I can’t speak to the other states, but that’s true in Tennessee. A couple years ago the governer and some state politicians recommended instituting a small state income tax and you would have thought they were suggesting baby sacrifices. They were thrown out of office quickly. Every election cycle, candidates pledge to fight against a state income tax – although no one every seems to be actually advocating one. Except me. Because our damned state sales tax is 9.25% and applies to just about everything, including food and clothing. Its the worst sort of regressive tax on a state with a large population of low-income residents.
So we have a proportionally high tax burden for low income residents, shitty public services (remember the fire department who let the guys house burn down?), and a debt crisis. But damn it if anyone is actually going to vote in a system that is more fair, provides more income and better services. Ugh, don’t get me started.
As a product of an East Tennessee school system, I have to jump in and offer some defense (at least of what the school systems were up until 1970). We may not have had all the “bells & whistles”/ options available at other better funded systems, but what we ended up with was a solid knowledge foundation of the “3-Rs” along with music and arts. It wasn’t like we were going to school in facilities with dirt floors. The high school had an indoor pool, etc. The dropout rate was minimal and I don’t know of anyone that came out of there without having basic reading & writing skills, unlike the issues you hear of in other parts of the country today.
I didn’t grow up in Tennessee, so I can’t speak to the school system in the 60’s, but they are not great now (except in wealthy districts). My wife taught high school for years in a suburban/rural county near here and had some horror stories. Now our kid is in grade school and at least twice a month the parents are hit up for school supplies, donations, fundraisers, etc just to keep the classroom going.
One of our neighbors complained to us about the school constantly asking for money from parents and I said something about needing to raise taxes. She looked at me like my hair was on fire. I don’t know where she thinks the money should come from if not from parents and not from taxes. Philanthropists?
Hardly unique to your local Tennessee district. Experienced much the same while living in central Illinois. Don’t see near as much of this now that we live the Houston, TX area. As for a point of tax reference, our property taxes are almost identical between IL & TX on an equal valued property.
I’ve been around public education enough to know that there can be a hell of a lot of cuts without touching what goes on in the classroom. The number of administrators, vice-principals, technology coordinators, assistant to the assistant superintendents with nearly six figure salaries are staggering.
In my empire, my first day on the job, I would fire half of the administrative staff. I wouldn’t even care who it was; I would just start drawing names out of a hat. Any of them can drink coffee just as efficiently as another.
I’m sure you’re right, but guess what actually happens when a school board needs to cut the budget? They lay off teachers, meaning special subject teachers – art, music, science, PE – are let go. Then they lay off more teachers, meaning regular classes – first grade, second grade, etc. – have more and more kids.
In WA, a combination of sales, property, and business taxes. Of course, when people aren’t buying things, property values sank, and businesses are going under - things aren’t pretty.
First, although I grew up in Canada, my family did shell out thousands in the form of taxes. Had public not been an option, they would have shelled out the same amount of money regardless.
Second, the two points of this thread is to ask, “why at the state level, and why based on income?” As you said, what’s the difference? If there isn’t one, it might as well be based on property tax and lump it all in at the local level.
Really, that’s the alternative? Nothing in between? It’s either this way or chaos?
How is education “restricted?” Is a publicly funded school the ONLY method for a child to get educated? Can there not be low cost private schools the way we have shitty low cost restaurants, and shitty low cost cars? Schools funded by charity? Home schooling?
But all that is secondary to the question: why is it at the state level?
Property taxes at the local level has some advantages. That funding source is more stable than income and sales taxes. Thanks to Prop 13 the contribution of property taxes in California is much reduced, but when the recession hit money from both state sales and income taxes fell rapidly, which is one of the major causes of our crisis.
The problem is that in states with local property tax driven schools there came to be big gaps between rich and poor districts in funding, and state and federal courts found this unconstitutional. In California, property taxes go to the state, where it gets distributed to local districts based on a formula set after the ruling. The problem is that this is impossible to change now (because L.A. did well, and they have a lot of votes) so a district like mine which was relatively poor when the allocation was set now gets ripped off.
When you choose to eat in a cheap restaurant or buy a cheap car, you are an adult, and the consequences are relatively short term. The kid sentenced to a crappy education has no say in it, and the consequences to him last his entire life.
As for your alternatives: sure, the single mother who was a high school dropout is going to do a great job in home schooling, even if she is motivated. Charity? Show me the money. Charities can’t keep up with feeding people and helping the homeless.
At the college level, there are for-profit schools - like the Univ. of Phoenix - and their track record is awful. They seem mostly to be a way of funneling federal student loans into their coffers. I can just imagine the kind of scams people would pull in low income neighborhoods to get voucher money or whatever.
And cutting taxes is not going to put a lot of any money into the pockets of those who need it most. Where do you think they are going to get money for school?
As I mentioned above, to reduce inequality across districts.
Of those 8 schools, Texas (24), Wyoming (17), New Hampshire (15), and South Dakota (18) are in the top half of states in this metric, which can’t be viewed as “that bad.” So half of your 8 are doing fine, and then states like West Virginia and California which have fairly large income tax rates have atrocious schools. I’m really not sure you’ve even demonstrated any strong correlation between absence of state income taxes and school system ranking. Let alone any sort of causation.
That is a problem, but obviously state laws cannot deal with differences between states. A state cannot pass a law asking for money from another state. If we want to fix this, federal law is needed. Your OP asked about state taxes.
YOu might get a better answer, and better insight to what you might want to know, if you rephrase your question, and ask what do we get from the state government that is DIFFERENT today, compared to back in the 1950s’s and 1950’s BEFORE there was any state income tax, back when the sales tax was only 2%, back when the gasoline tax was just 2 pennies a gallon.
50 years ago, before we had state income taxes, back when all other state taxes were very low, we still had state roads, we still had state universities, we still had hospitals, we still had state welfare, we still had state police, we still had a state legislature, we still had bridges, and everything else that we needed not very different than today. In fact, one could argue that we actually “created” more new schools, more roads, built more new bridges, back then when state taxes were so low. The state highway systems were mostly pretty well built/completed before the 1970’s, with only a few more highways added since then. Also, most state forests, most state parks, most state game areas, most state water access spots, most state recreation lands were bought and/or built before taxes went drastically up.
We have always had basic state services, and until recently we always had LOW state taxes to finance those basic services.
Prior to the huge increases in state taxes, we also had balanced budgets back then, and very little state debt.
I think once you find out where DIFFERENT the state money is being spent today now that the state is spending 100X beyond what is/was always considered necessary (roads, police, colleges, unemployment insurance, hospitals, bridges, etc).
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An interesting question. The courts have never ruled that this is required, and you-know-who would have a fit. Perhaps the idea is that states are big enough to provide the level of equality which is constitutionally required.