Brodsky: Two big changes with Gov. Paterson
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- March
- 12
Westchester Democratic Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said look for two big changes when Lt. Gov. David Paterson fills the seat vacated by Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Speaking on Brian Lehrer’s program on radio station WNYC this morning, Brodsky said Paterson first would change the tone in Albany. Known for his conciliatory manner, Paterson would reverse the confrontational approach that Spitzer, who famously referred to himself as a steamroller, brought to the job, Brodsky said.   Also, Paterson is less likely to rely on Spitzer’s  menu of tuition, fare and fee increases that hit the middle class and poor hardest, looking to a broad-based tax increase instead, Brodksy said. Â
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on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 9:58 am by Len Maniace.
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“Broad based” my foot. Look forward to efforts at “soak the rich” taxes and the veiled rhetoric of class warfare.
Careful, Sara, your partisan slip is showing…
Partisan? Hah! You either know nothing about Paterson’s politics or you’re just flailing away with an ad hominem. Probably both.
“A broad-based tax increase.” And Brodsky unabashedly states this as a positive way to move the state forward. Some things never change. The song is gone, but the malady lingers on.
Just playing devil’s advocate here, Sara R., but isn’t soak the poor and middle class worse?
Oh yeah, New York State is known for soaking the poor with taxes. Let’s get real. The issue is that the pejorative “rich” is increasingly applied by liberal politicians to people who are barely holding on to middle class status in a place with a very high cost of living. Taxes should be fairly assessed without attempting to transfer wealth from one group to another. Socialist wealth-transfer tactics cause entrepreneurs, and small and medium businesses, to flee the state, resulting in unemployment and further shifting the tax burden to the working classes.
Sara, I am one of those poor, middle class people that want only some relief from unfair taxes. The rich are able to receive “wealth welfare” = they pay less than any $40,000 a year secretary in taxes. What is fair about this. I do not believe the wealthy should be unfairly taxed but they have more so should pay more. People lament about welfare, they lament because the wealthy have to pay, they lament because their candidate did not win. Well I am lamenting about me, myself and I. I want to pay what is a fair and equal per centage of my salary not more than Trump or Gates. Why not turn it around, why not have the wealthy pay more what is wrong with that? Explain to me where this hurts anyone? You have more, you pay more.
The notion that, say, somebody earning, say, a $250,000 salary pays less in income taxes than somebody earning $40,000 salary is absolute nonsense. Look up the stats on what income levels pay what percent of tax revenue received, and you’ll find that a small fraction of the top earners pay the vast majority of taxes collected in this country. Oh, and ever hear of the AMT? It isn’t hitting the person making $40,000 a year. It is, however, hitting the middle class couple who each make $40,000 a year because they’re now considered “rich.” And tell me why people who pay NO taxes get tax rebates and why people earning less than $40,000 are entitled to wealth redistribution in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit. They worked less, they earned less, yet they’re entitled to taxes from people who worked more and earned more. How’s that fair?
Factually speaking, Sheilah may have a point.
For folks whose income comes from investments, they have a federal capital gains tax of what, 15 percent? I don’t have the income tax rates in front of me – but the income of most mid-level earners is taxed at a far higher rate.
Now you could say that capping capital gains at 15 percent encourages investment, but do those folks need more of an incentive than people who earn wages?
Keep writing.
Apples and oranges. You want to debate raising the cap gains tax, we can do that. The issue is raising income taxes, and doing so disproportionately to sock it to people who are really not “rich.” The two-income family with kids in Westchester or Putnam making a combined $150,000 could well be struggling to make ends meet living a middle class life, yet that income category subjects them to the AMT and the maximum tax bracket. And Paterson and his ilk want them to pay more. Yet he’s opposed to giving them tuition tax credits, so they pay for parochial schools as well as public schools they don’t use. We could go on and on with the hypotheticals, but we have to face the facts that we have among the highest tax burdens in the nation in New York and it is killing us by driving away business, investors, entrepreneurs, and other sources of revenue.
Well, just because Brodsky said Paterson was likely to do something, doesn’t mean the soon-to-be governor will.
I grant you this about New York. The state has not been well served by either party over the last few decades. How about this for a new motto on our license plates: the Dysfunctional State.