Teacher Unions and Their “Fair Share” Fetish
According to the California Federation of Teachers, taxed-to-death Golden Staters still don’t pay enough.
While teachers unions continue to slam the wealthy for not paying their fair share of taxes, it is the finger-pointers who are really the avaricious ones. Like spoiled children who just can’t get enough candy, they have no sense as to when to stop. Leading the brat campaign this time is the California Federation of Teachers, the smaller of the two state teachers unions. Its website proclaims,
Prop 30 stopped the bleeding in state revenue, but we will continue to see anti-tax, anti-government forces attempt to undermine the public sector. When you hear these people say, “We don’t have the money to provide adequate public services,” or “California has a spending problem,” they are wrong. We have a revenue problem.
Stopped the bleeding? Hardly. It’s the taxpayers who have been hemorrhaging and the higher tax bill is extracting even more blood. Nevertheless, CFT sees the passage of Prop. 30 as just the first step in solving the state’s “revenue problem.”
In fact, when Prop. 30 became law, it left California with the highest sales and income tax rates in the country. Our nation-leading state sales tax rate of 7.25 percent went up to 7.5 percent. And the top marginal personal income tax rate which was 10.3 percent – third highest in the country – is now number one at 13.3 percent – a 29.13 percent increase.
Yet, CFT wants more.
We have a tax system that does not ask those who have the most wealth and resources to pay their fair share—even with passage of Prop 30, wealth and income have been massively redistributed in California and the nation over the past three decades in the wrong direction.
So, CFT is suggesting that the wealthy among us are getting away scot-free, but a look at national numbers tells a different story. A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office in 2012 shows that the top 1 percent of income earners paid 39 percent of federal individual income taxes in 2009, while earning 13 percent of the income.
Hence, it’s clear that the rich are already paying considerably more than their “fair share.” The CBO also reports that “the top 20 percent of income earners (those earning over $74,000) paid 94 percent of federal individual income taxes, 85 percent more than the share of national income they earned.
CFT would also have us think that public education is underfunded, but as Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson pointed out recently:
Over the past four decades, real per pupil spending in California has roughly doubled. In dollar terms, Californians are spending $27 billion more today on K-12 education than they did in 1974, when Gov. Jerry Brown was first elected to office—and that is after controlling for both enrollment growth and inflation.
And what have we gotten for our increase in spending? A look at our latest National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) scores tells the tragic story. For example, on the most recent 4th grade math test, California students came in 45th nationally; in science, the same 4th graders scored higher than only Mississippi.
Perhaps when CFT and their ilk are making their “fair share” accusations, they may want to reconsider. In 2011, the California Teachers Association – CFT’s bigger brother – issued a press release (H/T Mike Antonucci) which announced its “support of the nationwide ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement for tax fairness and against corporate greed.” It goes on to say, “…a stable tax structure begins with everyone paying their fair share.”
Paying their fair share? Everyone?
The unions really have hit a new low here. According its latest available income tax form, CTA took in $185,222,341 in 2010. As a 501(c)(5), the union has a special tax exempt status with the IRS which is accorded to “Labor, Agricultural, and Horticultural Organizations.” So the union paid $0 in income taxes. (By comparison, CFT pulled in a measly $23,226,311 and also paid no tax.)
Our teachers unions – private corporations – take in over $200 million every year in forced union dues, pay not a penny in income tax, and yet want the rest of us to pay our “fair share.”
Have hypocrisy and hubris ever been more blatantly demonstrated?
Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.