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June 11, 2010
It’s Friday!
Do you enjoy the Friday Facts? Want more? GPPF Policy Points are brief items that the Georgia Public Policy Foundation sends daily out on Facebook and Twitter, along with links to more information. This week subscribers learned how states with no personal income taxes are doing, what Georgia could do to improve public transportation, and what will revolutionize the state of public education. Sign up on Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/y9uagnq. Follow our Tweets at http://twitter.com/gppf.
Quotable
- "Nothing is more damaging to a state than that cunning men pass for wise." – Francis Bacon
- "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." – Thomas Paine, "The American Crisis"
Taxes
- Over the last decade, the nine states with no personal income tax experienced greater levels of growth in GSP rates. Over the last decade, states with no personal income tax outperformed states with the highest tax rates by 26.5 percent and exceeded the U.S. average by 20 percent. Source: www.ALEC.org, "Rich States, Poor States"
Economy
- Why aren't we making more progress against poverty? Robert Samuelson suggests that our measurement is faulty. He notes that only a family's pretax income is included in total income when determining their poverty level. Thus, despite the fact that the average poor household receives $28,000 dollars in welfare benefits annually, these benefits are not included in their income. Not surprisingly then, even though the United States has increased welfare spending by thirteen-fold (adjusting for inflation) since the war on poverty began in 1965, the poverty rate has stayed much the same. However, the standard of living for the poor has increased substantially: Today, 43 percent of the poor own their own homes (80 percent have air conditioning and only 6 percent say they are overcrowded), approximately 75 percent own a car, 97 percent own a television, and nearly 80 percent have a VCR or DVD player.
- For the second year in a row, philanthropy has seen the deepest decline ever recorded by the Giving USA Foundation, which has tracked annual giving since 1956. You can help break the trend by clicking here!
Environment
- The vine that ate the South could be the vine that pollutes the South: At a test site in Madison County, Ga., scientists studied the potential effect of kudzu on ozone pollution.They compared the emissions of ozone-causing nitrogen oxides from soils where kudzu had invaded with sites where it was absent. The invasive vine more than doubled nitrogen oxide emissions. "We found that this chemical reaction caused by kudzu leads to about a 50 percent increase in the number of days each year in which ozone levels exceed what the Environmental Protection Agency deems as unhealthy," said study co-author Manuel Lerdau. "This increase in ozone completely overcomes the reductions in ozone realized from automobile pollution control legislation." Source: Sciencedaily.com
- "When the Deepwater Horizon first started gushing oil, many considered the incident an example of private enterprise having no regard for the environment. However, it is becoming clear that government was involved from the start, is in charge now and cannot do much about the problem," says Ian Murray, vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in an interesting article in the National Review.
Transportation
- Public transit is often portrayed as a low-cost, energy-efficient alternative to auto driving. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O'Toole debunks that portrayal in an Issue Analysis for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. "In fact, transit is much more costly than driving, and requires huge subsidies to attract any riders at all," writes O'Toole in, "Public Transit in Georgia: High Costs for Low Fares," which was released this week by the Foundation.
- The goals of tolls: The reasons for pricing roads can differ. Tolling can be used for revenue generation, demand management, transit promotion and environmental improvements, as shown in projects in London, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic and Singapore. In Singapore, for example, all net funds collected via its electronic road pricing are returned to the general fund and redistributed to road users in the form of vehicle ownership tax rebates, "which further emphasizes that the purpose of road pricing is not to generate revenue but to improve service levels during peak hours," reports a U.S. "international scan" team that included Georgia Transportation Commissioner Vance Smith. Source: www.FHWA.gov
- $$$ from PPPs: One proposal in the Foundation Agenda's chapter on transportation is, "Facilitate private enterprise involvement in transportation improvements." At an infrastructure investment conference in Miami this month, DOT Commissioner Vance Smith acknowledged the crucial need for public-private partnerships in Georgia, saying, "[T]he funds just aren’t there. So we have to build up a partnership to work on those projects." Click on the link to read more. Source: Infrastructure Investor
- Visit www.gppf.org to read the Foundation’s latest commentary, "Rail Transit Losing Traction," by C. Kenneth Orski.
Have a great weekend.
Kelly McCutchen
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