A Tax You Can (Almost) Like
The Steel City may soon come to be known as the Steal City.
In the midst of serious fiscal difficulties, 29-year-old Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, who is well on his way to becoming the worst “boy mayor” since Cleveland’s Dennis Kucinich in the 1970s, has proposed a 1% tax on tuitions charged at institutions of higher learning within his city. He apparently has the support of a majority of the City Council. By the time you read this, the tuition tax could already be a reality.
Even though it’s an obvious example of intergenerational theft, and even though I would never ultimately support it, in some ways I almost like the idea.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that any government entity can tax its way to prosperity, least of all a city that has lost about 25,000 people or over 7% of its population since 2000, and almost 50% since 1960. Pittsburgh’s serious problems, which include persistent crime, massive tracts of vacant or abandoned land, and flirtations with municipal bankruptcy, aren’t going to be solved by trying to extract more dollars from people who can have the final say by moving with their feet, as so many others have before.
The mayor’s intended use for the money is, as the Associated Press describes it, “to help pay for pensions of retired city employees.” This is a tax that if used as advertised (I know, that’s a stretch) literally takes money from the mostly young and passes it directly to the old with no kind of meaningful benefit provided in return — hence my “Steal City” nickname.
Whether the money would even solve the problem appears far less than certain. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the pension fund involved “holds just 31 percent of what it needs to meet its obligations.” The $16.2 million the tax might raise is well short of “the $189 million the pension fund will need in the next two years to save it from a state takeover.”
The mayor’s discussions with the city’s public and private universities have been more like a mob shakedown than an attempt to fairly determine what may be legitimate and heretofore unrecognized extra costs the schools may be imposing on the community. Of course, those costs, if ever identified, have nothing to do with whether retired police and firemen continue to get their monthly pension checks. The mayor has demanded that the schools cough up $5 million a year voluntarily to avoid having the tax imposed. (In light of the information in the previous paragraph, assuming that nothing is done about costs, how is $5 million even in the neighborhood of being enough?) One university president bluntly stated that she “does not negotiate with an ax hanging over” her head.
The mayor’s tactics, as well as the tax’s targets, inadvertently reveal the levy’s hidden beauty.
Classic case of, ”I was a liberal until I got mugged.” Personally, I wouldn’t be disturbed one bit if an even higher tax was imposed. And, I think it would be a great idea to impose a ”tenure tax” on professors, a special levy on research grants, a special tax on university investment income to pay for ”social projects” in the community, tuition surcharges to pay for increased diversity, and any other taxes anyone can think of on students & faculty – in other words, take their lefty ideology & shove it down their throats until they choke on it.
Trust me, it will definitely be an educational experience.
I absolutely love the idea of introducing academia to the concept of irony. Were it not for the fact that I oppose tax and spend politics I would support the idea of taxing these liberal mush heads. Nothing like beating them with their own stick. Great article.
Delicious irony: Liberal educators (but I repeat myself) reaping what they have sown.
They are as the male praying mantis — whose ardor blinds him to the fact that his head is about to be chewed off by the object of his affection.
They say that a Conservative is a Liberal who’s been mugged. Seems to apply here.
“What’s more, they’re coming up with constructive, cost-saving ideas of their own.”
I imagine there are countless ways to save money on college campuses—and about any other government run entity. These student, however, are in the rare position to do really anything about it. Few taxpayers are that intimately acquainted with an institution on an almost daily basis. Pittsburgh’s troubles seen ultimately unsolvable. It seems comparable to an individual who is only now starting to behave like a mature adult, but is still confronted with debts that can never be paid back. It’s just too late in the day. The city’s only real hope is probably to declare bankruptcy and begin all over. Of course, that’s the state of affairs for most areas of the United States where the voting majority elected statist Democrat and “moderate” Republican politicians. The world doesn’t them a thing. It’s their problem and nobody else’s. They also had better not think that they should petition Obama and have him steal the money of the red staters.
Make it 100%. Drive the little snots out of the halls of ivy into mowing the public parks.
Prevent a fourth generation of know-nothings from accelerating the aleady unstoppable decline to give more of us time to get out.
Truly, it’s a great, even magnificent tax — it will keep the great (and lesser) unwashed out of the universities and later on, as there will be less specialists and thus less competition, the professionals with their monopolies on their specialty can easily crank up their rates to recuperate the cost of the tax. The actual payers of the tax will be their clients/patients, not the academics themselves!
Music to listen to in order to celebrate this great idea of tax with: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqaFkC0EMmQ
I’m enjoying the spectacle of the city demanding payment from the college to give to the pensioners; when liberal special pleaders fight one another for scraps, who will be the last one left standing?
Lol this is great…
I most of all like terry’s “a special levy on research grants”… with 10 of 100 of billions being funneled into global warming junk science this tax would save us millions maybe even billions over a decade.
This sounds to me like part of the push towards more sales taxes. Governments are learning that income and capital gains taxes are difficult to calculate and collect and fluctuate too much and it’s a lot easier just to slap a tax on sales or revenues. Government needs – or thinks it needs – revenue and will go get it wherever it can.
Except a lot of research grants come from private companies outsourcing R&D, especially at the testing phase of production. They find a professor willing to take on the project and write a check for a few million dollars. The professor, in turn, hires a few graduate students to collect the data, and places a portion of the money into a pool for paying test subjects (mostly undergraduate students looking to make a fast $10-$300, with the higher end experiments involving medical procedures like vaccine testing).
I could agree with you on government grants, but private grants are needed to create jobs and produce new technology. Undergrads may put their education on credit, but graduate students usually pay for school by working for their professors as teaching or research assistants. Remember that Carnegie Mellon is a major hard science research school; it’s no Michigan, MIT or Cal Tech, but it’s up there. Be aware that PhD candidates in engineering and the hard sciences generally aren’t trying to live off the dole and postpone honest work; they are doing honest work for meager pay (at most about $30,000/year plus tuition and health care), biding their time until they graduate and land a six figure job, either as a professor or in private industry.
Taxing tuition? HAve they no shame?
There is plenty of waste in colleges-so much its hard to believe:
1. Tenured professors that rarely teach;
2. professors alloted paid time to publish useless anthologies of works by others;
3. Academic conderences–totally useless-involving hundreds of paid professors;
4. Faculty lounges with subsidized food and drinks;
5. Subsidized faculty housing;
6. Subsidized publishing for useless tomes on useless niche areas;
7. Useless academic publications and journals in the huanities area (I am a history majoe-no anti humanities bias);
All of those could be cut wihtout harming the misison of the university: and I never even got to useless departments such as “critical studies,” and “women’s” studies. (I would cut “men’s studies” too if there was one);
The there is the City itself trying to impose these taxes:
1. early–way early retirements at less than age 65;
2. reckless use of overtime;
3. Unwarranted awards of disability benefits–even desk paper pushers get them;
4. Too many people with city vehicles;
5. Too many “deputy assistant__” positions doing what the person who has the assistant is supposed to be doing;
6. Too much travel–like our mayor in LA really needed to go to Copenhagen; (with a sizeable entourage of course); he is as useless there as here.
7. too many city employees with cellphones paid by the city that are used as 24/7 personal phones.
8. excessive pension rights–like we have here in california–where employees pump up their last year of salary with overtime to inflate their pension; pensions that are way too generous–90% of last year’s salary; and no cuts when they go and get another job;
The professors and city leaches will all say these are “drops in the bucket,” which of course, is why they are in the red, and clueless about how to get out–except by taxing everyone else.
Students! Rise up and protest! These parasites hope you’ll just take it. Don’t!
pelaut:
Make it 100%. Drive the little snots out of the halls of ivy into mowing the public parks.
Prevent a fourth generation of know-nothings from accelerating the aleady unstoppable decline to give more of us time to get out.
Pelaut: how many people do we need mowing the public parks? What about computer scientists? Doctors? Researchers? Historians? Why do you want the next generation to be uneducated? How will that help America?
Also, why would you care since you obviously are not in college and probably didn’t attend?
Hey, I graduated from college and have one college grad daughter and one at a big public university now. There is plenty of waste that could easily be cut from universitiy budgets. My suggestion would be to cut all or most of the humanities and special “studies” departments. I’ve seen what they teach in these classes and college history courses, and it is mostly liberal brainwashing.
I believe that kids do NOT need the “liberal brainswashing” that is pushed upon them in almost every class. Maybe if students get out in the “real world” of work, which the lefty professors know nothing about, we would have less stupid election results.
Liberals mugging liberals!
Lets just stand back and enjoy!
I feel bad for them in a way, but you know, it’s the ‘youts’ in this country that so often support big gov and taxes because they are naive, and because they usually don’t foot much of the bill. So, enjoy, kids! Get used to it.
Do they have to pay this up front, or can it be rolled into a student loan? Because that’s when it really gets fun. They’ll be paying that “1% tax” with interest…for years….long after they graduate.
Elections have consequences, kids.
Tax the *University* for tuition received, not the students for tuition paid. That might at least give the University some motive to abandon the current scam of inflated tuition canceled out for some with financial aid, and just charge a reasonable tuition to everyone.
The mayor knows that retirees vote in far greater numbers than college kids.
Mr. Blumer:
“Now these collegians have discovered that the government is not their presumptive friend and will eventually turn on them if not reined in.”
Hang on a minute. This is one of them there “teachable moments” ain’t it?
“Many of them are currently having their entire cost of attendance, including living expenses, financed by the federal government and would be facing an immediate out-of-pocket cost that someone else isn’t paying for ranging from “$27 at the Community College of Allegheny County to $409 at Carnegie Mellon University.” They are not taking it well.”
This “boy mayor” fella is actually contemplating taxing a government subsidy?
He must be some sort of dirty Communist.
jp:
I feel bad for them in a way, but you know, it’s the ‘youts’ in this country that so often support big gov and taxes because they are naive, and because they usually don’t foot much of the bill.
-Yeah, blame the 18-29 crowd if you want. It was the so-called “Greatest Generation” and the Baby Boomers behind them that have caused these massive financial messes we’re in today. I agree that too many youths were naive enough to be taken by Obama during the last election, but don’t necessarily expect it to happen again. This 24 year old has seen plenty of Obama-voting friends change their tune after 4-6 months of unemployment while watching the Democrats bail out big-businesses left and right. Every generation needs its Carter I guess.
L. von Shtupp is right… the extra 1-400 bucks every year will only exacerbate the indebtedness of the young while wastefully throwing that money into the “great sucking maw” (Mark Steyn) of the government.
I wish the older posters on this board who are taking a vicarious pleasure in watching my generation get hammered for its naivety would instead lend a helping hand in reeducating the young and convincing them not to support statists. Internecine inter-generational warfare only serves to divide political movements and empower the wealthy liberal elite that runs our society nowadays.
No tax is good. It takes from the young and gives to another constituency.
Bkuo is correct, we need to educate our young people about the fact of who is going to pay for all this money wasting and theft. They are. My 13 year old daughter now understands that the government is spending her money, that she has no right to vote because she is not 18 yet and that there will be absolutely nothing to show for all the spending except for a debt with her name on it.
It’s truly shameful.
Nearly all of the Greatest Generation is dead. The youngest of them turned 80 this year. No, this is the Baby Boomer’s fault; too many of them neglected the wisdom of their parents, and now we have to suffer because of it.
#14
“My suggestion would be to cut all or most of the humanities and special “studies” departments. I’ve seen what they teach in these classes…”
Totally agree! I had no political affiliation when I was in college and I somehow ended up being an assistant to the “Director of Women’s Studies” for a couple of years–what a load of BS! All that whining and victim stuff–Geez!!! Made a right-winger outta me!
My introduction to taxes, many years ago, was getting a government scholarship for university – and then having that very same government taxing me on that scholarship.
The Gov’t giveth and the Gov’t taketh away, but I sure wasn’t blessing its name.
“My suggestion would be to cut all or most of the humanities and special “studies” departments. I’ve seen what they teach in these classes…”
Sadly, you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to cut courses, let alone departments. All those tenured professors and administrators have absolutely no interest in ditching even unprofitable programs.
I am in the neighborhood of Pittsburgh, in a broad sense. I remember interviewing there for post graduate education and trying to make a connection with my Ohio background, only to get cold looks with the clear stated message “we are easterners – you are something else”. But damn they had the institutions for this part of the country. Academics, physical science, and medicine still running hot 20 years ago. I hope they still are.
Yet we know in the rust belt that you cannot make an economy without industry. Cities and smaller communities everywhere where maybe the college or hospitals are running, declining population, empty spaces, no chance of landing a Toyota plant…they know it. I drive by the remaining Ford factory and steel mill where I live every day and smile whenever I see and smell the smoke rising and a full parking lot. When they go so will I.
Taxing academics? How low are we to think that this is as a plan. The cynical idea of “lets do something stupid to just show ‘em” is only that. Just plain dumb.
The idea might be that “We have only this revenue source left. People come from all over to learn here. We need to tax that since the steel mills are cold now.”
Yep. Now watch what happens.
Anyway, best holiday wishes to all.
Merry Christmas and Shalom,
Spindok
It is really hard to know who to root for in this squabble.
On one hand the retired municipal employees of Pittsburgh, and every other town, village, city and state in the US are like a ravenous horde of insects who will devour our sustenance and not say thank you. They have taken the excessive pension provisions licentiously granted by the negligent and complicit political class, and fraudulently pumped them up with overtime schemes and other cheats. Steelworkers, autoworkers and airline employees have seen their pensions redone by PBGC. We need a similar mechanism for the municipal pension tsunami before it drowns us. We should not raise taxes so these parasites can sit around and play gin rummy.
On the other hand the universities have grown very fat off their tax exemptions and government subsidies, and they give us little in return save for the mis-education of our children. One of the motives behind the reformation was the opportunity it afforded the political class to steal the endowments of the monasteries. Our universities occupy the same social and economic position as the monasteries did in the early 16th century. Why should their fate be any different.
#22 BKuo:
“I wish the older posters on this board who are taking a vicarious pleasure in watching my generation get hammered for its naivety would instead lend a helping hand in reeducating the young and convincing them not to support statists.”
Oh, but we ARE. This is the best way we know.
You cure Statism by making Statists PAY for their precious State.
Kewl, huh?
And believe me, if it only costs you the price of one or two months’ cell phone bill, it will be a heck of a cheap lesson.
While I do really appreciate the irony, I’m sure that the students will quickly compartmentalize the idea of taxing them, and taxing everybody else. After all, they are virtuous and the rest of the population are just greedheads refusing to share. Probably not going to be a teaching moment. Albeit, it will provide some entertainment.
The concept of taxing tuitions can go beyond traditional colleges. First, those colleges and universities that belong to the government are themselves exempt from taxation. This is akin to the professional courtesy the bars sharks from biting lawyers. That, I suspect, is why they are going directly for the students, because if they tried to tax the schools they would be told to shove it.
However, there are a bunch of private, tuition charging, post-secondary schools in Pittsburg; which are listed as being colleges. Most are one form of trade school or another. There are 107 of them in the list I found, some with multiple campuses.
There are 17 4 year colleges and universities in Pittsburg, of which only 4 are government owned. However, a further 3 are religious colleges [seminaries] and may be exempt.
Then there are the community and technical colleges [and there is some overlap with the above listings].
There are a lot more students than just state college and university students who can be taxed.
If they really want to sock it to the evil schools for cluttering up their fair city with all of that traffic and extra consuming by all of those non-local students; how about a special property tax assessment category for non-governmental, non-religious post-secondary educational institutions on top of the tuition tax? After all, just like California, New York, and New Jersey; private businesses would not ever dream of moving elsewhere just because they were being specially taxed. Then Pittsburg can have an even bigger income stream from schools and be living the Democrat dream. /sarc
Subotai Bahadur
1% becomes 2% becomes 4%……..