I agree with your bottom line Matt, and will vote for this tax.

But it's highly ironic for anyone even remotely associated with the Mercury to criticize another paper for taking an editorial stance. The Mercury is ALL editorial content. This blog post for instance....

@Blabby Once again: Our stance on journalistic objectivity is that it's a pretense generally adopted by rich white powerful men in America. At the Mercury we strive to be fair and accurate, and up-front with our own biases.

Going home this Christmas to England, I was trying to explain the idea to friends. They said it was "ridiculous." In the UK, if you lean right, you read the Daily Mail or the Telegraph. If you lean left, you read the Guardian. Same news, different slant. Better papers, though, I'd argue, than most we have over here.

Also: A local Democratic party precinct is organizing another public forum on the measures this Saturday, 10AM at Friendly House (1737 NW 26th). Senator Suzanne Bonamici and Rep Mitch Greenlick will be there for the discussion.

It would be amusing to see an Oregon voter that understands economics.

Read this very, very slowly and try to comprehend people:

The "rich" do not pay these taxes. They raise prices and slash jobs. So in reality YOU pay the taxes.

Government pensioners and unions sometimes can figure this out on their own, but they won't tell you that since they're the ones getting your cash.

Hehe. Nice article. I'll be voting Yes.

@D: It's a good but often forgotten point; it's like when someone wins a big settlement against, say, Verizon. They haven't "stuck it to the man", they've just made the man get more creative with his accounting.

Personally, I'm still undecided on either measure. :\

It is in the Oregonian's economic interest for the measures to fail because,
1. There will be sensational news coverage of the impact of the cuts, selling marginally more papers;
2. The followon campaigns to fill the budget gap and opposition to them will generate more ad revenue, and 3. perhaps they will have to pay more corporate tax.

D knows the score.

Matt, I'd also point out that the conclusions of the two editorials you are contrasting are basically the same: the group to be taxed should sit down with the legislature and come up with something more modest.

tk, my two cents: I'm voting for the business tax because it hasn't been raised since 1931 and is, in fact, ridiculously low.

I'm not voting for the income tax. Most people earning that much are small business owners or otherwise in the position to employ people. Ironically, hitting these people in the pocket book with an income tax will likely have a greater negative impact on employment then the direct business tax.

As has been noted on Blogtown and elsewhere, our job market sucks, and at some point we have to get serious about making it better.

@Blabby: Thanks for the insight. I was leaning against "no" on the income tax because, although the carrot of "no taxes on unenjoyment" sounds useful for people, we already have incredibly high income taxes and taxes rarely get removed or reduced. Sure, I don't make $250k+ now but, you know, I'd like to...

I would love your suggestions for questions for both sides during our endorsement interviews this week...

Well except for your added comment - I'd say the trip to the UK served you well to rebirth your journalist skills. How long will it take before you are the wayward child? It is a good article.

Matt, thank you for the offer. I think my question for proponents would be:

It seems to a lifetime Oregonian like the state budget is perpetually in crisis, particularly school funding, and we are regularly told that the "end is near." What is it about these tax increases which will prevent a budget crisis from looming again in a few years? If that happens will you advocate more tax increases?

I know it's a common name, but is the Scott Moore of the Yes For Oregon campaign the same Scott Moore that writes/wrote here on Blogtown? And if so, wouldn't that be worth mentioning, since we're talking of journalistic ethics type stuff?

I know my understanding of the topic is very simplistic, but I've always thought that - in general, you don't want to tax corporations. That profit becomes income for the employees and the shareholders - who are already being taxed on their income. Any profit left over after those payouts is used to grow the business. By taxing the corporation itself, you're in effect double-taxing the actual people involved, and reducing the company's ability to reinvest and do better than next year.

Saying "Company C earned $100 million last year and only paid $10 in taxes!" is very misleading. That profit went to it's shareholders, who were taxed on it, individually.

@CH: Scott used to have my job. Yes. But we went ON and ON about this, doing full disclosures for the first year after he left. It's been two years now, at least, and everyone's written for the Mercury at some point.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Michael Jackson was once a Mercury intern.

Etcetera. Gets a bit "same" after a while. You know?

Fair enough, though in this case, since the jab "reads more like a press release put out by the Portland Business Alliance" makes an appearance, it's probably fair to remind the reader of your own conflict of interest.

I'll be voting "yes" on both measures, btw.

Reymont - there's one bit missing from your case there. Many (most?) of the companies that will be affected by the tax increase aren't Oregon-only companies. The profits they make become income for their shareholders and employees, and if those shareholders happen to be Oregonian then the state gets the money anyway via personal taxes. So for those people your argument holds true. But if you don't tax the corporations doing business here, the money ends up in the pockets of people the state can't get at. And the net result is that we all end up paying to subsidize the quality of life in the Virgin Islands, and places like that.

A fair tax policy has a balance. You can argue all day about where the right balance is (and economists do...), but putting all the burden onto one form of tax makes no sense. It would be like relying solely on business taxes to fund public transit, or relying solely on income taxes with no sales tax, and we'd never do something as ridiculous as that...

Regarding slashed jobs:
In Multnomah County alone, this measure determines how many K-12 school staff, social workers, PSU and PCC staff, correctional facility staff, and many other state employees get to keep their jobs. (http://voteyesfororegon.org/map/multnomah.…)

As a teacher entering the job market, I would just LOVE it if 66 and 67 passed.

I also agree that as a lifetime Oregonian, we do seem to constantly struggle with school funding. Lots of programs face the chopping block again and again. What is it about these taxes that will prevent another budget crisis?

It's true, it won't fix a systematic undervaluing of public education or the state's reliance on revenue from a boom-bust economy.

However, I'm seeing a general refusal to change a 79-year-old $10 corporate tax because some citizens don't want to set a precedent for tax increases. That refusal is not going to assuage any budget crisis, now or ever.

If the measures fail - congratulations: You will have really stood up to state government. You will have really shown them. And as you do so, our state's children, seniors, and any citizens who benefit from public safety and healthcare will find themselves dealing with the consequences.

Why is the repeated phrase "taxes on corporations and the rich"? This seems to conflate two issues.

Most people agree that progressive income taxes make sense. But Matt doesn't seem to rebut the O's point, even though he quotes it: that taxing gross revenue (as opposed to net profit) is dumb and regressive.

Taxing a high-volume business that doesn't make much profit only adds to the price of doing that business. This makes it a regressive tax.

Doesn't it?

The "don't tax the people that create the jobs" argument falls flat: Who are we going to tax instead? The people who get the jobs? Won't they just ask the for more money from the people that create the jobs, resulting in, "no difference at all."

No, it doesn't, but to understand why, you have to understand why taxing the rich doesn't cause job losses in the first place. If you don't understand that, then you need to come up with a different explanation as to why it isn't the same thing...

I suspect that the real reason that most people are opposed to these are because they are opposed to taxes in general. I don't know if they don't realize that taxes pay for things, or if they do realize that, and they actually want to privatize everything, (like some IMF structured refinance in a third world country: That tends to end up very badly for 99.9% of the population, and the other 0.1% need bodyguards and armored cars so they don't get much out of the deal either.)

@Matthew D: Won't they just ask for more money, no matter what?

I don't think that most people are opposed to taxes in general. I think that most people believe that 30% of their income is *enough* to pay in taxes, and they see the government as a mismanaged, bloated bureaucratic structure that's never going to want *less* tax, only more.

@michaelanderson nearly every corporation manages their money so as to report as little profit as possible IN ORDER TO AVOID PAYING TAXES

@michaelanderson > corporations manage their money, and accounting, so as to minimize taxable profits

Matthew D, I'm not opposed to paying some taxes and I'm not opposed to government being involved in many things.

But as you get older, you realize that the government NEVER has enough money. In the best of times, in the greatest of boom years, ask a teacher if schools have enough money. Ask a social worker if their agency has enough money. Ask the city if its doing as much planning as it would like, has large enough road crews.

How much is too much to spend on our kids? Or the elderly? The answer is that there is literally never enough. But we can't literally tax people at 100%.

This is some economics, but easy enough: government jobs are not actually part of the "productive" economy. I don't say that to hurt feelings or devalue govt workers and the hard jobs and long hours they work. Really, I don't.

But these jobs are funded by taxing the economic activities of the private sector. The economic activities of the private sector have to be productive enough, and generate enough revenue to pay for itself, AND pay for the operation of public sector. The public sector doesn't generate revenues. It consumes revenues.

These measures will likely pass. But I encourage all of you to pay attention, and watch for the next time that the state and schools are in a dire, "once in a generation" crisis. It will likely happen again within the next five-to-seven years. It's always been like that here.

@Blabby: One of my favorite versions of the "boy who cried wolf" tale was the one that involved dire ballot measures in Multnomah in 2002-3, without which, to hear it told, countless firemen, policemen, and teachers would be without jobs. The measure did not pass, but they miraculously they found the funds and didn't have to make any staff cuts.

@MichaelAndersen: No. It makes it a way to tax corporations that pay high priced accountants to hide their profits as expenses, like the cost of high priced accountants.