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- February 4 Non-Partisan Training: HOW TO RUN FOR ELECTION BOARD IN 2013: HOW TO RUN FOR COMMITTEEPERSON IN 2014
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- The Reports of Unions' Death Are Greatly Exaggerated
- Ask Allyson Schwartz to run for Governor
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- Jan. 14 Workshop:HOW TO RUN FOR ELECTION BOARD IN 2013; HOW TO RUN FOR COMMITTEEPERSON IN 2014
- Seth Williams on Guns, Jasmine Rivera on School Closures @PFC Meetup Wednesday
- PA Revenue Strong Midway Through Year; Tax Cut Could Have Big Impact
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Hammer and Nail
Submitted by charlesdog12 on Fri, 12/09/2005 - 1:57am.
I think that the proponents of one issue or the other seem to think that that one issue is the basis for the problems for everything. Hey, even us hardcore progressives do it. I think that, for example, we need to stop talking about getting rid of Bush and talk more about bringing a spine back to the Democratic Party. Bush is bad, ra ra ra, but with the current lack of conviction in our party, even if Bush wasn’t there, there would still be a big problem. But I digress. Proponents of Tax Cuts seem to think that it will cure all of Philadelphia’s woos, and then do the dishes and slice the bread. As the saying in programming goes, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. I think that all of us need to get out of that nail mentality.
I think that the best way to put things into perspective is to tell personal stories. I am a computer consultant, which means that I have to pay BPT. There are some serious problems with it, and I think that we need to fix them. For example, why should I have to prepay next year what I paid this year in taxes? What if I am in a volatile business where cashflow is important? Why do we have to pay a tax on gross income. Doesn’t this punish people who need to hire a lot of people and/or buy a lot of equipment? (Click Read More for the Rest)
I have had many conversations with my parents why they chose for us to live our lives in Germantown. They told me that when they had me, they new that there was a decision that they had to make. They had two options. The first was to stay in Philly and send me to private school, and the second was to move to the suburbs. Sending me to public school was simply not an option.
A person from Chestnut Hill told me a story about why he left Germantown. One day, the Police, with guns drawn, chased someone through their back yard. He said that once he saw that, he knew it was time to go. Asher’s Candy, which was a Germantown institution when I grew up moves an hour and a half outside the city because their employees were getting robbed. Who can blame these guys for leaving? Who wants to live or own a business in an area where they have to worry about the safety of their kids or employees?
We can talk about taxes here. I hope that we have an honest open dialogue about that. But I think that at the end of the day, the exodus from this city has more to do with the fact that people don’t feel that they can make a good life for their family here. People want to feel safe walking the streets. People want their children to have a better life and have more opportunities then they had. Most people are willing to pay more to get more, whether it be through taxes, private school tuition, or a fat overextended mortgage for a trite cookie cutter home with a white picket fence and a Gas grill in the Burbs.
What people see happening in Philly is that they keep spending more and more for less and less. Their taxes stay the same or go up, yet their representatives in government are non-responsive. They keep their business here in the city, and they pay higher insurance, get robbed, and have contracts go to companies with bigger wallets and crappier labor practices. They send their kids to Temple, and then Temple basically tells them that they care more about out of state students.
I personally think that the Burbs are the 5th ring of Hell. But that is just my opinion. What does it say to us that, at the end of the day, people are more willing to spend a lot more money to live their than here?
Well said Charles
I think you speak for a lot of people in this city.
excellent points
Absolutely. I do know people who have chosen between houses just inside and just outside the city limits for wage tax reasons, but by and large, many people who would like to stay in the city move out for just the quality of life issues that you cite -- safety and schools. The city has been working to improve its school system largely for this reason, to prevent the brain drain of young families moving away. I hope they have success. But there are certainly many issues to be addressed in improving Philadelphia's attractiveness to both residents and businesses, and in all honesty, I find the fixation on taxes perplexing (and somewhat exasperating)...
acm
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead
Oh, I should link to this too
The CityPaper has a good story about the number of factors influencing people's choice of where to live and so forth...
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2005-12-08/canon.shtml
acm
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
— Margaret Mead
Center City, Mt. Airy, and Such
Three things:
1) They're not "anti-tax" people, they're "pro Philadelphia competiveness people"
2) Your commitment to the City and to non-bigotry are deeply appreciated and shared
3) Center City jobs create hundreds of millions in wages for residents of the inner-ring neighborhoods. What's good for the Center City economy is good for them.
We need so many things - tax reform and burden reduction so we can be more competitive, a better mayor so we can have a City that's more effectively run, a better police commissioner so that crime in our city is abated, a more responsive educational system, we could go on and on. But, we do need tax reform and burden reduction...it's an important part of the mix.
Let me torture a metaphor!
Charles your comments in combination with an article I read last night on Pittsburgh by Charles McCollester inspired an early morning census run, the result, some more nails for my nail gun.
According to McCollester Pittsburgh’s population has been decimated by industrial decline and the migration of the cities professional workforce to the suburbs. Huge tax giveaways to developers aimed at drawing suburban consumers back into the city to shop and dine didn’t pan out. The city in financial trouble has been prevented by the legislature from imposing a commuter tax on the two-thirds of workers who work in Pittsburgh but live in the suburbs. According to McCollester, the average income of Pittsburgh commuters is $47,000 a year, compared to $29,000 for people who live and work in Pittsburgh. The city in serious financial trouble has among other things closed pools and senior centers.
Looking at Census data for Philadelphia, the median wage and salary income for workers in Philadelphia who live outside the county is $46,000, compared to $28,000 for people who live and work in the city (these numbers are in 2004 dollars and don’t include Jersey commuters or long distance PA commuters coming from outside the four counties other than Philly which make up the metro. I have not fact checked these numbers but according to my early morning census run 53 percent of people who work and live in Philadelphia county are white and 83 percent of commuters are white.)
Think about how these income differences play out in terms of quality of life. The same tax rate in a wealthy suburb brings in more dollars than in Philadelphia. Just as an example 3 percent of $46,000, is $1,380. In order to raise the same dollar revenue from $28,000 you need a tax rate of 4.9 percent. Higher incomes translate into higher real estate prices and the same phenomena on school finance.
Paying less and getting the same service is difficult to do, consider education. Textbook prices are set nationally, labor markets are shaped by differences in earnings not altruism. You can pay teachers in Philadelphia less but doing so you run the risk that your school system becomes a training ground where teachers accumulate experience before graduating to higher pay in a suburban school system. And so far we haven’t addressed the reality that poor students come to school in need of greater investment than wealthy children thus raising costs.
The urban infrastructure from roads to homeless shelters to police and fire protection is more expensive than the suburban infrastructure. Worse still commuters take more income out of the city and they pay less as percentage of their income in taxes than residents to help support the infrastructure which makes their jobs possible.
It is not hard to see why urban populations that are effectively locked out of high paying occupations in their own city begin to feel overtaxed and underserved and open to tax cutters bearing gifts, “cut our taxes and we will create jobs”.
The consultants retained by Tax Reform Commission presented econometric results which suggested that tax rate differentials are what caused people to flee to the suburbs. As the posts by Charles and D.E. II illustrate, major factors that influenced the movement of people to the suburbs included race, crime and the school system. However the models the consultants applied did not and could not adequately control for these factors thus raising the likelihood that they erroneously attributed the effects of racism, crime and the school system to observed differences in taxes.
So what lesson does Pittsburgh have to teach Philadelphia? Wishful thinking on budgets will not hurt the wishful thinkers but city residents. The city budget has to be balanced, unlike the federal government the city can not print money or borrow money cheaply from the Chinese central bank. Tax cuts disguised as tax reform that endanger city services while also shifting the collective tax burden onto middle and low income workers are the first domino in a chain that leads to fiscal suicide.
the real reasons to stay
The only time I know of a concerted, citywide effort undertaken to figure out the cause of flight in Philadelphia was the three-part, 6-month series of citywide forums called Reasons to Stay. This series was an extension of Bella Vista United Civic Assoc.'s Reasons to Stay committee formed in 1996 to deal with population loss. In 1996, we declined by 10% in Bella Vista ...last year (after 9 years and a tons of hard work by hundreds of volunteers and numerous projects and initiatives, we grew by 7%).
Anyway, the citywide RTS forums were comprised of about 250 reps from neighborhoods (and an additional 60 or so folks who left the city for the burbs) and here's what they told us.... an overwhelming majority said if the streets were safer; if neighborhood schools were secure and actually academically challenging enough to educate kids well enough for college; if city services were accessible and customer-service oriented; if zoning and development matters were something individuals could have an impact on; if people didn't feel like those we elect were more interested in serving themselves than the people; if public transit, use of open space and recreation and environmental measures were a priority and if people generally thought their money was being well managed...then that dreaded (wage) tax doesn't seem so burdensome....because people would be getting their money's worth.
In fact, it was all those OTHER issues that were in the forefront of people's minds when they try and figure out if its time to go.
People still felt strongly about the wage tax (we even had david thornburg visit us and do a presentation on the Economy League's LEAD OR LEAVE)...but folks felt MORE strongly about shifting property tax burdens to surface parking lot owners and blight owners and off of middle class homeowners (the original LVT pioneers). There was a compromise in the end and tax reductions -- tax equity-- was an integral to the final report.
These forums were spearheaded by Ride Park Civic, Mayfair Civic Fairmount Neighbors and Bella Vista United and a ton of blood sweat and tears and debate went into them. They were magic...really. The result was a document we forwarded to Street and Katz..and many of the issues gained some traction till the bug was discovered in 10/2003.
What strikes me most, however, is how so many of the reform measures we championed in the summer, fall & winter of 2002 actually became law and/or (at least) elected folks started paying lip service to these issues. Remember-- few if ANY people actually talked about these issues as a group and NO elected officials had made them the centerpiece of any concerted effort.
One look at our final product will (I think) tell you that the best place to go for the ideas of change and progressive reform is NOT in City Hall...but in our neighborhoods. At the end of the day, it’s the people who know what this city needs more than any elected leader. And I only wish more people actually took time to speak up, and more leaders actually listened.
Here's the final product if you wanna take a look:
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2003-02-13/cover2.shtml
so now what?
right on Charles. I think the bottom line here is, what are the things that our city can do to create more opportunities for the people who live here to want to stay here? I think it's actually a bit misrepresentative to talk about what to do to keep people from leaving since the majority of Philadelphians couldn't afford to leave if they wanted. Not that there isn't a group of leavers, but that it seems like irresponsible public policy to cater to them over the majority.
Anyway, that being said, i think education, a better criminal justice system (one that reforms rather than being punitive) a huge investment in transit and a new STRATEGIC plan for spending economic development money will all go a really long way to rising the wages of people who live here and giving them an incentive to stay in the city. And, go a long way without any real risks- investments in these 4 areas have a proven track record for success (as opposed to the gamble is the BPT).
The only barrier to making this happen is getting the support of a majority of Philadelphians who can pressure Council and the Mayor to actually do it.
Good article, on point
I hope all the anti-tax posters read the it.
In response to some of the issues the article examines, and to offer another anecdotal/personal history perspective on the larger issue...
I grew up in East Mount Airy around 40 years ago, and witnessed the lightening-speed racial transformation of the area between Stenton and Cheltenham Aves. When my brother attended Morris E. Leeds Jr. High, it was predominantly white and largely Jewish. By the time I left the school three years later, it was predominantly Black and almost all of the Jews in the community had moved to the suburbs. The reasons why the demographics changed had little to do with economics, and probably nothing to do with relative tax rates. The reason was racism.
It was a kind of sport to watch the faces of people who had moved out of the neighborhood when I told them where I continued to live: they always went through the most interesting contortions when they tried to phrase the next question with some degree of sensitivity: "Isn't it DANGEROUS living there?" (translation: why would you still live there when so many Blacks have moved in?")
West Mt. Airy, on the other hand, never went through the same kind of transformation. Why? At least in part it was because there was a large contingent of activist and non-racist residents in West Mt. Airy who made a concerted effort to not let fear and bigotry transform their community (also, I would speculate because many of the houses in West Mt. Airy were larger, and as such, would have been harder to sell without significantly undervaluing them).
After leaving the Philadelphia area for close to 20 years, I moved back to the West Central Germantown area about 8 years ago. I'm surrounded by neighbors who are very committed to their community. What differentiates my neighbors from folks of similar economic means who live in surrounding suburbs? Many reasons I suppose - and as the article points out, the state of public schools is probably chief among them (most of my more afluent neighbors do not have school-aged children or can afford to send their children to private schools). But not insignificant among those reasons is that most of my white neighbors are committed non-bigots. And as such, they understand that to a large degree, the perceptions of a "dangerous" Germantown are more likey rooted in prejudice than in reality.
It seems to me that the 800 pound gorilla that tends to get lost in all the speculation about what will or won't promote economic growth in Philadelphia is the role of racism. It isn't simple economics that creates a Center City that resembles a "tiny island of prosperity in a sea of poverty," as the article describes. Another way to describe the configuration of Center City and it's surrounding neighborhoods is that it resembles a largely white island in a predominantly black sea.
So, what's the point of this rambling? I suppose it's that I believe that the impact of racism must be an explicit part of the discussion of Philly's economics. While eliminating or reducing taxes may, possibly, attract new businesses to Center City or improve profit margins for existing businesses, I don't see how it will do much to invigorate the surrounding neighborhoods - not as long as that 800 pound gorilla is still sitting in the room.
torture never felt so good...
Let me just say A-FRIGGIN-MEN!!!
Really, really, well said. Thanks Price!
Draft Zinni! It's Security, Stupid!
This is a really important co
This is a really important comment that people need to understand.
good comment
Well said man. You seem to see the potential in Germantown that I do. I know the stories of East Mt. Airy and Olney and the whole issue of white flight, and it is a real issue. However, as you pointed out, Germantown didn’t have it’s Exodus as a result of racism, because the people here are committed non bigots. I mean growing up here, I know that the coolest people that I have ever known are White people who grew up around Black people.
The Exodus from Germantown, which happened early in my life, had much to do with drugs and what it did to our community. From what I understand, we were a heart bed of progressive activity in the 70’s. This was around the time that my parents moved here and met each other and, well, I’m here, bla bla bla.
What I love about my neighborhood, which I don’t think can be said about most parts of our great city, is that it is truly diverse. We have economic, religious, and cultural diversity in a way that is not shown in much part of the “city of neighborhoods”. I mean what the heck does that really mean? It means that we are a segregated city.
Where in Germantown do you live? I’m not quite sure what West Central Germantown is. All that I know is that you seem like you know what’s going on, and if you would like to have a beer at McMennamins, it’s one me.