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“Poverty is a policy choice,” Larry Marx, CEO of the Children’s Agenda, was quoted in a recent Beacon article calling for state action on child poverty. “When it comes to children, there is fierce urgency to act now.”
According to Act Rochester, as of 2022, Monroe County was home to over 68% of the total population below the federal poverty line in our 8-county region, amounting to over 9,800 individuals. The City of Rochester had the highest count of residents living in poverty, totaling more than 56,000 individuals in 2022. (The US Census Bureau defines the poverty threshold for a family of four – two adults, two children – as $29,678. Could you support a family on that in our area? Not likely – meaning the real level of poverty is much higher. )
These numbers are shameful. We can well afford to fund a more equitable society. New York State has the third wealthiest economy in the U.S. If we were a country, we’d be the 10th richest in the entire world. New York City alone has more millionaires than any other city, roughly 1 in 24 residents. Yet we are the country’s most economically unequal state, where billionaires take private helicopters to their Hamptons homes while families right here in Rochester can’t afford rent. Too many of our residents struggle – of all the cities of similar size in the U.S., Rochester has the fourth highest rate of child poverty.
As Warren Buffet told his shareholders last May, if big corporations paid their fair share of federal taxes, no one else would have to pay a dime. “We don’t mind paying taxes at Berkshire,” he said, “and we are paying a 21% federal rate. Last year, we sent in over $5 billion to the US federal government. And if 800 other companies had done the same thing, no other person in the United States would have had to pay a dime of federal taxes, whether income taxes, no Social Security taxes, no estate taxes, no… . It’s open down the line.”
Recent polls show that 80% of New York voters support taxing wealthy corporations and increasing taxes on the wealthiest households, including households that make more than $400,000 a year. Another recent poll showed that 74% of New Yorkers, regardless of their political affiliation, believe lawmakers should make the ultra-rich and highly profitable corporations pay their fair share to fund public programs and services.
The upcoming state budget presents an opportunity to offset massive cuts to healthcare, education, and the safety net threatened by actions at the federal level; address long-standing inequities in our tax code; raise more public funds to meet our state’s current fiscal obligations; and address critical unmet needs of our community. As a member of Elders & Allies to Free the People – Rochester, I ask others to contact their state legislators and Governor Hochul to pass the Invest in Our New York suite of legislation: 5 bills that will ensure the ultra-rich and highly profitable corporations pay their fair share, and generate $40 billion in new annual public funds that can be invested back into our communities and save the programs Rochesterians rely on.
New York can well afford to enact such measures to better meet local needs for education, housing, child care, climate justice and more.
Steven Jarose
Pittsford
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
“Last year, we sent in over $5 billion to the US federal government. And if 800 other companies had done the same thing, no other person in the United States would have had to pay a dime of federal taxes.” Warren Buffett is really smart, but this was really dumb. He should know there aren’t close to 800 companies who can pay that. In fact, there are only 80 U.S. companies with at least $5 billion in profits. Not to mention that the U.S. government spent $6.75 trillion last year, not $4 trillion.
Poverty is not primarily a political choice. It is mostly a reflection of a lack of skills/ability, opportunity, and effort. There can be a political dimension to lack of opportunity, but there is also a personal responsibility component to each of these aspects. Wealth redistribution has never been successful in eliminating poverty, both because you eventually run out of other people’s money and because dollars alone won’t eliminate poverty if poverty-inducing behavior is maintained.
I’m a strong supporter of providing everyone the means of building skills so they can be productive members of society (and a safety net for those truly unable), particularly through a variety of tax-supported schools rather than a single, failing government monopoly. If your “fierce urgency to act now” focuses on providing greater educational opportunity, I’m with you. But this letter is nothing more than envy cloaked in pieties.
Progressive taxes built the middle class, not equal taxes per person. People paid the same RATE of taxes until reaching extreme wealth. FDR then obtained a 90% tax on the excessive wealth, much higher than today. He answered their outrage with one of his own. FDR said they still had plenty of wealth for their mansions and their servants, yet they complain while our boys defend them against Hitler, with their lives, for $800 a year or less. They call me a traitor to my class, and I welcome their hatred. I’m with FDR on this.
The concept of taxation is that citizens get something they couldn’t afford to provide on their own by everyone paying into a pooled resource—schools, public safety, roads, airports, clean water, some healthcare, the military, etc. Most rational citizens don’t mind paying taxes as long as two conditions are met: they are fair, and they perceive a benefit.
Politicians and bureaucrats do not clearly communicate benefits, perhaps believing they are self-evident. Fairness is another place where those who make the laws are too heavily influenced by lobbyists, donors, and inexperienced, but passionate staff members. Although it’s the topic for another discussion, public financing of campaigns and term limits would go a long way toward ensuring a more equitable tax system.
The cruel irony is that millionaires, billionaires, and corporations benefit the most from the things that taxation provides. Yet, they also have the resources to put their meaty paws on the scales of fairness in taxation. If I recall correctly, during the Eisenhower administration, the tax rate for the wealthiest was 90%.
There are always opportunities for waste, corruption, and fraud in any human endeavor. Often, some administrator decides that the cost of correcting these flaws would be greater than accepting the loss. The threshold for accepting loss is subjective.
I’d like to know how much subjectivity and bias are involved when decision makers fail to adequately fund anti-poverty initiatives. You know, DEI.
Money alone isn’t the answer. Take the Rochester City School District, we are spending nearly a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money to continue a decades-long slide toward complete failure. Many factors play into why families and their children live in poverty. I’m confident that sociologists, psychologists, social workers, law enforcement agencies, educators, and not-for-profit leaders all think they have an answer—the silo syndrome. The bigger question is, do we as a society want or need to commit to tackle the challenge in a comprehensive and long-term way, or is it just easier to fund the enormous welfare and criminal justice systems and keep the impoverished more or less hidden and unempowered. I would love to hear from anyone with a workable system that will turn our shameful statistics around.
I could not agree more with Steven Jarose’s letter. Let me comment on just one element of the kind of consideration this letter is asking for: Housing justice.
I have been an advocate for housing justice for the past ten years after seeing the struggles of homeless people to find affordable, supportive and safe housing. Currently am reading Jerusalem Demises book, On the Housing Crisis. In short this is a national problem and needs national and state leadership to affirm that housing is a human right. No one in this wealth land should be unsheltered. We have to make the moral decision to support the right to appropriate shelter for all who live here.
We can do this if we have the political will to do so.
Thank you Steve for your good letter.
Peter
I support the values in this article. Poverty is and has been a political choice. An example is the $50 trillion in wealth transferred from 90% of the people to the richest 10% since President Reagan, half or more going to the richest one percent. This is addition and subtraction, not rocket science. The IRS just adds all wealth, taxable or not, from the richest 10% and that from the 90% each year, and adds it all up. This does not include trillions unreported and/or held offshore. This has resulted in almost all that wealth once paying Social Security taxes, from which it is now exempt. This example alone has taken about $3 trillion away from Social Security. In my view, billionaires are a crime against humanity.
People continually complain about how others aren’t paying their “fair share” of income taxes. But they never seem to want to define what constitutes “fair”. What percentage of the total income tax should the top 1% of income earners pay? 10%? 20%? 80%? (The Top 1% actually pay between 35% and 40% of the total, depending on the year and what the capital gains numbers look like).
Everyone seems to think that other people should pay more taxes — but that they themselves are paying quite enough, thank you. Just for reference, this fiscal year, the U.S. Government is budgeted to spend close to $7.2 trillion. Divide that by 341 million Americans and you get $21,100 in expenditure per capita — $84,400 for a family of four. That’s your proportionate share. Are you paying it? If you’re interested, the IRS maintains an account that accepts voluntary citizen donations to help offset the federal deficit. It generally collects a few million dollars each year.
Finally, there aren’t 800 other companies in the USA that approach Berkshire Hathaway’s size and domestic profitability. Not even close. Berkshire’s operations are generally USA centric. But many of the Fortune 500 are multinational companies with operations across the globe. All those other countries they operate in expect them to pay taxes in those nations as well, not just in the USA.