PA Tax Increases

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PA Tax Increases

Wanted: Ideas on how to balance budgets without raising taxes.

There are not a lot of businesses breaking down doors to do either move here or conduct business here. The Post Gazette reported the following in an August 8th article. “Pennsylvania earned a D in overall friendliness to small businesses, placing it 33rd out of the 38 states included in the survey. Pittsburgh also earned a D, ranking it 73rd out of the 82 metropolitan regions surveyed by Thumbtack in conjunction with the nonprofit Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.”

Like many states we are ‘unfunded’ or running deficits in many areas – capital projects, pensions for police and firefighters, pensions for teachers and state workers, etc. Our debt and unfunded is somewhere in excess of $100 billion.

There are many pockets of encouragement. It’s exciting to see the growth in many of our cities – especially the youthful trend and population increases over the past decade. But two things are needed – now.

We need to start telling the truth about what the real issues are. It has little to do about politics. Let’s begin with the campaign rhetoric. Actually, let’s just stop the campaign rhetoric. The issues are the pensions, the eroding tax base in the housing market (hint – we need land banks) and the lack of honest communication in the legislature. There’s that communication word again.

Quit spinning the obvious and start talking solutions. The ones that really need addressed. We don’t need politicians. We need people that care for the people in their state.

Mark Schuster

August 11, 2014

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