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Post on November 19, 2009 by staff 3 Comments »

In his commentary “A double struggle for the poor,” Chris Fitzsimon points out that low income families are stuggling not only to afford basic necessities like food and shelter but to pay taxes, which consume a higher percentage of their income than they do for the richest one percent of North Carolinians.

Progressive Voices commentator, Melissa Reed writes “Abortion Should Not Imperil Health Care Reform” in which she argues that the Stupak amendment is

a cynical attempt to push an anti-choice agenda that imperils badly needed reform.

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NC Blue Cross started with major funding by charitable Duke Endowment foundation

Official statements on the Senate health care bill

Comments (Closed):3

IBXer
November 19, 2009 at 12:36 pm
The healthcare bill in Congress will only increase the taxing of the poor even more. The Congress is pretending that these bills are affordable and lower the deficit by paying for them with unfunded mandates on the states. This will force NC to raise sales and property taxes, which will burden the poor even more. These are people who are already eligible for Medicaid, so this plan will not be of much, if any, benefit to them.
Something Clever
November 19, 2009 at 1:02 pm
“This will force NC to raise sales and property taxes, which will burden the poor even more.”

Even if we accept the rest of what you say as true, there is nothing forcing the states to increase those forms of taxation in lieu of others. The main point of the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy report was to show how certain types of taxation impact certain populations disproportionately.

Raising the sales tax to fund programs that aid those who are most burdened by the sales tax is stupid. It is also what the legislature recently decided to do. In this day of computerized UPC codes, there is absolutely no reason that we cannot impose variable rate sales taxes based on the class of item being sold. We already do for some goods. But we need to make necessities sales tax free or at the very least benefiting from a lower sales tax rate.

Problem is, if we raise the sales tax on certain goods, people will hop online and buy them out-of-state. There is no easy solution, but it is clear to me that the current state revenue system is one that is not working as it should.
IBXer
November 20, 2009 at 10:45 am
“Raising the sales tax to fund programs that aid those who are most burdened by the sales tax is stupid. It is also what the legislature recently decided to do.”

Yeah, that. My point exactly.