TEXAS LONE STAR FORUM
By Don Baylor and Chuck Stokes
This week, Texas is one of many states celebrating America Saves Week, a national week to promote personal savings and encourage individuals to take financial action. American Saves Week couldn't come at a better time, with so many Texan families struggling. To strengthen our communities, Texas needs to adopt a new blueprint for helping families save.
As noted in Why Thrift Matters: 20 Propositions, a report recently released by the Institute for American Values, Americans are rediscovering the thrift of our forefathers and mothers, who worked hard, saved their money and shared their wealth with those in need. The recipe for building financially strong families and communities remains the same today. Texas Saves Week reminds us that we need only look back to find a wiser way forward. We need to work together, not just for individual change, but to create a culture that values hard work, planning ahead and the importance of community.
Creating a college-going culture is widely acknowledged as the best way to secure a better future by increasing the earning potential of tomorrow's labor force. In Texas, we need to direct similar energy to creating a savings culture. Like a good education, household savings - regardless of family income - is a sound predictor of whether a child who grows up poor will become part of the middle class. The association between savings and future financial security is even more pronounced when savings are targeted toward college. Academic research has found that a child with a dedicated savings account is seven times more likely to attend college than a similar child without such an account, even when controlling for race or income. In essence, savings represent hope and opportunity.
Texans want to become better savers. In the 2010 Survey of Texas Savers, over three-fourths of all Texans said they want to save more in the future; nearly 90 percent of the poorest said they want to save more. But Texas families need more than discipline and desire to be able to save. They need opportunities and incentives. They need a culture that makes savings the default choice, not the exception or choice reserved for wealthier families. This is why both public and private sectors are
working together to help households build financial security. For example, in some Texas communities, financial institutions, community tax centers and local United Ways now provide incentives and opportunities for working Texans to save a portion of their tax refunds. Throughout February, Texas Saves -a campaign to promote savings to low- and moderate-income Texans lead by the Center for Public Policy Priorities in partnership with our Opportunity Texas partners -- is distributing savings tips and resources to families and raising awareness about the importance of savings.
Another partnership, Bank On Brazos Valley, is having excellent results in getting more Brazos Valley residents connected to the financial mainstream and on the pathway to savings. The Austin Savings Bond Project, run by Foundation Communities and supported by Opportunity Texas and the City of Austin, provides small incentives for tax filers to save a portion of their refund with a U.S. Savings Bond. More partnerships among banks, credit unions, schools and nonprofits are needed to promote savings for all Texans.
Texas policymakers have a role to play in promoting savings. In 2011, the Legislature adopted several policies to promote savings, requiring K-8 math-based financial education and establishing both the Texas Save & Match, which helps families save for college by matching their contributions to pre-paid tuition accounts, and the Texas Financial Education Endowment as public-private initiatives to enable household savings.
Despite these steps, the Corporation for Enterprise Development's 2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard ranked Texas in the bottom 10 states in overall measures of household financial security. One in two Texans lacks enough "rainy day" savings to weather a loss of income. We also rank at the bottom in terms of average credit score.
We can do better. In order to move ahead, the Legislature should remove policies that punish or discourage household savings. For example, one pro-savings legislative step would be to limit the number of times a payday lender can raid Texas bank accounts for the same loan. Legislators also should abolish the social services policy that counts a family's savings when determining whether working families qualify for health insurance coverage for their kids. The message to these families is clear: give up your dream of owning a home or educating your children -- you have to choose between saving or caring for your children.
Texas Saves Week is an excellent time to encourage Texas Legislators, along with key stakeholders in business, education, and philanthropy to support strategies that strengthen household financial security. Helping Texas families save should be seen as an economic development strategy to create a stronger middle class and a brighter future.
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Don Baylor is economic opportunity senior policy analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin. Chuck Stokes is a Fellow at the Institute for American Values' John Templeton Center for Thrift and Generosity and Scholar-in-Residence at Samford University.
(c) Texas Lone Star Forum. 2/12
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economy. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
AMERICAN FORUM
By Brian McGregor
A guy walks into a bar and says, “ouch.”
Now, you might be thinking that’s a really bad one-liner. Actually, I was just recounting the start of my day.
I walk into the Silver Dollar Saloon – the bar I own in Butte – every day, and I’ve been saying “ouch” a lot lately. My business may be more recession-proof than many others, but we’re still hurting in this down economy.
Small business owners want our communities to flourish once again. We are working to build a thriving local economy that supports a strong middle class, and that can only happen if we have customers who have money they can spend at our businesses.
This isn’t something we can accomplish on our own. Our economy is tied to the national economy, and we need our elected officials to take decisive action to create jobs and put Americans back to work.
As a small business owner, I want to be clear on one thing: if we want a vibrant local economy, we must maintain the rules and standards that protect our employees’ health and our customers’ financial security. Just look at the lessons from our local history.
Here in Butte, we know what happens when you don’t have strong rules protecting workers and local quality of life. We know what happens when one company’s unchecked power overruns basic rights to health and safety.
From the toxic smelter emissions that once gave Butte a higher death rate than New York City and created the largest Superfund site in the country, to the Speculator Mine disaster of 1917 where at least 167 miners were killed, Butte residents have paid for inadequate regulations and enforcement with their lives. And they worked hard – through unions and other organizations – to create lifesaving labor, health, and environmental protections that built the middle class and bolstered the customer base for local small businesses.
Butte’s history of working together to protect our local community and local economy from corporate special interests runs deep. But it’s not just Butte’s story. In thousands of communities across the nation, people have come together to demand rules and safeguards that protect our well-being.
Now, some politicians are siding with big businesses who want to roll back these protections, threatening to take away health, safety, and financial rules that keep our air clean, our workforce healthy, and our customers safe. Big businesses want more profits – no matter how much it costs the public.
You don’t have to be a small business owner to see how high these costs can be. Just look at the 2008 financial crisis. That crisis, which destroyed more than 8 million jobs and left us with this jobless recovery, was caused by decades of deregulation that let Wall Street run wild in pursuit of astronomical profit – at our expense.
It boggles my mind that some legislators are arguing that gutting rules and standards will magically create jobs after the deregulation-fueled financial crisis just destroyed 8 million of them. This is like proposing another drinking binge as the cure for a really bad hangover. It’s utterly insane.
The fact is, regulations create jobs. About 32 jobs are created for each $1 million of restoration funds for the Silver Bow Creek (for which $85 million has been allocated). The workers on that project will be paying customers at Butte businesses. That’s what small businesses need: customers.
I've heard politicians say they're for “liberating” Main Street. I’m for that, too. I’d love to be liberated from the Too-Big-to-Fail banks and from health insurance companies that hike rates by double digits every year. But gutting regulations won’t “liberate” small businesses – it will liberate big banks and insurance companies to crush us.
So, the next time you hear politicians talk about scrapping clean air or financial protections in the name of small business, don’t buy it. Remember that these rules keep communities healthy and level the playing field for small businesses against big special interests. If we let big business use small business as an excuse to rewrite the rules – for their gain and our loss – the joke will be on all of us. We have seen that happen before. Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.
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Brian McGregor owns the Silver Dollar Saloon in Butte, and is a member of the Montana Small Business Alliance and the national Main Street Alliance business network.
© American Forum. 2/12.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
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| Riane Eisler |
By Riane Eisler and Rene Redwood
A financial debt can be paid back. But the debt we’ll owe our children if investments in health, nutrition and education are slashed is irreparable. Investment in human infrastructure – providing the human capacity development for optimal economic productivity and innovation through both government and business investments – is essential for success in the post-industrial economy, and this should be our policymakers’ guiding economic principle.
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| Rene Redwood |
Why are we told that cutting social programs is the road to prosperity, when our past prosperity was the result of the very opposite?
At the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was what we today call a “developing country.” Except for the super-rich, our general living standard was abysmal: child and general mortality rates were extremely high, as was poverty. Then we invested in prenatal and child health care such as vaccines; abolished child labor; mandated not only primary, but also secondary public education; and promoted college education through the GI Bill for returning soldiers. These kinds of government expenditures, along with Social Security, Medicare, Head Start and other government programs to care for and educate our people had a huge return on investment for our people and nation.
Today, largely as a result of retrenching in such public expenditures, the U.S. has higher child mortality, maternal mortality and poverty rates than any other developed nation. According to a 2007 UNICEF study, the U.S. ranked 24th of 25 developed countries with children living below the national poverty level. By comparison, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Spain topped the list. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that poverty afflicts roughly one in six American children—some 13 million youths, a figure that’s expected to rise as poverty trends continue to soar.
In 2009, more than 4.4 million single mothers earned wages below the national poverty level and were barely able to supply their children with basic needs. That number of women had increased 6.7 percent compared to the previous year, according to census figures. The kinds of cuts now proposed—especially cuts to programs to help impoverished families with children—will push us down even further.
By contrast, investing in education, health care, child-care and eldercare drastically reduces unemployment, poverty, public assistance, spending on prisons -- and at the same time provides a trained work force and higher tax base. According to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 37 percent of Americans believe job creation/economic growth is our nation’s No. 1 issue, and only 22 percent named the deficit/government spending as the top. What’s more, while Americans find some budget cuts acceptable; they adamantly oppose cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and K-12 education.
That’s because most of us know that our most important assets are our people. If we don’t invest in human infrastructure, we cannot be economically successful.
We urgently need a realistic long-term perspective on how national and state deficits are calculated. The human capital deficit created by cutting social programs will be irreparable. By contrast, benefits to individuals, families, businesses and society at large from investment in human infrastructure will accrue for generations.
There’s an old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Our priorities should be exactly what the “deficit hawks” are putting on the chopping block. Cutting those programs is criminal behavior, not sound policy.
Riane Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Studies (www.partnershipway.org) and author of The Real Wealth of Nations and The Chalice & the Blade. Rene Redwood is CEO of Redwood Enterprise in Washington, D.C. (www.redwoodenterprise.com)
Copyright 2011 (c) by The American Forum. 5/11
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
By Susan Shaer
As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.” It costs money to make this country hum. Anyone can see that it would be impossible to have roads crisscrossing the country, federal jails and courts, national parks and monuments, environmental protection that has no boundaries, and a whole raft of other essential services without a nationwide system in which we all have a stake.
Right now, our debt, the deficit and the spectacle of a narrowly averted government shutdown have focused attention on federal spending of tax dollars. To that, I say hooray. I hate looking at my own spending budget, but I know what my priorities are, and what money I have to use, save or borrow against. When we examine our personal finances, we recognize our personal values. Such a magnifying glass aimed at the federal budget will expose priorities of our “civilized” society.
So what are our federal values? We have two sides to the spending budget; one non-discretionary (required spending by law or interest on the debt), and the other discretionary. The discretionary side is where our priorities are displayed full frontal. The current budget allows for 56 percent on the Pentagon, wars and nuclear weapons.
Yes, that’s right. Not to confuse the issue, but that 56 percent does not include veterans’ benefits, or the interest we pay on the debt of past wars, or homeland security. We spend a lot on war, war planning, defense, offense, outdated weapons, overspending on weapons systems cost overruns and more.
It brings to mind the old adage: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If we have the “stuff” to make war, we use it. If we shifted priorities, we could spend more on international development to help countries survive and thrive so they might not be ripe for conflagration. If we had plentiful, well-trained and professional conflict resolution teams, we could rely on them more and boots on the ground less.
Our troops do a masterful job. The outpouring of support for what they have handled in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now in Libya, is appropriate. However, many in Congress are saying it’s time to look at the military budget. The Pentagon does not pass audits. Weapons manufacturers routinely have cost overruns that would not be tolerated anywhere else in the budget. Weapons systems made in various congressional districts are reauthorized even if the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs don’t want them.
As you look at what you pay in federal income taxes, take a few minutes to think of our country’s values in spending your hard-earned dollars. Last year, in a nonpartisan town meeting effort sponsored by America Speaks in 60 cities across the country, 85 percent of all participants wanted defense spending cut by at least 10 percent, with a majority of participants, 51 percent, supporting a 15 percent cut.
We can have the defense we want and need, plus the security of jobs, health care, education and a clean environment by adjusting our spending priorities to meet our values. It’s time.
Shaer is executive director of the national women’s peace and security organization, WAND, Women’s Action for New Directions.
Copyright (C) 2011 by American Forum. 4/11
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
By Frank Knapp, Jr.
Economic reports show that most job growth in our country this year has come from small- and medium-size businesses. That trend will only accelerate, according to the recently released Small Business Index from the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Nearly 3.8 million new jobs will be created by small businesses with fewer than 100 employees in 2011, says the report. That will be enough alone to lower the U.S. unemployment rate by 2.4 percent. The survey, conducted in January, also found that only 2 percent of small businesses planned to lay off workers.
Major health insurance companies nationwide are reporting dramatic increases in small businesses offering health insurance to employees. This reverses a trend for small businesses dropping insurance because of affordability.
This is not what opponents of health-care reform told us would happen if Congress passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They warned us strenuously before the ACA became law March 23 of last year that small businesses would not only stop hiring out of fear of the future but would begin laying off workers because of anticipated new taxes, fees and health-insurance mandates under the ACA. Small businesses also were supposed to start dropping health insurance because the ACA would drive up premiums. These dire predictions continued right up until last year’s November elections.
Fortunately, the gloom and doomers were wrong. Those of us who supported the ACA have tried valiantly to put out more realistic predictions about how the ACA was going to help small businesses. There will not be new taxes, fees or health-insurance mandates for small businesses with 50 or fewer employees (approximately 96 percent of all businesses). However, most of the mainstream media preferred to report on the negative tea-reading.
But now the good news for small business is rolling in and the positive future effect of the now 1-year-old ACA is becoming clear.
More than four million U.S. small businesses with fewer than 25 employees are eligible to receive health-insurance tax credits under the ACA. That’s 87.3 percent of all small businesses in the country that the ACA can help by making health insurance more affordable.
As for the ACA dramatically increasing the cost of health insurance, a senior vice president at Harvard Pilgrim says that the federal law has only increased premiums by 1 percent.
The ACA is helping small-business owners who have been locked out of health insurance because of their own pre-existing condition. Right now, these entrepreneurs are eligible for affordable coverage from new high-risk pools established under the ACA.
This year, the ACA is requiring that at least 80 percent of every premium dollar being paid in small group health insurance plans is actually paying for medical costs -- not marketing, CEO salaries or profit. If not, the policyholder is owed a refund.
These benefits for small business are in place now.
Today, small businesses are paying as much as 18 percent higher premiums than big businesses. This is a result of higher administration costs for small groups. In 2014, this extra cost is eliminated, so small-business employees, along with individuals, will be able to purchase their coverage from the new health insurance exchanges in each state.
A small business with only one employee with a pre-existing condition finds itself priced out of the market or paying highly inflated premiums. In 2014, health insurance companies will no longer be allowed to charge higher rates because of pre-existing conditions.
And because no one will be denied health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, aspiring entrepreneurs will no longer be locked into a job because of health-insurance benefits. As a result, ranks of small businesses should expand.
The one year anniversary of the ACA is truly something small businesses should celebrate for what it has already done. The future will be even better.
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Knapp is president and CEO of The South Carolina Small Business Chamber of Commerce and serves on the steering committee for the American Sustainable Business Council.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by American Forum. 3/11
By Jackie Rodríguez
I am not to blame for the unemployment crisis in Florida. Yes, I have been unemployed. And yes, I have collected unemployment to support myself and my family. After two years since I was last laid-off, I finally found a new opportunity just a month ago. It was not easy, and I do not blame myself. But I do point my finger at the economy and the greed of our current economic system that only looks out for those on top.
The news is all a flurry with the idea that unemployed people, like I was just a few days ago, are the ones to blame for the situation we find ourselves in. This round of “blame the victim” is nothing less than despicable, shameful and downright dishonest. Let’s look at the facts behind the blame game.
In Florida, for every job created last year there are 25 people who still need a job. Our state has a whopping 12 percent unemployment rate. While there are one million unemployed people in our state, less than half are receiving unemployment insurance. Nationally, profits have more than recovered from the worst of the economic crisis, raising 12 percent since 2007, but unemployment continues to grow.
So what gives, and why am I to blame?
It’s easier to blame me, the victim of our economic system, than it is to look for the real culprits, the ones with their hands in the cookie jar. And let’s be honest, the real culprits are the unrestrained finance industry focused on the quick buck and greed, rather than building a whole society.
By blaming me, big business and corporate interests are let off the hook. They are playing a dangerous game of taking advantage of public outrage during difficult economic times. By directing my neighbor’s outrage at me, it’s easier for them to slide out of their responsibilities as economic entities in our state.
This redirection distracts my neighbors, and even me, away from real solutions to the current crisis for workers in this state. We are put on the defensive, and more concessions are pushed by big business to offset the toll I am supposedly taking on them. In reality, these policy shifts that the business community is pushing for will harm the public structures in our state that protect not only unemployed workers, but all workers. By blaming unemployed workers, businesses are blaming all workers, when corporate interests are the ones setting agenda in our state.
Rather than blame me, business leaders need to work with legislative leaders and us unemployed workers to craft policies that create fairness, security and equality in our state. Until business stops kicking us while we’re down, we can’t be expected to get up off the ground.
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Rodriguez is now Administrative Assistant of Miami Workers Center.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the Florida Forum. 3/11
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
By Charles H. Kuck
From the perspective of a lifelong Republican, I am always troubled when the State Legislature starts looking at ways to “fix” a problem by getting the government more involved in the lives of its citizens, rather than less involved. That is absolutely the case with the currently pending legislation on immigration. A detailed review of HB 87 and SB 40 reveals that these bills do not reform illegal immigration nor do they enforce laws related to illegal immigration. What they do is increase taxes on every citizen of Georgia by increasing government regulation, create unfunded mandates for every county, city, town, and village in Georgia, and create new private rights of action against every Georgia polity that will result in hundreds of lawsuits that will drain taxpayer coffers and result in little, if any real change on the issue of illegal immigration.
This type of legislation is popular because it gives the perception that the state is doing something, which the federal government is purportedly not doing—enforcing federal laws on illegal immigration. The problem with this notion is two-fold. First, the federal government is doing more than it has EVER done in enforcing the laws on undocumented immigration. The Obama Administration is spending literally billions of taxpayer dollars building fences, hiring border patrol agents, detaining undocumented immigrants and actually deported 400,000 people last year—a record. Second, these proposals do not create any greater degree of enforcement than already exists under current state and federal law.
By September 30, 2013, everyone arrested in Georgia is going to be run through the Secure Communities program, and if they are unlawfully present in the United States they are being held for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to pick up within 48 hours.
Without discussing the deleterious details of this program (DWH—Driving While Hispanic), it has resulted in a record number of cases filling our Immigration Court dockets.
So, if these bills do NOT reform immigration, do NOT effectively increase enforcement, and do NOT make Georgia safer, what will they do? They will increase taxes on Georgians, force cities and municipalities to hire previously unnecessary personnel, and make litigation lawyers smile.
These proposals have as their main thrust a desire to make Georgia like Arizona. The bill is designed to make it so hard to live as an undocumented immigrant in Georgia, that such immigrants will leave the state. If this bill accomplishes its purpose it could result in the departure of more than to one million people from the state, along with their tax dollars, investments, talent, and businesses.
There are also at least two provisions which will never be enforced, and which will be struck down as unconstitutional or preempted before they even go into effect, for the same reasons that similar provisions in the Arizona bill were struck down. Provisions dealing with unconstitutional police stops and non-definitions of reasonable cause beg for a judge to overturn this law. The authorizing of private lawsuits against government agencies looks like a lawyer’s full employment act, and business destroying mandates and penalties best dealt with under federal law will simply shut down businesses and cause greater unemployment.
These proposals are bad public policy and bad for Georgia. If our legislators really want to fix the immigration problem they should all take a day and go to Washington, D.C. and demand that Congress fix our immigration system, rather than trying to put a band-aid on a gaping shotgun wound.
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Charles H. Kuck is an adjunct professor of Law at the University of Georgia, and a past national president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by Georgia Forum. 2/11
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