State Needs Higher Taxes For Education Spending
Dear Editor,
Despite its Constitutional obligation to provide a sound, basic public education for our children, the North Carolina General Assembly has chosen instead to cut taxes to 0% for large corporations. This law to give large corporations a free ride has already passed and is scheduled to take full effect by 2030. It would further redirect resources from communities to country clubs, from classrooms to ballrooms.
How could we use the $2 billion in annual revenue scheduled to be lost? How about $267 million to guarantee every school has licensed staff to support student mental and physical health? Or $93 million to expand and preserve affordable housing for 10,000 low-income households? How about $151 million to support healthy pregnancies and child development for 10 times the number of low-income first-time moms and their babies through the Nurse-Family Partnership program? Or $13 million to cover the costs of two weeks of early voting for every registered voter in the state? The list goes on.
Do we see what’s getting shorted, here? It’s our opportunity to raise our voices for good, and it’s our very futures. And without this revenue, it’s almost certain we’ll face higher property taxes and sales taxes in the future.
Please join me in reaching out to our elected officials to demand they rewrite the rules. North Carolina families deserve an opportunity to create great lives here. We deserve the services and support needed to see ourselves through, in good times and bad.
Kimberly Thornton Scholl
Please look beyond the State Legislature to blame someone for our broken education system. From the FEDERAL Department of Education to the NATIONAL Teachers Union there is plenty of evidence that our taxes go for a plethora of things that don’t aid our children’s education.
I’m all for paying teachers as the true professionals they are, and I wholeheartedly endorse paying for all supplies for students but once the FEDERAL Government and UNIONS get hold of our dollars they take their share first, then dictate curriculum before they send us our money back.
How about abolishing the Department of Education and TEACH OUR TEACHERS what they support with their union dues and then hold teachers and staff accountable for the miserable level of education our students currently receive?
Hilarious !
She should be a comedian.
If you can’t vote in 1 week of early voting how will you find time to vote in the 2nd week. It’s all about priorities
My thoughts: Reducing corporate income tax isn’t a zero sum game. NC is one the highest ranked states in terms of “business friendly” low tax rates are part of the reason why . The ability to bring businesses here is key to our economy and tax revenues. Job growth is very important. More jobs, more spending, more income tax and sales tax revenue. I agree the 0% tax rate is strange. But, there are states that do not have an income tax. We can see how it works and raise the rate if needed. The general assembly has done that in years past.
And, when I registered to vote, you cast a ballot in person on election day, or you requested a mail-in ballot in advance. Never heard a complaint for decades. Why do some believe today’s voters are so incapable they just can’t be expected to do one or the other?
While I know taxes are a necessary evil, the inequities involved are manifold. Under our system of taxation, the top 1% of earners pay nearly 50% of the taxes collected and the bottom 45% pay no income taxes at all, so it is obvious that very few people are paying their “fair share”. Corporate taxes are nothing more than income taxes for businesses, but what most people don’t realize 8s that corporations don’t really pay these corporate taxes. Their customers pay the taxes; if the corporation 0ays higher taxes, the cost is passed on and the price of that corporation’s good 9r services go up, and the consumer ends up paying more.
It’s been shown time and again that when corporate taxes go down, revenue increases. Big corporations avoid paying taxes by assigning profits to offshore subsidiaries and don’t repatriate this money to grow the business here as well.
You want to take an additional $2 billion from North Carolinians who earn it to expand government, which invariably means to expand corruption? The schools haven’t done enough to screw up the mental health of its captive students? Pumping them full of drugs such as Adderall & SSRIs & sex change hormones, grooming them to question their sex, telling them they are racist if they are white.
Let people keep the money they earn and spend it as they see fit. Not have it taken from them for a government one step removed from being organized crime.
I agree wholeheartedly. Across the board, from the Federal level all the way down to local there needs to be an amendment/law, plainly written and approved by the people, that requires…REQUIRES…a balanced budget. Also any raises, be it actual pay or “benefits” (i.e. ‘franking’ for example} for our “professional politicians” at all levels requires the approval of the People.
Huh….NC already has such a law that we must maintain a balanced budget, which means state revenues must cover all spending. That’s why they produce a revenue forecast before developing a budget and why OSBM monitors state revenue on an ongoing basis.
But would be appropriate if the Federal govt took that stance decades ago when Republicans pushed the ‘Trickle Down Economic’ experiment and jacked up the deficit spending. Now just servicing the debt would require a significant increase in taxes just to balance to budget not to mention reduce the debt.
If you would get rid of 90% of the administrators who do not teach or manage a school, there would be plenty of money. The entire system is bloated and sickened with people just sucking up money and self-justifying their positions. Instead of looking for ways to spend my hard-earned money, how about we reduce government spending?
GO VOTE TO STOP THE BLOAT.
Yes, if they have a director, then they’ll also have assistant director, then a deputy assistant director, etc. In academia you are the provost, then there is a deputy provost, then the assistant deputy provost, etc., and always the other titles which are meaningless to the average person. What they all have in common is shielding the top layers of academia and local governments too. I worked in local some in my life and it is fraught with layers of beauracracy, all to shield the top directors of their responsibilities.
Is this the same Kimberly Thornton Scholl?
https://humanitiesinstitute.wfu.edu/about/staff
I bet it is! Good work Joe.
When you read her mini-bio it’s almost impossible to divine the meaning of most of it. The opaque WokeSpeak of colleges is both hilarious and pathetic. Kimberly “transitioned into parenthood”… What? Did she have a baby? Or is that an oblique way of saying she adopted one? Is she a lesbian? She has links with such organizations.
The Left has to twist language because it tries to manipulate how we think.
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Exigency requires that I recuse myself forthwith, for it has become necessary for me to “transition into elimination”.
– I gotta go pee.
Inordinate ingestion of brewed beverages is correlated and likely causative.