What would be good questions to stir up controversy with this economist?

[dpakman91]

I'm interviewing an economist on my radio show tomorrow that is supporting a republican candidate for state senate against the incumbent democrat. Here are the items that the candidate wants to do inorder to "create jobs and raise the standard of living for all people in the district." The economist supports these items.

New Jobs, Better Jobs
Last year, Massachusetts ranked second to last in job growth. Only Michigan, suffering from massive reductions in the auto industry, faired more poorly than we. Even hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi created more jobs than Massachusetts!
Politicians have never and will never be able to efficiently and effectively predict where innovation and real job growth will take place. It is time that we tackle the fundamentals that help all sectors of our economy, not just the largest campaign donors. When we offer across the board incentives, we not only drive job growth, we pull the teeth from industrial special interest groups who hire former political leaders as lobbyists.
New Job Tax Credit
Our goal in economic development is to create new jobs and better-paying jobs for Massachusetts workers. Why don't we just incentivize THAT instead of creating all sorts of special loopholes that benefit political cronies instead of workers?
To that end, I propose a New Jobs Tax Credit that allows companies to double-deduct the wages and benefits of net new positions from their next three years of state income taxes, provided they keep those jobs filled.
All companies, from the smallest mom-and-pops to multinational corporations, count employee wages and benefits as a reduction in revenue, which lowers the amount of profits that a company pays taxes on. What I'm proposing is very simple. Every year in which a business employs more people than the year before, they get count those new employees' wages and benefits TWICE when determining how much state income tax the company has to pay.
This program only benefits companies that INCREASE the number of jobs and then keep those people employed. Companies can't just keep laying people off and hiring new people to get the credit. It's a simple, straightforward program that encourage companies to hire more people.

End the Personal Income Tax Increase
In 2000, the voters of Massachusetts overwhelming voted to roll back the income tax to 5%. Incumbent Stan Rosenberg and the legislature disregarded your wishes and the will of millions of voters and froze the personal income tax rate at 5.3%. They argued that the "roll back" is tied to revenues, but every year revenues go up and the "roll back" remains stalled. Why? Because they continue to change the revenue "threshold".
I believe we should obey the will of the voters. It's your money, after all. Massachusetts is losing population at a time when all other states are gaining. We will probably lose one congressional seat after the 2010 Census and we could even lose a second!
People are leaving because of high taxes and a high cost of living. Keeping faith with the voters and rolling back the personal income tax will help keep young people in the Commonwealth and bring new people to Massachusetts. As our population stabilizes and our economy grows, we can take the initiative and move to roll back the income tax even further.

* More Information
* Ballot Question Vote Results

Reduce Our Country's 4th Highest Corporate Tax Rate
For decades, our state has tried to micromanage the economy through a series of politically-convenient tax breaks and incentives targeted to specific, Democrat-friendly industries and business activities. The Lopsided Legislature's record on job creation is a dismal failure.
Last year, Massachusetts ranked second to last in job growth. Only Michigan, suffering from massive reductions in the auto industry, faired more poorly than we. Even hurricane-ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi created more jobs than Massachusetts!
Politicians have never and will never be able to efficiently and effectively predict where innovation and real job growth will take place. It is time that we tackle the fundamentals that help all sectors of our economy, not just the largest campaign donors. When we lower corporate taxes across the board, we not only drive job growth, we pull the teeth from industrial special interest groups who hire former political leaders as lobbyists.
Massachusetts has the fourth highest corporate income tax rate in the country, 9.5%, a major encouragement for companies to move jobs elsewhere. The states bordering Massachusetts charge most corporations between 7.5% and 9.0%. To make Massachusetts competitive again, we must at the very least reduce our tax burden so that we're competitive with our neighbors, say from 9.5% to 8%. Combined with my New Job Tax Credit, this tax cut will spur economic growth in all sectors of the Massachusetts economy, create tens of thousands of new jobs, and bring business back to Massachusetts. This in turn, will increase our overall revenues, reducing tax burdens on our most vulnerable citizens while helping us to close critical budget shortfalls, such as bridge repair and education.

* Corporate Tax Rates in America

Permanent Sales Tax Holiday
After three years, Massachusetts' retailers and consumers are dependent on a sales tax holiday towards the end of the summer, when sales are usually sluggish and parents are looking for back-to-school bargains. Last year, the sales tax holiday put over $64 million dollars into the economy and created 162 new jobs. Yet the legislature almost failed to renew the last year's sales tax holiday.
Worse still, they rejected a proposal to make the sales tax holiday a permanent annual event. Retailers and consumers need predictability for business and household budget planning purposes. The fate of their pocketbooks should not depend on the whim and fuzzy memory of the legislature.
We must also remember that mid-August is the anniversary of the many local tax-protest meetings that ultimately led to Shays' Rebellion. To that end, I propose that we permanently declare the weekend closest to August 17 as "Tax-Free Weekend" in honor of Daniel Shays and the thousands of brave Massachusetts citizens whose sacrifices inspired the United States Constitution.

* More Information

Property Tax Relief
Any candidate for State Senate or any other State office who promises to reduce property taxes is lying to you. Property taxes a dependant on municipal spending and real relief will come from city and town leaders. The state legislature can help local leaders by providing predictability, cost savings, and by protecting proposition 2 -1/2. I will do all three:
Predictability
Predictability in Budgeting
In election years, politicians like to finish the state budget early so they can go back to their districts to campaign. In non-campaign years the legislature takes more time to harangue over the budget and to fight for their particular interests. The unreliability of the legislature's budget makes local budgeting a giant guessing game. A two-year budgeting process would smooth out the lumps give the legislature time to work on other pressing issues.

* Harvard Report on Two-Year Budgets

Predictability in Revenue Sharing
When financial crises hit the Commonwealth, the legistlature targets cities and towns first. Teachers, fire-fighters, police officers, and road crews, the people who most directly affect your life, always seem to get the axe. When Beacon Hill has problems, the politicians squeeze cities and towns. These local governments' only way of making up the difference is to raise property taxes.
The pain of a financial crisis should be shared equally by the state and local. A shared revenue plan would ensure that the state would have to tighten its belt in tough times, instead of shove the blame and hardship off on our towns.
To that end, I support legislation or even an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution requiring that at least 40% of all state revenues be returned directly to municipal governments according to an equitable formula, not based on policial whim and patronage. This formula must guarantee that Western Massachusetts gets its fair share of tax revenue. Furthermore, this money must be free of strings or mandates. Only the basic rules of ethics and accountability should limit how local governments can spend these funds.

* More Information

Predictability in Promises Kept
More than two hundred years after Shays' Rebellion, Beacon Hill continues to promise help that it lacks the will or the means to provide. Many towns are still waiting for promised payments "in lieu of" property taxes on state lands. Other towns banded together to form regional school districts based on a state promise to pay for bussing. Those towns are still waiting for the transportation help the state offered. The full list of unfunded obligations will probably never be known.
To that end, I support 100% funding of promised regional school transportation support and local property tax reimbursement. I also propose that the legislature irrevocably fund for two full-time "Sunshine" employees in the State Auditor's office who will continually check past and current government activity for broken promises and then report those lapses to the legislature and to the media. If honor will not motivate legislators to keep their obligations, maybe public shame will.
Cost Savings
Revisit the Prevailing Wage Law
In 1988, the voters supported the Massachusetts Prevailing Wage Law in an attempt to guarantee that public works employees would be fairly compensated. Twenty years of cost overruns, tunnel collapses, and political graft later it is time we re-examine the costs that this incurs on the taxpayers.
With a massive backlog on bridge and school repair due to limited funds, we need to consider whether cities and towns in Western Massachusetts should have to pay Boston rates for construction work. In 1988, this law cost taxpayers $200 million a year. Not counting inflation, that is about $4 BILLION- roughly enough to build a subway connecting Greenfield, Northampton, and Amherst!
I would commission a study that would examine the costs of the Prevailing Wage Law to every town and every voter in Massachusetts over the last 20 years. With all of the facts I would put the question back to the voters.

* More Information
* Massachussetts Information

Allow Civilian Flagmen
Massachusetts is the only state in the Union that requires a police officer to stand at every roadwork site. Isn't it more important to have those officers catching criminals instead of waving cars around traffic cones? Even if we only used overtime and never had to pull a cop off the beat to flag construction, don't our police officers deserve some time with their families? How can a few hours of overtime ever compensate for missing a child's ballgame or recital? How can lost sleep and extra shifts of standing out in the freezing rain help hardworking officers to maintain the upbeat attitude so critical to good community policing?
Allowing civilians to serve as flagmen at most construction sites will save millions of dollars, reduce crime, give our brave police officers much needed family time, and improve community relations between officers and the public.

* More Information
* Boston.com Article
* Boston.com Editorial

Proposition 2-1/2 Protection
Proposition 2-1/2 limits the amount that towns can raise property taxes each year. This helps seniors, working families, and first-time homebuyers to afford to keep living in Massachusetts. Before it was passed, some towns greatly boosted tax rates every year, just one reason that our state used to be called "Taxachusetts"
Stop H 2840
House Bill 2840 is an attempt to undermine Proposition 2-1/2 by exempting seniors, so as to encourage them to vote for tax increases on the young that they themselves will not have to pay. Education advocates are right when they say that all citizens benefit from public schools, and everyone should have a vested interest in any tax increase and weigh it carefully before making the best decision for their community.

* More Information
Stop Efforts to Repeal Proposition 2-1/2.
Periodically there are efforts to repeal or run around Proposition 2-1/2. I am opposed to those efforts. Proposition 2-1/2 does not stop wise expenditures, it just ensures that municipalities have to ask you, the People, before making significant increases in your property taxes.

[7960]

ask him about the tolls, and what he proposes to do about the mismanagement, and how he's going to end the practice of writing payroll checks for employees from bond issues that are being paid back in what amounts to a 20 year mortgage

MassHighway now has over four-fiths of its workforce on payroll funded by bond issues even though most of them are working on current maintenance and operations. In addition to payroll "items such as rent, office supplies and litter pick-up are being amortized over 20 years" by using bond proceeds to fund them. Future revenues are being mortgaged in the notorious federal Grant Anticipation Notes and by various other 'innovative' funding techniques, the commission reports.

Comments the commission: "Moderate use of debt for longterm capital assets is reasonable. Use of debt to pay for day to day operations such as grass cutting is symptomatic of a broken system."

Massachusetts' mismanagement of turnpike detailed | Toll Roads News

[goldenponderbob]

Here's a good basic economics question for anyone who wishes to leave a political discussion better informed then before tuning in?

Can the term "monetarist" (normally associated with conservatism) be explained in language a layperson would understand as it applies to Clinton's having raised the hell out of taxes but left office with a surplus, while Bush cut taxes but left the nation burdened with tremendous and steadily mounting debt?

In short, which came closer to adhereing to the tenets of monetarist theory, "Liberal Bill" or "Conservative George"?

goldenponderbonb

[Phantom]

For decades, our state has tried to micromanage the economy through a series of politically-convenient tax breaks and incentives targeted to specific, Democrat-friendly industries and business activities. The Lopsided Legislature's record on job creation is a dismal failure.

Wow. I think this would be an interesting topic for discussion, just to see if he's a hack, or he's got a point.

I support legislation or even an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution requiring that at least 40% of all state revenues be returned directly to municipal governments according to an equitable formula, not based on policial whim and patronage.

Any evidence of what's the status quo? The studies I've seen usually show rural/less populated areas are the benefactors of redistribution, not the other way around.

Massachusetts is the only state in the Union that requires a police officer to stand at every roadwork site.

LOL at cops waving flags.

His ideas seem more Reagan-esque than crazy economic theories to me. Have fun with him.