A few comments on taxes in the blogosphere:
I followed the link to find out what Bruce Murphy thinks is the "scandal" of college tuition. It turns out that average tuition in Wisconsin for a four year college, while materially less than in surrounding states, is $ 228 (4%) more than the national average. Must have been a slow news day.
Here's a differnent way of looking at it. Maybe the scandal is that we charge that above average tuition in a heavily taxed state.
Speaking of high taxes, MPS wants to raise its tax levy by 16.4%. Jay Bullock anticipates the responsorial growl and is reaching for ... the earplugs. Taxes too high? Talk to the hand. He isn't going to listen because the growlers must not live on MIlwaukee. (But what about, e.g., McIlheran and Harris and Belling?)
I would not want to tell the folks in Milwaukee what to do, but in a city with property taxes that are among the highest in the country, I would want to see a fairly powerful argument for an increase like that. You know, if it were me.
I'm not sure that a school district with the burden rate that MPS has could ever hope to make such an argument. As I have noted before, my daughter-in-law and sister work for MPS. I am happy that they have what they do (and that I don't have to pay for it.) But how can you impose that kind of tax increase on people when you provide the kind of gold plated fringes that MPS does?
3 comments:
Well, yah, but in addition, recall that in Wisconsin, the median earnings are only about 85% of the national median.
(I KNOW that 'median' and 'average' are different.)
So Murphy may have a valid complaint, albeit yours is more on-point: how can we be taxed so highly and STILL require the little darlings to pay more than the average?
So college here costs $228 more than the national average, and our taxes are higher than the national average.
I guess in an effort to lessen the cost of college on those who avail themselves of it, we should raise taxes on the public.
This isn't f'ing brain surgery. The money either comes from the public in the form of taxes, or it comes from the students.
Obviously our University system is understaffed and underpaid.
"We should not, we must not I will not raise taxes".
Remember?
Sooner or later someone has to start representing the people of this state that are being squeezed between higher taxes and health costs...a part of me thinks that only lawyers could screw things up this bad.
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