Month: August 2005

Miscellany

Bush’s tax cuts undermined by basic principles

Posted on by Michael J. Waddell

His [George W. Bush’s] policy thus rests implicitly on the premise that if business owners could afford to hire additional workers, they would. But whether owners can afford to hire is not the issue. What matters is whether hiring will increase their profits.

The basic hiring criterion, found in every introductory textbook – including those written by the president’s own economic advisers – is straightforward: If the output of additional workers can be sold for at least enough to cover their salaries, they should be hired; otherwise not. The after-tax personal incomes of business owners are irrelevant for hiring decisions….

Had the dollars required to finance the president’s tax cuts been used in other ways, they would have made a real difference. Larger tax cuts for middle- and low-income families, for example, would have stimulated immediate new spending because the savings rates for most of these families are low. Their additional spending would have been largely for products made by domestic businesses, and that, in turn, would have led to increased employment.

Economists from both sides of the political aisle argued from the beginning that tax cuts for the wealthy made no sense as a policy for stimulating new jobs. Experience has proved them right.

Bush’s tax cuts undermined by basic principles

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Miscellany

Public to discuss jail expansion

Posted on by Michael J. Waddell

Planning to continue to voice opposition to the construction project is a coalition of eight groups known as the SAFER Racine Partnership, which includes the Racine Taxpayer Association, the Racine Branch of the NAACP and the Racine Interfaith Coalition, among others.

The SAFER coalition argues that Racine County has failed to use the best practices in criminal justice to reduce the jail population and, in turn, jail costs.

Kenneth Hall of SAFER said that while the eastern half of the Racine County community had scrutinized the Racine Unified School Board’s plan to spend an additional $6.45 million to save school programs, a similar debate is not being encouraged on a $17.3 million jail project.

“Schools are closing, fire stations are closing – every other part of government is being cut or going through a tough analysis of what it’s doing,” Hall said. “If we’re going to talk about jail expansion, we need to be doing the same kind of analysis with jail operations and the criminal justice system.”

Public to discuss jail expansion

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