Blog fight!
Today, the folks over at BSB are up with a response to my flogging of them yesterday.
A quick recap:
1) They jumped on a Kasich remark about waiting to implement increased tax cuts until the economy stablized. They felt it was impossible to define a ‘stabilized economy’.
2) I responded by saying a normalization of the unemployment rate would be necessary before tax cuts could take place. After all, why cut taxes on people that don’t pay taxes?
If that is the case, then that disproves the main hypothesis of Kasich’s rationale for repealing Ohio’s income tax. You’ve just stated that Ohio’s unemployment rate can return to the natural rate of unemployment without the repeal of Ohio’s income tax rate. Therefore, the state’s income tax rate is not a serious barrier to entry for employers to create jobs in Ohio’s market.
Except that’s not the only motivation for tax cuts.
The BSB guys seem to think as long as everyone has a job, everyone is happy.
Wrong.
Kasich has long been an advocate of bringing quality jobs to Ohio. That can’t happen with a business tax climate that’s 47th in the nation.
And are the jobs we currently have left quality jobs? No. Since the Governor took office, Ohio’s median income, the best gauge to judge job quality, has increased at almost half the rate of the national average.
That means that not only are we losing jobs under Ted Strickland, but we’re only holding onto jobs that pay less than the national average.
That’s not good.
The way to fix it? Encourage innovative businesses to come to the state via lower taxes that help all Ohioans.
And giving the taxpayers a little extra money to invest and spend into the economy doesn’t hurt much either.
Case closed.
