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Pittsburgh To Tax Students
societyofrobots writes "Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl has proposed taxing college and professional students for the privilege of receiving an education in the city. The proposed tax will charge students in the city at a rate of 1% of their yearly tuition — which, at Carnegie Mellon, would mean roughly a $400 tax (PDF) on most students. As the tax proposal hit local media outlets this week, the mayor repeatedly emphasized the burden that college students have placed on city services, and the need for students to pay their 'fair share.'"
After thinking about it, I bet the Mayor doesn't care about the truth. He simply wants more money, and if he can sell the average, not-so-bright Pittsburgh voter on the idea that students are "getting a free ride", then he can start vacuuming wallets and making himself... er, his budget wealthier.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
1. Get $2 bills and dollar coins and use them for all their purchases for two weeks.
2. Then spend a week or two not spending a dime - ideally until they've saved the $400 tax.
3. Publicize it. Write articles in the student paper and letters to the editor.
4. Sit back and watch the results. Lather, rinse and repeat.
5. Profit?
Seriously, students need to show their economic impact on the local community. Using money not normally used will help make that point.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Easy. Just pander to the people who a) don't drink, or b) pretend that they don't. "Sin taxes" are becoming increasingly popular among the holier-than-thou voting crowd who look at it as a way to get everyone else to pay a tax increase while they get off free because "it's bad for you! You deserve it!"
"First they came for the smokers, and I said nothing because I was not a smoker. Then they came for the McNuggets and suddenly I cared because ZOMG MY FREEDOM!"
The city is just acting stupidly by threatening to tax the students and tuition fees. It should simply reduce police and fire services to the univ neighbourhoods and ask the univs to hire private security for protection and refuse to maintain things like synchronized traffic lights and traffic by pass and other such things.
They do. Both CMU and Pitt have private police forces. And you don't think that things like Pitt games bring venue to the city? The city seems to think so.
Also it should charge market rates for their sewer connections, water supplies and use of public spaces for utilities. The univs will come back begging to give up their tax exempt status and agree to pay real estate taxes like all other residents and businesses are paying. In fact if their tax exempt status is revoked, almost all the businesses and private property owners will see a big reduction in their tax bills.
I would hope you think we should also charge churches real estate taxes. I feel pretty confident all the churches take up more real estate than the universities. I wonder what the public reaction to that would be?
Blame the greedy CMU that charges 48000$ a year from their students,
Greedy? CMU has a *tiny* endowment compared to their status (only 10% of their operating budget). None of student tuition goes to the endowment, its all used to operate the university. And, of course, many students seem very happy to pay it. I wish that universities didn't have to charge that much, but I think it's unfair to call CMU greedy.
refuses to bear its fair share of the cost of providing civic services passing the burden on the shrinking tax base.
It's not the shrinking tax base that's to blame. Its the city mismanagement of it's pension fund. "That need stems from decades of questionable management of the city's pension fund, which holds around one-third of the $899 million it should to cover future obligations."
In other news, the mayor left for the weekend, and the average IQ of the city increased.
You know how it is - every vilage has its' idiot, and Pittsburgh wants to be able to say "We're #1" about something.
New slogan: Pittsburgh - it really IS the pits!
Or maybe they heard that the economy is changing, with more part-time, menial, mindless jobs, and they want to make sure their future workforce isn't over-qualified.
Or they want to make sure the supply of dumb voters increases.
Or they heard about "higher" education, and "don't want none of that people getting high on shit on school grounds - if they got money for weed, tax 'em".
Or the real explanation - they're broke, and figure that they can't tax the people who live there, because that means getting tossed out at the next election - so why not tax students who don't live there, can't vote, and are locked into a 4-year program?
but if you have a hospital that has that many people coming to it, then it has highly paid employees and families traveling to your city for medical care and professionals for conferences. If you're not making money with tens of thousands of people coming per day from outside your city to spend money there, then you're doing something wrong.
by this line of thinking why not raise taxes on poor people to get them to move out. Then most of the city will be university... or shops and businesses that support university, problem solved with the pesky citizens.
Living in Michigan, I see this difference very clearly between Ann Arbor and East Lansing. In Ann Arbor, the University and Hospital is in the very core of the city. Things going on at UofM are going on in Ann Arbor..students go everywhere in the city for shopping and work, it's well mixed and well connected. In East Lansing the situation is very different, being a land grant school MSU was put on a big empty square miles "in the country" specifically to develop the idea it was "separate" and the city of East Lansing is a little sliver between expensive Lansing suburbs...MSU is probably bigger than the city in raw area from the start. Now they have 30K students living in the middle of nowhere and your closest malls, restaurants are miles away and all the travel goes thru one little "suburb". It's a very "us versus them" attitude I don't see when I talk to people that live/work in Ann Arbor.