Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer | Hacker News Reader

Oklahoma Makes the Poor Poorer

nytimes.com

57 pointslmcnish1431 comments

Sadly it's the same story all around the Western world. European governments also pamper to big business by effectively lowering their tax rates in the name of "global competitiveness", at the same time cutting programs and services that help the poorest make ends meet and give them hope for a better life for their children -- and everywhere, the rhetoric is a variation of "we must cut, we can't afford it anymore, there's no alternative."

In absolute numbers, Western countries are richer than they ever were and their corporations pay more dividends than ever. Tax cuts for these established companies do nothing to help startups and economic innovation. It's the other way around: a welfare state can be a safety net that makes individuals more free to innovate in a free market because the risk of devastating failure is eliminated.

European governments also pamper to big business by effectively lowering their tax rates in the name of "global competitiveness", at the same time cutting programs and services that help the poorest make ends meet

Hopefully, in just a few weeks time, we can redress the balance.

What are you referring to -- the Brexit vote? That won't change anything either way. Or something else?

> What are you referring to -- the Brexit vote? That won't change anything either way.

Quite the opposite really, the UK (and more specifically england) is leading the neoliberal charge in Europe. If anything, brexit would increase its velocity not change its direction.

Germany's actions in Greece are beyond the wildest dreams of the most fervent Anglo neoliberals.

The language of this article is ridiculous. I'm not sure I even disagree with the author, but the article is full of overly emotionally charged words and extremely obvious bias.

Cutting the budget of a social program is not necessarily morally wrong or evil. Especially when the state has a serious deficit and things need to be cut. Budget cuts and tax increases will always be extremely unpopular, but sometimes they may be necessary.

Of course it is -- it's the NY Times. The author(s) didn't even have the guts to put their own names to it.

One example: they criticize the OK Legislature for a modest cut to oil and gas taxes.

OK's extraction tax for oil and gas is 7%. So, this year's budget takes somewhat less than during the boom.

In CA (a blue state), there is no oil or gas extraction tax at all. Zero.

So, OK producers are paying a little lower tax to the state this year, and that's evil. CA producers pay nothing, and the partisan media (and party insiders) totally ignore that.

Has the NYT (or any other mass media entity) ever brought that up? No; it would point out their hypocrisy.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club has protests in downtown San Francisco protesting oil development in the Dakotas while ignoring the lack of taxation, and groundwater poisoning, right here in CA.

The problem in Oklahoma is that the energy industry is doing poorly, thanks to very low oil and gas prices. Energy is one of the main industries in the state, and a plunge in profits has led directly to the state government's $1.3 billion deficit in the current fiscal year. They have no choice but to cut budgets, which include not just the public schools but also the prisons, health, and other departments. It's a terrible situation, but budgets need to be balanced.

If I would fault the legislature for anything, it's that they never take the surpluses during energy boom years and bank them for a rainy day. Energy is cyclical; we're currently in a downturn, and in a couple or five years it'll be booming again, almost guaranteed. In the good times, you have to save some of the seed corn and not eat it.

Governor Bellmon in 1987-1991 instituted higher education budgets, term limits, and other reforms, and tried to persuade the Legislature to save surpluses rather than spend them, to little avail. This is democracy. The people want their pork barrel projects in their towns and counties, and damn the budget. I believe the current governor has also made an effort to take a long term stance on budgets but she does have to deal with the legislature.

Just a personal nitpick, as someone who grew up there and still has family there: the fellow who wrote the NY Times article clearly doesn't know a whole heck of a lot about Oklahoma but merely cherry-picked this one budget item to paint Oklahomans in general as being unsupportive of education. Well, to some extent it's true and the US News rankings put OK at #30 by certain criteria this past year, not great though not the worst either. But I can testify that Oklahomans do take a lot of pride in their schools (even if sometimes it only seems to manifest itself in support for the football teams). When people put down Oklahoma, the image that always comes back to me is the monster tornado that ripped the roof off that school in Moore in 2013, and some of the teachers literally threw themselves on top of their students to protect them with their bodies. Sure, I'd give these folks a raise; I hope they got one after that storm.

I like EITC, but I find the focus on change in the tax system instead of absolutes to be very short sighted. Where are all the articles complaining that EITC needs to be even higher? Because it strikes me as unlikely that every state already has set the EITC at the perfect level, and so only changes are worth commenting on.

Of course it's very hard to say from first principles what the tax system should be, but any attempt to do so is going to be worthwhile. The alternative is the implicit position that every single change to the tax system should make it more progressive, (and not make any single person below a certain income worse off).

At the same time London makes richer the rich.

Of course, in the end, it's the poor Oklahoman's who keep supporting people and policies that make them poor.

Or by not voting at all. Vote people. It matters.

If you could change anything by voting,you would not be allowed to.

Possibly. These people might lie to them about what they'll do in office. Many poor people are unable to vote due to convictions (such as possession of marijuana), jobs that don't give them enough time off, or just a feeling of disenfranchisement.

If the vast majority of people in Oklahoma could and did vote, I'd be more inclined to agree.

Ex-convicts can vote in Oklahoma unless they are still on probation or parole.

Oklahoma allows registered voters to vote early, between 8 AM and 6 PM the Thursday and Friday prior to an election. For state and federal elections you can also vote between 9 AM and 2 PM the Saturday before. This is in addition to the regular poll times of 7 AM to 7 PM, and the ability to get an absentee ballot based on being unable to vote at the available times. So in Oklahoma at least, "I work too much" is not a valid excuse to not vote, although it may be so in states without early voting and without absentee provisions.

And "a feeling of disenfranchisement" is a pretty ignorant reason on its face.

Most Oklahomans support policies that make themselves poorer. The public school system in Oklahoma has long been underfunded, in fact it is so awful that everyone who can half afford it sends their children to private school. With public schools you pay based on the value of your house. In private school you pay for every single child.

Those who can afford only public school are at immediate disadvantage at college or the workplace because of dire undereducation, and it makes itself felt in the bank account.

There is no short-term or medium-term fix in the works. Fixing education takes decades. My suggestion is to pray for another dust bowl.

>Those who can afford only public school are at immediate disadvantage at college or the workplace because of dire undereducation, and it makes itself felt in the bank account.

Is there any evidence that better education causes increased earnings? I've seen a lot of articles arguing that it doesn't. Particularly this recent SSC post: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/19/teachers-much-more-than...

You wish that you did not have to introduce the metric system and metric prefixes in science courses for non-majors, but here at Tumbleweed State you have to. You also can't rely on the kids having basic facility with algebra. Some are stupid, but others are undereducated; we are mopping up after the poor highschool. These are the kids that plump for allied health professions.

Also: we seem to be rolling back the Enlightenment: Enlightenment: "man's emergence from self-incurred immaturity"

Are you talking about all 575 school districts in Oklahoma, or some specific ones that you know about? Do you live there or are you basing all this on a NY Times article or two? As for "pray for another dust bowl", I don't see how that's going to solve anything. Pray for higher oil prices, maybe; that would reverse the budget shortfall and hopefully get the cuts restored.

Is the EITC even constitutional in the case where somebody receives more money back than they pay in taxes? The federal government has the power to lay taxes, and can reduce those taxes to $0, but a negative tax isn't a tax.

I can see it if individual states opted into a dedicated income redistribution tax, where the federal government would pool money from any states opting in and redistribute it back to people using the tax mechanisms they already have in place.

Why would it be unconstitutional for the government to give money to the poor? There have been thousands of bills created at all local, state, and national levels to create these programs. Is your argument that a constitutional amendment is needed for some reason? Government support for the poor is not a new concept, and certainly doesn't originate within the past century. It has been around since before the founding of the United States: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/05/poverty-and...

Not "the government", but specifically the federal government of the United States. The federal government here has a specific list of enumerated rights, and anything not listed is given to the states, which split it between themselves, the local governments, and the people.

Taxing needs to be explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and income taxes even needed their own amendment. It just seems like the EITC isn't actually a tax, and that the best they could do is offer an optional program that individual states could opt-in to.

The U.S. Constitution consists of lots of statements that grant the federal government powers. These statements have logical implications. Logically valid implications of the enumerated powers ought to be constitutional, right? It would be absurd to say the Department of the Air Force is unconstitutional even though there is no explicit mention of the federal government being granted the power to have said department. Should there be 50 different states with their own departments of the Air Force?

The originalist interpretation, so favoured by a certain faction on the political spectrum, would argue that the Taxation Clause concerns itself with laying taxes - indeed, as you say, a negative tax isn't a tax. Consequently, the EITC is constitutional, the constitution does not prohibit it. It doesn't even discuss it.

The Constitution doesn't mention painting your fence white, but it would still be unconstitutional for specifically the federal government to pass a law banning white fences. That power is usually left to the local city.

The state, county, or city could pass an EITC program, of course.

I would think that a "No white fences" law would be unconstitutional no matter what division of government passes it (whether federal, state, or local). Unless there was some pressing public safety need (i.e. "White fences are a breeding ground for the white-fence-virus") I don't think any such law would stand up to a constitutional challenge under the same freedom of expression challenges that protect art from government censorship.

I would think so too, but I hear some really bad stories about trying to get anything developed in San Francisco, and zoning law in general seems much more developed than is stictly necessary to ensure safety.

Replace 'white fences' with 'zoning law', I guess.

What? A) yes, the federal government is allowed to distribute benefits without income testing them. B) You misunderstand how the EITC works -- it's a credit, not a cash gift -- it can't go negative. In fact, its benefits disappear for someone without an income (or with too low an income), which is what differentiates it from a real basic income or "negative income tax".

You misunderstand how the EITC works. EITC is "refundable", which means that you can get more money back from the government than what you paid in tax. It can, so to speak, "go negative".

https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/earned-income-tax-credit-do...

EDIT: Am I wrong? I took a taxation class, that's what I learned.

EDIT: Am I wrong? I took a taxation class, that's what I learned.

Nope, you're not wrong, I am. Sorry! It's definitely the case that in marginal cases it does go negative (it's hard to actually tell but it looks like the correct narrow income bracket AND a spouse and some kids, e.g. "normal" families++). Eyeballing it, it doesn't look like it could go more than a couple thousand $ negative in the most optimal circumstances, but not exactly sure.

I was familiar with the fact that EITC doesn't provide a credit if you don't have an income and narrows to zero with less income (and I've checked it out at both ends of the spectrum in a couple weird years), but not so much with its politics, which are surpluses for low-income-but-not-no-income families.

++ or at least how politicians like to pretend normal families look.

The refundable part of EITC can be viewed as a form of federal welfare. Federal welfare is constitutional as there is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_welfare_clause

Reply on news.ycombinator.com