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Vincent Gray doesn't want to raise taxes on the wealthy
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Anonymous
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DCist Headline, FTW:
"Vince Gray: Election Year is a Bad Time to Raise Taxes" Not a Gray fan. And when it comes to a battle between, on the one hand, a marginal tax increase on the very wealthy, and on the other hand, a group who appears to be trying to get the District to corner the market on the region's poverty, I really want to see both sides lose. |
Anonymous
| I have a Gray sign in my yard, but this tempts me to remove it. |
Anonymous
| I don't think it's a good idea either. The tax structure is already progressive enough. |
Anonymous
You would like to see the taxes of hard working residents raised just because they earn a certain amount? War on the rich!! |
Anonymous
First of all, it's not the tax itself, but the fact that, at least at first hearing, it sounds gutless for a guy who is so critical of Fenty's budget cuts for the needy to run from the idea of a tax increase because of election year politics. Second, I do support the tax increase, but don't see it as some kind of punishment for the hard-working. I just think a tax bracket that goes from $40 K to infinity is not progressive. I'd love to have everyone's taxes cut, and I'd certainly love to see an end to the corruption that has bled so much from the City, but most of all, I don't want to see cuts that hurt those who can least afford it. |
Anonymous
Says someone who would not be affected |
Anonymous
True. It won't cost me anything because I happen to be retired. But neither will I get anything out of it, since I live fairly comfortably. So I sit here in the middle, knowing that others are going to be hurt by shrinking funds, and I confess I have more sympathy for kids on school lunches, say, than for my hard-working compatriots on this list who have the good fortune to fall into that upper income range. Let me emphasize that I don't lack sympathy for you, I just have more for the other end of the spectrum. |
Anonymous
Well put, pp. We should also note that it could hurt us if social programs that offer a way out of poverty are cut back. I'm already worried about the kids who can't read well or add and subtract decently. What kinds of jobs are there out there for them? But if you give a kid some kind of hope to hang on to, maybe they'll hang in there at school even when they see adults around them who didn't. The kids who don't hang in there? They've been breaking into houses and robbing people in the street. I'm worried that the good kid who is hanging in there will be tempted to join this latter group. Cutting social services isn't going to make it easier to stay in school and do the right thing. I think my neighborhood is safer when kids at risk are engaged in supportive social programs. |
Anonymous
| To add an old sound bite to 17:02: It's cheaper to put the ten-year-old on the right path than to put the fourteen-year-old in reform school or the eighteen-year-old in prison. |
Anonymous
| DC taxes are already skewed against people who make more than a nominal amount. ALL of the DC tax incentives phase out at ridiculously low income amounts. We are already close to moving out of DC because of the hassle of living here - every interaction with DC government is painful, whether it is trying to get recycling picked up, trying to get a permit for anything (use a park, cut down a tree, do a renovation), or trying to pay taxes for your household employees (I have a service and they DC is the worst - bar none- jurisdiction they deal with, and they often lose filings or fail to process them but send you delinquemcy notices while your paperwork was sitting in their office the whole time). We don't use the schools but pay tons in real estate taxes anyway. I do think this will be the final straw for some people, including me. |
Anonymous
| Some of us in DC won't move but we will start budgeting and that means we stop patronizing local businesses. |