So here come the tax cut arguments from "conservative" Republicans. What are they conserving, exactly? Well, consider what happens as a consequence of tax cuts at the state level. In Pennsylvania, our wonderful new Governor, Tom Corbett, has decided that the current economic mess makes it impossible to levy taxes on "job creators" in order to balance the state budget. So he has decided to cut and cut and cut the state budget. His original proposal included a 50% cut to state colleges and universities, and a 19% cut to public schools. Mercifully the legislature reduced those cuts significantly, albeit at the price of state moneys for social service supports of all sorts.
So what are the results of the cuts? For those who depend on state social services, the result is a further fall in their socio-economic condition. Poor? How about hyper-poor? But the result for education in the state is equally abysmal for the poor. Almost without exception, the state budget cuts have led to crises at the level of the local school districts. Those districts have one of two options: they can cut educational services and opportunities, or they can set about raising property taxes, which fund the schools. In poor districts raising property taxes is a vain effort to raise funds. One reason that the poor districts are poor is because the property values are so low. And of course low property values produce low tax revenue for the local school district. So the poorer the school district, the less likely that raising property taxes is a possible solution to the budget crises. The only option is to cut services.
So we wave goodbye to the services that high need students require in order to have the ghost of a chance to succeed. Everything from counselors to classroom aides are gone gone gone. That may not sound so terrible to the comfortably middle class person who graduated from high school in the 60s or 70s. I graduated from high school in 1970, and have to say that I never had a class with a classroom aide at hand. But that was then, this is now. A single adult in a classroom with 35 or 40 students, a fair number of whom have emotional and/or educational problems simply cannot do much with the students. And then comes the NCLB punishment for those schools that "fail" to have adequate yearly progress. The price? Further cuts in budget.
What a wonderful way simply to sideline the poor!
Governor Corbett's budget cuts affect the more affluent districts very differently. In the first place, such districts are far less dependent on state subsidies precisely because they are affluent. Property values being high, the real estate tax provides a sufficient ground for the educational services that the districts extend to their communities. Affluence helps such school districts in a different way as well. This past tax-setting season here in Pennsylvania saw school board meetings in which citizens asked their school board members to raise taxes so that the children would not be short changed in their schools. Parents in affluent communities can afford such raises without much sweat, and would rather pay the higher tax than have their children lose a counselor or a classroom aide or a language program.
So what is the net effect of the Governor's "disciplined" approach to the budget? The poor get poorer and the rich get . . . what they "deserve." In the not too long run, then, what the no-tax Republicans are in train to produce is a social system that parallels the economic system we now have in which the upper X percent of the population owns almost all of the wealth of the nation. The technical term for such an economic system is "banana republic." Our social system is going in the direction of the banana republic as well.
Maybe that result will stop illegal immigration as well. After all, what's the point of coming up to El Norte when El Norte is identical to Guatemala?
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