When it comes to economic forecasts, I tend to be a “glass-half-full” kind of guy. Yes, there is some probability that gas will rise to $20 per gallon and we’ll start riding horses again. I think it more likely that gas prices will fall back to $3 per gallon and there will again (sadly) be a market for the Hummer.
My natural optimism was dealt a blow by a new assessment of fast-growing firms from the Small Business Adminstration (SBA). The study is an adaptation of the work of David Birch of Cognetics from the 1980s and 1990s. Firms with rapid revenue growth were dubbed “gazelles” by Birch. He found that these firms were responsible for most of the nation’s employment growth.
Shouldn’t we at least talk about the notion of capping school property taxes?
A recent poll found 74% of New Yorkers think it’s a good idea. A commission appointed by our previous governor recommended it after several months of study and more than a dozen public meetings around the state.
And yet, the state Legislature is poised to adjourn for the year without seriously considering the idea. There were no legislative hearings on the commission’s report, and Gov. David Paterson couldn’t even get his bill to cap property taxes introduced in the Legislature.
Whether or not you think capping school property taxes is a good idea (full disclosure: I do), what does it say about our legislative process that an idea with such broad appeal addressing a problem that is clearly impacting on millions of New York residents isn’t taken seriously by our lawmakers?
CGR recently recruited a staff member from out of town. After he and his wife had found a house they liked (comparable to the home they were selling), they were confronted with what is a familiar problem—the property tax bill. The house they were about to buy was going to cost them nearly 50% more in property taxes each year. Familiar story, right? Darn those folks in North Carolina and Florida and Utah for their low property taxes! How can we compete?
But my colleague was moving from Orchard Park, a Buffalo suburb, not from Raleigh or Tampa or Salt Lake City! That’s right—Erie County property taxes are lower than Monroe County’s.
It is a good time to be a farmer. Farm product prices rose 18% from 2006 to 2007. From the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, farm product prices went up 15% with crop prices jumping 20%.
Joseph Glauber, Chief Economist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testified before Congress last week on rising food prices. He recited a litany of factors influencing world food prices, including a string of poor wheat harvests in Australia, Canada and parts of the U.S., and growing demand for high quality food from rapidly-developing economies like China and India.
I did it! I got my taxes filed on time AGAIN. This may not seem so miraculous to many of you, but I’m on a 12 step program for late filers. Early each year I seek out a group of my fellows for support in my struggle: “Hi, my name’s Kent. And I’m addicted to Form 4868.” If you don’t know what Form 4868 is, well, I’m begging you, PLEASE, don’t start. You’ll tell yourself it will just be just this once, but . . .
In honor of having stayed on the wagon for another year, I figured I’d write about taxes.
Some weeks ago I received an email containing a comparison of taxes paid under Clinton v. Bush II. Sent by a good friend, I was one of many names on the list. In the message, my friend challenged someone to confirm these figures, which claimed to show deep reductions in taxes paid under George Bush, deep reductions that became proportionately smaller as income rose.
The subtext of the message was something like, “I know that Bush cut taxes. But only for the fat cats, not for regular people.”
The nation’s economy is in trouble. How bad it is and how long it will last is open to speculation. Economists’ prognostications are treated with a good bit of skepticism—and for good reason. Our track record would shame a weather forecaster in a third-tier media market. In our defense, the economy rises and falls for a combination of real and perceived reasons. And perception is often more powerful than reality. At the moment we confront a real problem of global liquidity that has been revealed in an ongoing series of disclosures, each more surprising than the last, often in obscure markets that are unexpectedly significant. Each new revelation erodes the sense that we really know what’s going on in the markets or, more to the point, what it all means or when this steady stream of bad news will end. It is this uncertainty and ignorance that feeds negative perceptions about the future, perceptions that may be right or wrong but influence behavior nonetheless.
Rochester’s economy has suffered the loss of many jobs at one of its best-known employers. While many predicted doom and gloom, Rochester has survived, even thrived, in the wake of these dramatic losses. In fact, many of you reading this don’t know that General Dynamics ever had a presence in Rochester at all.
I hate red tape. Years of contracting with government has nurtured a hearty dislike for intricate rules imposed by tinpot dictators in legislatures and administrative offices. Here at CGR we recently executed a contract with New York City that was the size of Rochester’s White Pages (not Manhattan’s, thank goodness). The number of schedules, promises, clauses and conditions we had to complete was a project in itself. Not that I’m one to condone the harvesting of tropical hardwoods. And I’m as big a fan of peace in Northern Ireland as the next guy. We had to address both issues in the contract. But is all this really necessary?
That’s why it feels rather odd to be urging more red tape for local development corporations (LDCs). But that’s what is needed.
Perhaps we have the Iowa voters to thank for the foolishness of the latest energy bill. It significantly increases incentives to produce ethanol from corn.
Am I unaware of the urgent threat of global warming, unwilling to pay a few cents more for fuel and Fritos to end our servitude to sheiks and demagogues? Have I not seen Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth (or one of the sequels playing in an auditorium near you)?
Here’s the problem: Ethanol from corn just doesn’t make sense economically or environmentally. Many studies conclude that the corn-to-fuel process consumes more fossil fuel that it displaces. A recent study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development dubbed corn from ethanol as “a cure [for oil dependence] that is worse than the disease.”
In partnership with the Finger Lakes Health Systems Agency, CGR sponsored a conference in Albany on November 27 to discuss the role planning should play in New York’s health care industry. This column is an edited version of my remarks to conference participants.
My father-in-law practiced radiology at Howard Community Hospital in Kokomo, Indiana for 40 years. And I was always hearing stories about the latest threat from St. Joe’s, the competition across town—a new CAT scanner, or this new technology called “magnetic resonance imaging.” When the radiology practices of Howard Community and St. Joe’s merged just before he retired, you’d have thought the Berlin Wall had come down.
Monthly blog by senior staff on public policy + updates.
Enter your email address.
When it comes to economic forecasts, I tend to be a “glass-half-full” kind of guy. Yes, there is some probability that gas will rise to $20 per gallon and we’ll start riding horses again. I think it more likely that gas prices will fall back to $3 per gallon and there will again (sadly) be a market for the Hummer.
Shouldn’t we at least talk about the notion of capping school property taxes?