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underlankers.livejournal.com posting in

Bay Area Counties Give so Rural Counties can Recieve
SACRAMENTO — A new report on who supplies — and who spends — California's public dollars shows an interesting disparity between the givers and the takers:
Counties that provide most of the state's revenue streams like income and sales taxes reliably elect Democrats, who traditionally want to take more of your money. And counties whose Republican representatives argue most vociferously for social services cuts draw, per capita, the most state aid.
The breakdown, prepared by the Legislative Analyst's Office for the office of Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, puts another spin on what's emerged as the central issue in this year's fight over a $19 billion deficit. It also adds new color to the prevailing portrait of poverty for many Californians — it's not fundamentally an urban problem.
Instead, experts say, rural residents would be most affected by the drastic cuts being considered to health and human services programs. The report shows the Bay Area's blue counties are, in many ways, a revenue lifeline for the rural Republican red.
"Is there a disconnect here between political sentiments in rural areas and the demand or desire or need for public expenditures? I think there is," said Al Sokolow, a retired professor at UC Davis. "Leaders in these rural areas, while wanting more from the state, are also less reluctant to give in on the tax front."

According to the snapshot provided by Evans' office which compares per capita income taxes and sales taxes with spending on programs like in-home care for seniors, parole services, welfare, MediCal and others — seven of the top 10 contributors of tax revenue to Sacramento are Bay Area counties — all of which lean heavily Democratic. Marin County is No. 1, measured per capita, and Santa Clara County is fourth.
In contrast, the counties receiving the most cash from the state are those in California's impoverished north, like Del Norte and Yuba counties, and especially in the agrarian Central Valley, including Tulare County — the top recipient of state help — but also Kern and Kings counties. Many have more registered Republicans, or only slightly more Democratic voters than Republicans.
In San Mateo County, for example, Medi-Cal spending in 2007-08 was $257 per resident. In Lake County, the state spent $703. But per capita income tax and sales tax revenue in Lake County was only $879, while in San Mateo it was $4,232.
State-funded home care spending in Imperial County was $68 per capita but only $26 in Contra Costa County.
In some ways, that divide is intuitive, budget experts and economists say.
California's coastal counties are home to its biggest cities and most prestigious universities. They also are magnets for wealthy residents and industries that define California nationally: entertainment, technology and tourism.
But in inland counties, which are sprawling and sparsely populated, there are fewer opportunities for high-paying work. Agriculture is a key industry, but it relies heavily on seasonal and migrant workers. Additionally, Central Valley counties like Stockton and Merced — which hosted an influx of middle-class residents amid the housing boom — have been devastated by the housing bust.
While budget cuts would affect all Californians, experts say the fallout is compounded in rural districts.

Rural residentsalready struggle with a shortage of doctors who accept MediCal clients. Cuts to in-home care for seniors might force many into nursing homes in bigger cities. And sheriff's departments, patrolling massive counties, already lack staffing to personally handle every call.
But because some rural counties tend to lean libertarian, or because many of those affected can't afford the time or money to engage in the political process, that reality isn't always apparent.
"People don't understand how much they get for the money they pay. It starts with making communities more aware," said Connie Stewart, a former mayor of Arcata and the executive director of Humboldt State's California Center for Rural Policy.
To be sure, other measurements may show a less extreme imbalance. Examining the figures on a per-capita basis doesn't take into account the sheer volume of social services clients in places like Los Angeles County. It also doesn't account for uneven income distribution — poorer pockets like Oakland and parts of Los Angeles nestled into richer communities.
And, moreover, because the breakdown uses tax revenue totals from 2006 and spending from the 2007-08 fiscal year, the numbers may also have shifted.
But anti-tax advocates say that's not the point. Even if lawmakers from wealthy districts — and some of their constituents — support tax increases, that doesn't mean they're the right medicine.
"If you want to raise taxes to create jobs," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, "that strikes us as flawed logic, to say the least."
But for Evans, whose office commissioned the data, it was a matter of reframing the budget debate to show what anti-tax rhetoric might really mean. Instead of asking how California spends its money, why not ask "where," she said.
"It tells an important story," she said, "and it really does start to change your outlook."

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My feeling on this? Ain't no surprise here, it fits in with the pattern across the country. Counties and states which are so-called blue states are capable of paying their own way with minimal social dysfunction. The heartland can't do the first and have massive amounts of the latter. But then the United States is basically a First World country sharing borders with evolving former Third World dictatorships, so......

Oh, and Steve_Potocin? Aw Hell Yeah Right-Wing freeloading whiners.

Will be X-posted to my own LJ and to The_Recession

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rasilio.livejournal.com

I suppose this could appear to mean something if you don't understand the nature of our progressive tax system.

See contrary to popular belief the rich pay nearly all taxes in this country. Yes, everyone argues they don't pay their fair share but that is simply not true as this (http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/collections.cfm?collect=13) report from the CBO indicates the rich not only pay a higher proportion of all taxes paid (see the second <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/tax_liability_shares.pdf>chart</a> in the above link) they also pay a higher percentage of their income. Looking at that chart you can see that the top 2 quintiles of wage earners account for over 80% of all tax revenues with the middle quintile accounting for another 9%. So, if you have an area which disproportionally represents both the top and bottom quintiles (as large cities do) it will pay more in taxes than areas over represented by the 2nd and 3rd quintile (as most rural areas are), However this has very little to do with how 'Democratic' or 'Republican' a region is all that matters is the income demographics of that region and it is purely a side effect of the progressive nature of the tax system. If you were to change the tax system such that the percentage of taxes paid matched exactly the percentage of income earned that disparity between regions would mostly or totally disappear. I will give you however that there is a small correlation in that the super rich and the super poor trend democrat (slightly in the first case, overwhelmingly in the second) with the Republicans taking the majority of the middle income earners. That said it is not 'right wing freeloaders' it is bottom 4 quintile freeloaders and any area which contains a disproportionate number of those in the top quintile will contribute most of the taxes.

From:

chessdev.livejournal.com

I think you're confusing "income" and "taxable income". Makes a big difference.

and this has been analyzed to death -- so long as you have tax shelters, then to argue the rich pay more *proportionately* is just not true.

While I agree that income demographics are what are important - to claim such demographics are "purely a side effect... of the tax system" is just a bit too fantastic a claim. You seriously going to argue TAXES are solely the reason and not education, artifacts of poverty and jim crow, the actual INDUSTRY in the region, etc....?

From:

underlankers.livejournal.com

While I agree that income demographics are what are important - to claim such demographics are "purely a side effect... of the tax system" is just a bit too fantastic a claim. You seriously going to argue TAXES are solely the reason and not education, artifacts of poverty and jim crow, the actual INDUSTRY in the region, etc....?

This. Jim Crow left much of the Red States in the position of being evolving democracies hooked up to much more prosperous established democracies. Were the Red States to be left to their own devices you'd have states as healthy and functional as Saudi Arabia. In fact both Iran and Israel would come across looking better off than the Red States in that scenario.

From:

rasilio.livejournal.com

???

I did not say what you seem to think I said.

First I did not conflate income with taxable income, the CBO numbers clearly indicate that all income is included as are all taxes even indirect ones (for example corporate income taxes are not paid by the corporation but rather passed on to some combination of customers, workers, and investors, the CBO numbers factor in the portion of said taxes that each group ends up paying) If you disagree with this please go read the link and review the numbers yourself.

Second Tax Shelters are irrelevant to this as it is not income until it is realized, so putting money into an offshore bank or investing in municipal bonds doesn't matter because you don't have the money, your wealth has increased but your income does not.

Third please indicate where I said that demographics are purely a side effect of the tax system? My claim was that the disparity of tax revenues generated by given geographical regions was a side effect of the Progressive Tax code and the particular demographics of those areas and not any statement on the morals, ethics, beliefs, work habits, etc. of the people living in those areas.

That said your response to your mistaken opinion of what I said is still wrong.

Yes, obviously the tax system has little bearing on where a person places in the economic quintiles or their ability to move between them, that said neither does most of the effects you listed.

Education is obviously a barrier but whether you become educated or not is purely a personal choice because the education is there, even in horrible school districts. What matter is your choice to avail yourself of it or not. So education (or lack thereof) is really just a subset of personal choice.

Artifacts of poverty? What are these, kind of hard to say how being poor is responsible for your being poor. Further given that there is an 80% turnover in the individuals making up the bottom quintile every 5 years seems to indicate that such artifacts are not much if any barrier.

Jim Crow, yeah that may be a problem in the over 50 crowd, but the fact is that by this point no one under that age remembers living under them and really no one under 55 ever really had to deal with them very much as they were only 10 when the civil rights law of 64 was passed so we are essentially at the point where this cannot be used as an excuse any longer because the portion of the population that experienced it is primarily retired.

Finally yes, Industry in a region is in fact a huge factor in the particular demographics of that region but I was not claiming it wasn't I was claiming that the extra wealth generated by having more and higher paying industries would not skew the tax contributions of that region if the tax system was not progressive.

From:

chessdev.livejournal.com

Ok, several serious issues here dude:

First, "Average Taxes" instead of Median?? Do we *really* have to explain the problems with this metric?

Second, your definition of "it's not income until it's realized" is bullshit -- from both a practical and a definitional standpoint. It is INCOME because it is still an asset than can be tapped, used as collateral, etc...

Taxes are only concerned with TAXABLE income, so pretending that the money the rich put away for later use "doesnt count" is disingenuous and revisionist.

Finally, believing the effects of Jim Crow ended with the ending of those laws --- no offense dude, but that is ignorance of the highest level both historically and economically.

and you give no reasoning for why we should believe what you do about progressive taxes -- again, sounds like ideology rather than reality.

SO without trying to be rude, Chessdev gives this a thumbs down across the board...but I'm open to you pointing out where I may be mistaken??

From:

badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com

ounties and states which are so-called blue states are capable of paying their own way with minimal social dysfunction. The heartland can't do the first and have massive amounts of the latter.

Two issues:

1) The "blue states" generally have larger urban centers, which is why they lean left. Even in red states, the cities go Democratic.

2) It's not that the the red states cannot, but it's that there's no reason for them to do so. The system is currently situated as such where everyone pays into a central pool and then it's distributed. That's always going to result in a disparity, because that's the point. If we ditched the centralized system tomorrow, the red states would do fine.