Republicans' North Carolina plan penalizes poor to subsidize rich
Published February 21, 2014
by Gene Nichol, UNC professor of law, published in News and Observer, February 21, 2014.
Last month, scholars at Harvard and Berkeley released a massive study of economic mobility in America’s 50 largest cities. Charlotte came in last – 50th of 50. If a child is born poor in North Carolina’s richest city, she is more likely to stay that way than if she were born anywhere else in the country.
Our Mecklenburg County trio – Pat McCrory, Thom Tillis and Bob Rucho – didn’t seem to notice the study. They were too busy bragging about the new North Carolina plan, delivered in 2013. The governor explained that he and the General Assembly had made “tough decisions” to improve our prospects. Massive cuts to programs benefitting the poorest Tar Heels, significant tax increases for low-income residents and hugely generous tax cuts for our wealthiest corporations and citizens will, allegedly, right the course. Trickle down on steroids.
Why would a state with among the country’s highest poverty rates, child poverty rates, percentage of uninsured, levels of income inequality and worst economic mobility decide to dramatically penalize the poor in order to subsidize the rich?
One answer that we’ll never hear – the obvious and, I’m convinced, most accurate one – is that our current crew of leaders represents and carries water for only the wealthiest among us – the folks who pay for their campaigns and benefit the most from their policies. The problem is, this truth can’t be confessed in a democracy. It won’t do to plead: “We’d like 51 percent to vote to aid us in service of the top 2 percent.” The numbers don’t work.
More acceptable, perhaps, is the distinct claim that yawning chasms of inequality and the advanced world’s highest levels of poverty are central to America’s particular economic genius. Only as a result of our unfettered, rapacious, investor-subsidized version of capitalism can such astonishing mountains of wealth be produced. This goose’s egg is golden indeed.
But when unpacked, this justification reveals an oddly nasty moral component. We’ll accept a lot more poor folks, including our specialty, poor children, so that a handful of us can amass the greatest wealth ever witnessed by mankind. Intense sacrifice by millions of the most vulnerable is necessary to secure the absurd indulgences of a relative few. Not exactly the message you want on a bumper sticker.
So, the claim transforms to the breathtakingly counterintuitive notion that special solicitude for the rich will actually result in elevated prospects for the poor. For McCrory, it’s crucial to alter the landscape to favor “job creators” to “let them know North Carolina is open for business.” Sen. Rucho embraces the contradiction more overtly. Cutting poverty programs and lowering taxes for those at the top will “lift” the impoverished. The status quo, he reports, is “worse for the poor than anything, we need an alternative.”
Just for a moment, let’s put that assertion into perspective. The wealthiest Americans, and North Carolinians, already capture more of our income than at any time in 100 years. Over 95 percent of our income gains 2009-2012 went to the top 1 percent.
We have the greatest income inequality of all advanced nations – the largest gaps between rich and poor. To find our peer in economic disparity, you have to speed past the Western European nations, past our new world colleagues like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, past our less-developed counterparts in India, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Russia and Uganda, down to the bottom of the list to our apparent running buddies Rwanda, Madagascar, El Salvador, Cameroon and Sri Lanka.
Despite all this, lo and behold, once again the key to prosperity for those at the bottom is to be just a little more generous to those at the top. OK, a lot more generous. Good Lord.
The new North Carolina economic plan requires a fealty to plutocrats that is robust, complete and unyielding. It assumes an ignorance in the vast majority of Tar Heels that is beyond surpassing.
In the months ahead, we’ll see whether we’re as clueless as they think we are.
Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley distinguished professor at the UNC School of Law and director of the school’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. He doesn’t speak for UNC.
February 21, 2014 at 8:48 am
Win Quakenbush says:
Speaking of penalizing the poor to subsidize the rich - isn't it interesting that a NC ditch-digger gets to pay state taxes which are used to subsidize the six-digit salaries of law professors?
February 21, 2014 at 8:58 am
Richard Bunce says:
Do you actually read what you write? Study was of just the Top 50 cities, and of course just because it is a study does not mean it is correct, yet you extend the results to "anywhere else in the country"... polemic screed alert!
Slightly reducing the ability of the State government to use its coercive powers to confiscate the wealth of its citizens is NOT redistributive or a subsidy for those citizens. All income and wealth is NOT the governments until the government says otherwise no matter how desirable you may find that... well except for your personal wealth and income I am sure... but you should feel free to continue to pay the NC personal income tax rates from last year.
February 21, 2014 at 7:58 pm
Norm Kelly says:
Can we tell anything specific about Gene just from his editorial? Of course. It's easy to determine, based on what I type in my responses, that I am NO LIB! In fact, some can draw the conclusion that I am very conservative. I go beyond conservative. I am a libertarian. I find it difficult sometimes to listen to people like Rush because I find him too liberal, too willing to compromise. That's how conservative I really am. So, now that we know we can tell some things about a person by what they write/believe, let's get back to Gene. He includes 'income inequality' in his diatribe. This is clearly a liberal/socialist, big government position. Income inequality covers such a broad range, such a wide scope of criteria that it's a meaningless, useless liberal talking point. What constitutes income inequality? If I go to college, get an advanced degree, and work for a company where I invent a new process/product/way of doing business, I am going to make more money than the person who drops out of high school, gets someone (or themselves) pregnant, and never gets beyond being a burger flipper/sub sandwich maker. Is this income inequality? According to good libs, the answer is obviously yes. But to those who actually have the ability to think, which eliminates most libs, this comes down to preparation, desire, commitment, and probably some other individual input/output. Is there a way that some lib can justify claiming that I don't deserve what I've earned, that some lib MUST have the ability to steal it from me, and GIVE it to the aforementioned individual? Why should I be penalized for being motivated, determined, goal oriented? Why is it the government, or some libs', role to steal from one group to give to another group?
Let's get back to Gene. If 'she' lives in Charlotte and doesn't take advantage of the education system that's GIVEN to her, doesn't take advantage of programs that are ALREADY IN PLACE to assist, support, advance her, then who exactly is responsible? Who needs to be penalized for this? Other than stealing from one person to give to another person, what exactly is the lib plan to change this scenario? Robin Hood was a story; make-believe. Until libs got it in their heads that they could try to actually do it. Then it morphed from make-believe to a nightmare. But as long as libs are in charge of the nightmare, they are a happy group of people. So long as 'we the people' don't look at the results of the lib nightmare, the libs sleep good at night, dreaming of new ways to demonize success (of any kind).
One would expect a lib to conclude that 'our current crew of leaders' is simply looking out for their wealthy friends, trying to 'fix' things on the backs of the poor, biased against 'the poor', and biased in favor of 'the rich'. How does this same lib then explain the Demon plan for keeping homeowner's insurance premiums low in the higher risk area of the coast? You know, those people who can afford a beach residence, but their insurance premiums are artificially low by order of the NCGA when it was run/controlled by libs/Demons/Gene's buddies. This can also be said as the Demons penalized us ordinary/poor folks in order to support their wealthy, beach loving donors. And how about all the lib plans coming out of Raleigh that were/are designed to reward their wealthy donors? How does a good lib like Gene explain these? Things like a special road being built to benefit Wolf Pack supporters. I know this is only one example I can come up with right now, but there are more. After all the Demons controlled Raleigh for 100ish years!
Areas around the country are completely controlled by good libs. Show us, Gene, where these areas are so much better off than NC. For example, some lib politician in New York recently said that wealthy people shouldn't bother living in New York, they are not welcome in New York. New York has raised taxes on 'the rich' to such an extent that 'the rich' choose to leave New York. How does this benefit ANYONE? Tell us about the little girls who are left in impoverished schools in New York because the people who used to pay the bills are no longer around to steal money from. Tell us how the Demon stronghold city that filed bankruptcy (you know, the one in the Detroit area. which city is it?) because they kept raising spending, kept increasing regulation, becoming less business friendly, less wealth friendly. Tell us, Gene, how the little girls in those schools are better off now. Show us, use real life examples, of how socialist ideas promoted by libs around the country are ACTUALLY helping 'the poor' achieve something besides receiving government subsistence. Tell us, Gene, how people are better off because the government gives them a free cell phone. Because the rest of us are stupid enough to pay for our own cell phones. You know, Gene, those of us considered 'the rich' who have a good work ethic, who believe in paying our bills, who take responsibility for our kids and MAKE them do homework.
The rest of Gene's drivel isn't worth reading. Like most garbage put out by libs, what they say has no real-world application. Poor people aren't poor because Apple sells iPhones. Poor people aren't poor because the feds haven't set the minimum wage high enough. Poor people aren't poor because the government hasn't taken enough money from producers/employed people. Gene's drivel isn't pointless because it's Gene. Gene's drivel is pointless because socialism DOES NOT WORK! Even when good meaning American libs try to implement it. Socialism hasn't failed around the world because the people who implemented it were incompetent. It fails every time because it's not a workable system. Plain and simple. Disagree? Present your evidence. When you can find it, that is.
February 22, 2014 at 10:55 am
Richard Bunce says:
Robin Hood "robbed" from the government to give the money back to the individuals the government originally robbed it from...
February 22, 2014 at 11:45 am
Alan Ferguson says:
Gene,
You don't need me to tell you just how eager some people are to throw their fellow citizens under the economic bus. Three have already written comments to your well-argued comments on the inequality study.
It is no secret that a significant proportion of Americans believe that they advance or fail individually entirely as a result of the degree of application of their own efforts. That position is a childish fallacy that ignores a newborn's gifts at birth, his upbringing, and so much more. And much of our current debate regarding the direction of public policy is between that dog-eat-dog school of thought represented by some of the comment here and those of us who believe that our time on earth is best spent assuring that we continue to live in a civilisation that improves from year to year.
Part of that improvement is assuring that every child has as nearly as possible an opportunity equal to that of every other. That includes as nearly equal as possible those children who are "born on third base". History has shown that any system which does not assure that equality will not endure. Those who are shut out from the wonderful goodies promised by modern life, and yet have to look through the gates up to the big house on the hill where life is oh, so good, will not do so quietly for long.
North Carolina historically, and I would argue the most successfully among the states of the old Confederacy, has supported that equality. My own family has been here since before the Revolution, and it shames me to no end that the latecomers who now have our state by the throat are rolling back so much of the progress made by the average man and woman over the past 50 years or so.
As for the Troika you have described, I would point out that not one of them is a native North Carolinian. As a native of Mecklenburg County that's my only consolation whenever I read of one of these three. If they (or their families who brought them here) had stayed in Ohio or Maryland or whatever jurisdiction from which they emigrated, we in North Carolina would still be progressing nicely into the mainstream of the 21st Century.
Instead, with much help from the Mecklenburg Troika, we are again becoming a national, and often international, laughing stock. Somehow, we seem to have managed to attract some of the most reactionary immigrants in the United States. They are building upon the recessive reactionary gene in our native social DNA in the ways you see in the posts here to drag us back into the times of days gone by. In those good old days, the rich were rich, the poor were poor, and those who should lead were those who did lead--the rest of us kept our mouths shut, stayed in our places, and defended the hoary old order when drafted to do so. That's where our current leadership wants to take us.
