Just when you thought California (where I am temporarily hanging my hat) couldn’t get any more harebrained ideas than they already had, they are now thinking of making teachers exempt from state income taxes.
And here I thought the Left never saw a tax they didn’t like. Excerpt:
A bill moving through the state Legislature seeks to give California teachers a big tax break to entice them to enter the profession and stay — a nationally unprecedented approach to boosting salaries amid a shortage in the field.
Senate Bill 807 would exempt veteran teachers from paying state income tax for 10 years and help new teachers pay for their education and certification costs. Teachers with at least five years’ experience who earn a $75,000 salary would gain the equivalent of a 5 percent raise, saving nearly $4,000 on their annual tax bill.
About 300,000 teachers would benefit from the tax cut in the first year. The measure’s sponsors believe the financial support would increase the number of people entering the field and retain more educators who are already in classrooms.
A statewide teacher shortage has hit many districts hard, with more than 7,000 classrooms staffed by teachers operating under some type of emergency credential or waiver. The San Francisco Unified School District started the school year with 38 teacher vacancies.
Californians being economically illiterate (with a few notable exceptions) is nothing new. But this just beats all. The labor market is like any other market; supply and demand obtains. Any market will only pay a certain value for any commodity or service; when demand falls, so does the price.
But San Francisco, that home-base of nutballery that lies about 40 miles north of me as I type these words, has a different problem. Decades of restrictive zoning laws and NIMBY building restrictions have raised Bay Area property values through the roof and on into the stratosphere. Nice if you already own a home in the area (and have since the late Seventies) but lousy if you are trying to start a career there. I know the malady; my own Denver is seeing much the same thing on a smaller scale.
If young teachers were able to afford homes in the Bay Area, maybe they wouldn’t have trouble filling teacher positions. The solution is obvious – deregulate land use – but here in looney old Californey, it just ain’t gonna happen.
