked 24 or 25th in state/local tax burden as a percentage of income. I see that we’ve fallen lower since then.
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More to the point, let’s think about the countries with really really low tax rates – like Paraguay and Guatemala. They don’t seem too prosperous, do they? In fact, a listing of low tax countries (excepting tax havens) is pretty dreadful reading.
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Modern economies require education, roads, ports, airports, railroads…. all based on public expenditures. It’s been this way for 200 years and it isn’t going to change soon. If you want to attack a real problem that limits our competitiveness, look at the enormous amounts we pay for shoddy health care, as opposed to Europeans (who pay 50% to 66% of what we do), or the enormous amounts we spend on prisons – five times what Europeans do. Or the total collapse of the private pension system in the United States, thanks to the corporations.
Too bad Healey doesn’t want or need any info that will get in the way of her focus group tested sound bites!!!
Shameless (3.20 / 5)
Oh my goodness, you look just like a lefty!!! I can just hear your droning on about how Deval will save us all. Just look at Deval posing, he looks just like Alexander or Caesar, all he is missing is the laurel wreath.
Did you tell the voters you were addressing that Deval will shake down the evil multi-national companies for us just like he did for himself after he had left his post in the Clinton administration?
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To me Deval is just another in a long line of race hustlers. He is an empty (but nice) suit. I cannot fathom how you Democrats back stiff after stiff. You could not beat a drunken Weld, a gambling addicted Celucci or a Morman (for God’s sake) Romney. Deval has no chance against Muffy, none whatsoever!!! You can take that one to the bank.
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