Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
That's a way to dumb down the city.
... now back to the bit mines.
While it's true that the students don't pay regular taxes like other residents, what about the fact that they bring a huge amount of disposable income and spend it in the city? The money goes to the local businesses, who in turn pay taxes on their revenue. Seems fair enough to me.
Students bring tons of money into an area. This fool is going to drive the students to another city. Heh....I wonder if he talked it over with the Universities before he did it?
...wouldn't just raising the booze tax accomplish the same thing?
They already do shithead Mayor. Students pay:
- property tax (included in the school's tuition and the dorm room rental fees)
- sales tax (by buying local products)
- gas tax or road tolls (when they drive around)
This story reminds me of Baltimore City Council, which keeps trying to tax neighboring counties on the theory that suburban folks work in the city, or visit the Raven stadium, but don't pay taxes. (Except that they do - via state income tax and sales tax and providing income to stadium/restaurant/other inner city workers.) Same stupid first-order level of thinking. These politicians need to dig deeper.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
We are going to tax you because.. "blah blah blah blah". No one believes them because they will then turn around and "waste" money the next time. We fought the British off and then turned around and just did it to ourselves. If they are short of money, maybe they should get some higher education "smart" people from MIT to look at "innovative" ways to cut costs or do things "smarter" and "cheaper". Any corporation worth its salt has this approach and sells it to their employees as well as a corporate standard. Better faster cheaper. Instead we have the politicians (who are not living in a dingy one bedroom trying to get an education, maybe raising a kid or working 3 jobs) who keep the status quo the same year after year and show no innovation toward bettering the lives of the people. They stifle innovation and change just by their very existence.. Another example of government? The blinking yellow lights where you have to drop to 20 miles and hour during school hours. I drive a 30 minute commute and on that road, there are 3-4 areas like this. The problem though.. no kids! In the 3 years I've taken this route, I've yet to see any kids crossing the road at these locations. Yet every day, huge numbers of cars have to slow down, causing traffic congestion, wasting time, because some politician said "protect the kids, blah blah blah, do it for the kids". I'm not impressed.. we always go for bigger organizations instead of smaller ones that can do a better job in a localized area..
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
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.
Something is really wrong when you tax a student while just having given massive tax cuts to the very rich in the last 7 years.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As a CMU student (sort of), this doesn't surprise me, and I invite Luke Ravenstahl to kiss my poor ass. Considering this guy prioritizes money in the most bogo-riffic ways (e.g. spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on fancy trash cans sporting his name) it seems clear he is not and has not been fit to run the city.
Pittsburgh's new economy is fueled by the universities*. Everybody knows this. Taxing the students---those people least able to pay---is akin to cannibalism.
Of course, what will happen is students will just borrow a bit more and stack on a little more debt. So maybe Luke's idea is to get students to hedge their futures on his present financial problems.
* And the Steelers
Lifeblood sucking students who contribute nothing to society and ruthlessly download music and movies must pay their toll just like all the rest of us hard working people with income. We all had spare change during school to throw at the municipal government. Why can't they?
And while we're at it, we need to tax other non-contributing members of society who place a burden on social services. I'm all for a tax on K-12 students, a tax on pre-schoolers, a tax on the disabled, senior citizens tax, and a tax on people who have crimes committed against them.
After all, with all the student financing available, they'll just pay it with loans right? So it's like we're actually taxing their future income!
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
The Mayor of Providence has proposed a similar tax in providence, although it would "only" be $150/student as opposed to $400. The arguments being made in both cities seem to be exactly the same: Students need to pay their "fair share". I'm kind of curious how we don't already pay our fair share, though, given that anyone who lives off campus pays property taxes and we bring millions into the local economy. (And in Providence, we're all the local economy has left)
Now I'm not one to go shouting about the Government and taxes, but student taxes are very clearly a form of regressive taxation. It just doesn't make sense to be trying to take money from a group of people who don't have all that much of it in the first place. But that seems to be the trend of taxation lately, more and more regressive so rich people can keep all of their "hard earned" money.
Yet, we're still not taxing churches...
terrible towels? A 5-10% excise tax on terrible towels would probably bring in millions.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Why not a politician tax, somewhere around 1% of their annual income, for the privilege of being a politician?
If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
The problem is, in Pittsburgh the two major enterprises/employers are colleges and hospital systems. Both non-profit and both tax exempt. They own a tremendous amount of land (tax-free) employ the most people (tax free) and use up a tremendous amount of city services (such as police, ambulance, fire, water, sewage, etc, all tax free). The city has been trying for years to get the universities and hospitals to pay something, ANYTHING to help the city with its budget situation. In other cities where non-profits make up a large percentage of the area, the non-profits usually contribute something in terms of "voluntary payments", such as in Boston. What the mayor is doing, is trying to pressure the universities to come to the negotiating table to help support the city in its time of financial need, using other major cities with major university systems as a model. So far, the universities and hospital systems have refused. (Keep in mind, our major hospital system is UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center). Luke cares little for this tax and doesn't want it to pass. He want to use it to cause a big firestorm (which obviously it has) and force concessions. We'll see if it works. PA State Reps are already proposing laws to prevent the City of Pittsburgh from being able to tax students directly.
Sugapablo
In a time such as ours. Where so many people are loosing their jobs. And most of the people who lose their jobs have no education. Why then would your want to tax people trying to get an education when you know how much more tax a person with an education is going to pay than a person without an eduction.
In Norway for instance education is free. Yes FREE. We have excellent universities. For instance, Oslo University ranks at 101 at topuniversities.com. Not only though is it free to study, but the government pays you around 15000 NOK for every semester you complete (for full time students) (2 semesters a year). And not only that, but they give your a further 30000 NOK in loans (per semester) that are interest free until 1 year after you complete your studies.
The way the US treats it's people still puzzles me. Surely putting a strain on people who already have little money to live for just sounds like greed to me.
Say NO to unpaid Internships!
(don't tell me how cutting taxes stimulates the economy and raises money and the laffer curve and supply side and fleeing jobs and all that... CA's economy has been "stimulated" in this manner for a generation, and it's still fucked.)
The problems that California have is the result of spending more that it earns. It's as simple as that. The economy was booming and tax revenues went through the roof because of it. Their tax policy, as far as income was concerned, wasn't too bad. Unfortunately, on April 15th in past years, the California legislature sees that huge pile of cash come in and they spent it thinking that California's boom will last forever. The Legislature, especially the liberal Democrats, have no clue about saving for the future or any clue that times do change and there are downturns in an economy.
Every time someone had some sort of project and regardless of its merits, they put money into it. Look now, when they want to cut spending, regardless of where, some special interest protests saying that they are important and the legislature needs to cut somewhere else.
If they had a responsible fiscal plan instead of spending every penny that came in they wouldn't be in this situation.
Laffer said that reducing taxes stimulates the economy as long as government reduces spending to match inflows. The California legislature was too stupid to realize that and they were too beholden to the special interests that always have their hands out for government money.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
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?
This country is sounding more and more like every period history class. The rich increasingly refuse to pay any taxes. In response, the government, powerless against said rich people, turn on the poor even more.
Yes, because the many socialist democracies of Europe are well known for taxing students.
Oh, wait, I got that backwards, they're well known for paying students while they're in school and charging them nothing for tuition.