Yes on 66 and 67

Well the debate on measures 66 and 67 rages on. Proponents argue that the cuts to schools and other social services would be too great to sustain if the measures don't pass, while opponents say that passage would cost Oregon jobs in an already dire economy. For the sake of full disclosure, I am a teacher, and plan to vote yes on the measures, because the simple fact is that I may not have a job if they don't pass.
What frustrates me most about the dialogue surrounding the measures is that essentially, conservatives, business owners, and Oregon's wealthy citizens consistently threaten to hold voters hostage on the issue. The logic is this: the upper class and business owners provide jobs to Oregonians, and therefore, by taxing them more we would be biting the hand that feeds us, and, taken at face value, this makes sense. We certainly don't want to tax businesses so much that they cannot compete and be profitable, and there is a point at which we would be doing just that.
The problem with this argument is that we are no where near that point. In fact, whereas individual citizens in Oregon pay a 9% tax on income, even if 67 passes, corporations will pay 7.6% on income (after the first $250,000, which is taxed at the current rate of 6.6%). So even if 67 passes, corporations would still pay a lower tax on their income than lower or middle class Oregonians. Moreover, most corporations (90% is a number I've heard thrown around by state economists) would merely pay the minimum tax, which would increase from $10, which I hope we can all agree is absolutely absurd, to $150. And if $140 is going to sink the ship, you're a shitty business person whose time would probably be better spent trying to generate revenue than bitching about taxes.
How about the rich: joint filers who make more than $250,000 a year or single filers who make more than $125,000? Well, if 66 passes their income tax would go from 9% to 11%, and then only for years 2009, 10, and 11; after that it drops back down to 9.9%. The difference? For every $10,000 after the threshold, about $200, or, since Oregon's disinvestment in education, about what it costs for a kid to play on a sports team in high school.
So the idea that these measures are going to somehow put all kinds of corporations out of business, or cause the rich to flee for greener pastures en mass is utterly ridiculous. Not only that, but if you followed their logic through, what conservatives are essentially arguing is that we should decrease taxes on business and the rich, and then let the lower and middle classes pay as much of the tax burden as humanly possible. Does that sound familiar? It should. Its called trickle-down economics and IT DOESN'T WORK!!!
Quick economics lesson: Trickle-down economics is also called supply side economics, in which the idea is to make costs as low for suppliers aka corporations as possible, allowing them to hire more workers and produce more of whatever they're making. The problem is that in order for any product to be sold, there must be a buyer, in other words, there must be demand. Demand is defined as the want to posses a good or service AND the ability to buy it. In short, markets don't work without demand for goods and services, so to simply focus on supply is to see only half of the picture.
The other half? What happens to the economy when thousands of teachers, policemen, firemen, and state workers are put out of work, and those that remain in their positions see their salaries slashed by shortened school years and added furlough days? Short answer: less demand. End result: a less vibrant economy. The fact that everyone seems to be forgetting is that the same state employees that would be effected if 66 and 67 don't pass, are also consumers that need housing, groceries, clothes, transportation, etc.
The big picture here is that this is part of what is wrong with not only Oregon's economy, but the U.S. economy as well. We bail out banks that are "too big to fail." We bail out auto companies that are getting blown out of the water by foreign competition. We privatize here and deregulate there, always making sure to help out the big guys in the hope that it will somehow end up trickling down to the middle and lower classes, and the plain fact is that it doesn't. Everything we do is an attempt to prop up the supply side of our economy, and our answer for demand: credit cards with extraordinarily high interest rates and bad mortgages, that only serve as platforms for the rich to once again fleece the shit out of the little guys. And Obama and the Democrats are in on it just as much as the Republicans, along with the corporate media and the television--closer friends to most Americans than their neighbors.
The worst part is that so many Americans and Oregonians buy the bullshit, and the one tool that we have to combat this modern day Goliath, education, is being attacked and belittled as I write. Give David a fighting chance: vote yes on 66 and 67.