Thursday, March 26, 2009
News Crawford: 'We gave tax cuts; where are the jobs?'
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 3:00 PM
Veteran Gold Dome report Tom Crawford hits the nail on the head:
When the billion-dollar tax break for corporations was being debated in the Senate in 2005, Casey Cagle, then a senator from Gainesville, averred, "It's pro-jobs legislation. It will ensure we have jobs for the future.""It's about jobs, jobs and jobs," said Rep. Ron Stephens, R-Savannah.
Funny thing. All the new jobs that were supposedly going to be created from this gusher of business tax breaks don't seem to have materialized.
We have continued to suffer higher than average unemployment since 2005, culminating last month when the jobless rate hit the highest level ever in Georgia at 9.3 percent. How could that be happening if all of those business tax cuts were creating so many jobs?
Don't get me wrong. For the entities who get them, tax cuts are a wonderful thing. I'd love to get a business tax break myself, but I can't afford to hire lobbyists to demand one from the legislature.
Let's be honest, however, about what these tax cuts are: a financial gift to whoever happens to receive them. Business tax breaks are not going to create jobs and it's time that legislators quit using that as an excuse for passing them.
(H/T to Andre at Peach Pundit)
Comments (5)
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What if the state's population is growing at a faster rate than the "new jobs"? Then wouldn't it be possible to have a higher unemployment rate, even with a greater number of total jobs? The unemployment % is not only reliant on the # of jobs available, but the state's population. So, let's look at that # and see if the story holds.
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It could also be asked, "What would it be like WITHOUT the tax cuts". The article is too one dimensional to be taken very seriously. Are financial and corporate management jobs disproportionately lost in certain places? ie lumberjack layoffs hit Oregon harder than Kansas and more shrimp fishermen lose jobs in Louisiana than North Dakota.
"The article is too one dimensional to be taken very seriously." Same could be said about DaleC.
Sorry to burst Mr. Cagle's bubble, but there has been a significant drop in unemployment since the 2005 tax cuts. Check out these charts from the University of GA: http://www.georgiastats.uga.edu/timeseries1.html While your there, take a look at the increases state wide in per-capita income, which had been flat prior to the 2005-era. I expect there to be a spike in unemployment in the as-yet-uncharted years of 2008 & 2009, but wtf do you want, we're in a global recession? It's settled economics that tax cuts, either on personal income or business, leads to economic growth. Case study: Ireland. Thomas - you know better than this, don't you? Please?
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