Jon Greenbaum posts this morning on the party millionaires have been having on Wall Street and the “shared sacrifices” Governor Patterson now expects the rest of us to swallow:
Governor Paterson is confronted with a $15 billion deficit and is talking about shared sacrifice. He is asking us to tighten our belts, proposing $2.5 billion in cuts from our children’s classrooms (on top of reneging on a court ordered increase of $1.9 billion in education funding the Governor is proposing and additional $700 million in education cuts).
But not everybody will feel the burden of these budget cuts in the same way. The cuts will have a disproportionate impact on upstate residents with low incomes and people of color. But aside from a symbolic gesture of taxing things like furs and jets, the Governor is not proposing that the wealthiest New Yorkers step up to pay their fair share.
I’m still having a hard time understanding why people keep calling Patterson a progressive. No progressive in his right mind would insist on VAT taxes – which are inherently regressive, hitting lower incomes harder – instead of what is logical: an income tax policy more in line with the rest of the country.
