Teachers need more money but coming out of the box as a tax and spend democrat is pretty dumb TBH.
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You got that right. The states (blue) that focus on education over sports will put it into education, in states (red) that focus on sports, it will go there and the educational split we see between the blue and red states will widen further. It is probably a smart political move to come out with this idea but I don’t see it happening.
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I can’t speak to the politics of this but you couldn’t do a better thing for the country and for the rural districts in particular than actually raising teacher pay there. In this country, affluent districts do world-class education but below that the teaching is mediocre. We literally don’t value the profession or the educated citizens it produces. If you pay more, you get better employees. That’s not in dispute. Excellent proposal from an outcome for society standpoint.
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My wife was a teacher. We value the profession mightily. We sent all of our kids to great public schools, which our high state and local taxes paid for. While I agree that rural teachers in some states are vastly underpaid, their recourse, I believe, ought to be in their own state’s political processes. I’m fed up with my federal taxes subsidizing states that chose to not raise the money among their own citizens. There’s not a single one of those states that couldn’t raise more from their wealthier residents if they wanted to. Rather, they play the rest of us for chumps.
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I believe you are correct that, if she wins the nomination (or perhaps even before, if she is closing it out), she chooses Brown as her running mate. I suspect several candidates have had that conversation with him already, which is big reason why he chose to sit out the primary.
Its still far too early for me to commit to anyone, but from a campaign perspective, I think Harris is a pretty good spot for the early (and most important) part of the primary. SC then NV then a Super Tuesday with CA and a whole lot of southern states…she should be the front runner after that.
Iowa is going to clean out a lot of people, I believe. There are too many people that NEED to do strongly there. Sanders, Biden, and Klobuchar, in particular all need to have 1st or 2nd place (or very strong 3rd place) placings. Beto, Booker, Buttigeig, Harris, Warren will need to competitive, too. A weak showing there for Warren for example, followed by a loss in NH is the end of her campaign. Biden doing poorly will result in massive bleeding of his support. Booker and Biden both have a problem that other candidates are better positioned in the early races than they are. By the time states more favorable to their messages start showing up, they could be scrapping along at the bottom. Folks like Castro and Buttigeig either do well early or die because of lack of funding.
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Bingo!
The teacher strikes, particularly in very red states, is a foretelling of a big change happening on the ground. In a bigger picture, its largely a repudiation of the groundswell in the late 70s/early 80s to lock in low taxes that foretold the Reagan Revolution.
As a party, we would be remiss to ignore it.
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I don’t know the plan details, so it’s not clear whether most of the tax burden is on the wealthy, no matter where they are.
However, what is clear (to me) is that most red states have lousy education - and improved education will eventually make them a little less red. Who knows, better educated young people might be more likely to leave for nicer places.
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I do love her and teachers are underpaid. But how is this a matter for the federal government?
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Educated populus, minimum standards for education.
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Those are decent justifications for federal action. I have a hard time though imagining this getting implemented without going through the courts, however.
I can think of some states that would squawk. Texas, most likely, would be one.
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Not income taxes but estate taxes is the funding source.
From https://kamalaharris.org/teachers/
"We estimate this plan’s cost to the federal government will be in the range of $315 billion over ten years. It will be paid for by strengthening the estate tax and cracking down on loopholes that let the very wealthiest, with estates worth multiple millions or billions of dollars, avoid paying their fair share.”
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As noted before, Texas keeps its taxes (relatively) low by mooching off the federal government. In what direction would Texans squawk if the net subsidies they get from the feds were conditioned on their paying their teachers more? Would they squawk to reject the subsidies or squawk to reject paying their teachers more?
(Also as noted before, Texas is not the worst moocher; not by a long shot.)
Real question: To what extent does that actually happen? I don’t know.
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Perhaps the following addresses your question.
In direct subsidy of teacher pay. I have a general idea of how it works overall.
An estate tax as she is proposing would be collected in all states.
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Uh, she wasn’t in Dallas. She was in Houston — you know, in HARRIS County.
Thanks for the link. I’ve just looked at it. It’s pretty amazing. Not only is the plan loony (yes, just take a look at how she plans for it to “work”), it also only uses the estate tax (of unstated but assumed increase) for 10% of the promised increase in teacher salaries. The other 90% will come from the states. Really? What planet is she on? What does she think the Republicans will do with that? I can see it now: “Democratic candidate Harris not only wants to raise your federal taxes, she wants to force your state to raise its taxes, too.” Gee, I wonder why she didn’t put that little factual tidbit in her speech. We are cruzin for a bruzin if we follow that path.
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Number 1: The estate tax comes primarily from Blue States, and their money will subsidize Red states. Number 2: she has enormously low balled the amount necessary to reach her goal. I have discussed that below.
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I have come to the point of not really worrying about whether the numbers in democrats’ policy proposals “work”. Republicans have spent generations lying not only about the magnitude but the direction of the changes they’re proposing. Even when they’re in office. Passing appropriations and other bills. Maybe in another generation or two the public discourse may be cleaned up enough that we can worry about the details in a nonpartisan fashion. Maybe.
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