I want to commend Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson’s thought-provoking op-ed in the New York Times to your attention. It’s expressly a retort to those who point to low tax states as models for economic growth and prosperity:
Mr. Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are united by the conviction that cutting taxes — especially on corporations and the wealthy — is what drives growth.
A look at the states, however, suggests that they’re wrong. Red states dominated by Republicans embrace cut and extract. Blue states dominated by Democrats do much more to maintain their investments in education, infrastructure, urban quality of life and human services — investments typically financed through more progressive state and local taxes. And despite what you may have heard, blue states are generally doing better.
and it’s accompanied by an eye-catching graphic depicting median household income, life expectancy at birth, taxation of the top 1% (state and local taxes), patent rate, and percent of population with bachelor’s degree or higher by state.
I wish they had factored two other things into their thinking—Gini coefficient and percentage black and Hispanic population by state. Their paragon state, Massachusetts, has one of the highest Gini coefficients (least income equality), exceeded only by Connecticut and New York. Its percentage black plus Hispanic population at 18% of total is far below the national average of 30%.
I also wish they had excluded professional degrees from their measure of educational attainment. The very high incomes of medical doctors and a relatively small number of lawyers and MBAs skews the statistics on education to the extent that it’s difficult to draw any meaningful conclusion from them. In response to my conclusion that most bachelor’s and master’s degrees are meaningless with respect to income expectations, someone always brings up statistics that include the lifetime earnings expectations of professionals. Unless your plan is to give everything an MD, JD (from a top law school), or MBA (from a top school), I think your plan is suspect.
We have a problem fostering prosperity in this country and the problem has race written all over it. If your assessment of how we should be fostering prosperity doesn’t take that factor into account, you’re looking at the problem through a keyhole or from a height of 50,000 feet.
How does your plan to make everyone prosperous by seeing that they all get associate’s or bachelor’s degrees reach people who aren’t graduating from high school? Are we actually creating jobs that require associate’s or bachelor’s degrees or are jobs that used to require high school graduation now being taken by people with associate’s or bachelor’s degrees?
I’m eager to listen to any plan that has genuine prospects for making people’s lives better. Let’s not just tell a fraction of the story.
Massachusetts may have a high Gini (Wiki says New York and Conn. are worse), but then it also provides all of those other services. while having lower poverty rates. look at the state right behind Mass, which is Louisiana. Being a red state, does it have a high Gini because it has lots of poor people with a few rich folks with very high (out of sight) income, or does it have a high Gini because it has few poor people and a lot of people with pretty high, but not out of sight, incomes? Also, would you rather be in the bottom 10% in LA or MA? (Discounting the food and music which is clearly better in LA)
Steve
Have you ever been to Louisiana? Other than New Orleans, I mean? If you had you’d know the answer. Lots and lots of poor black people, many living in rural areas or small towns.
My point, one I’ve made before, is that our policies need to be tailored to address the worst problems. There will be better results from programs that help very poor people, particularly black and Hispanic people, than policies that help the urban working poor to compete.
The reason that the Chinese herd poor people from the countryside into the cities is that it’s easier to deal with them there. We don’t have the alternative open to us.
Uhh, that was rhetorical. Thought the answer was obvious. Yes, have been to other parts.
Steve