"NY, California hitting up millionaires, again" by Michael Gormley Associated Press / December 10, 2011
ALBANY, N.Y.— In New York, an Occupy Albany movement has camped outside the Capitol all fall. At first, Cuomo, a Democrat who ran as a fiscal conservative last year, tried to evict them, only to be stymied by local Democratic district attorney and mayor.
Why couldn't more city officials have behaved that way?
Occupy Albany called Cuomo "Gov. 1 Percent" for opposing a millionaire tax and saying it would drive employers out of state.
Meanwhile the Democratic Party that Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his progressive allies head continued to push for a new millionaire tax to avoid more cuts to education and health care.
In November, Cuomo made a hard left and pushed for the millionaire tax increase passed Wednesday that includes a modest, but rare middle class tax break. The package also provided more spending for jobs programs....
But while there may be an immediate payoff in cash and politics, the long-term wisdom of soaking the rich has long been questioned.
But it's okay to soak the rest of us?
"As many states face increasingly large budget shortfalls that are often related to economic cycles, leaning on high-income earners and small businesses to pick up a disproportionate amount of the bill raises serious equity concerns and is bad for government revenue stability," said Scott Drenkard, an analyst with the Tax Foundation.
He notes many businesses, 94 percent of which file as individuals, and high-income earners have the most volatile income. If the economy continues to slip, they will have less revenue and that could further hurt businesses or prompt them to flee.
They are already fleeing and have for 30 years.
New York and California already share another distinction: They have experienced some of the greatest flight of taxpayers from 1999 to 2009 and have tax structures considered among the least attractive to businesses, according to the Tax Foundation.
"It reminds me of the Bob Dylan song, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing," said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College politics professor in New York City. He said continuing fiscal crisis and the Occupy Wall Street could force the same consideration elsewhere....
Hollywood moguls and Manhattan stock brokers are facing a slap by the Occupy Wall Street movement as California and New York again target high-wage earners to address a continued fiscal crisis in the states.
"Occupy turned the political conversation on its head," said Richard Brodsky, a senior fellow at the Wagner School at New York University. "Time was austerity and tax cuts were the only acceptable place to be. Now, income inequality and the 99 percent dominate practical politics."
There's no evidence of a national groundswell after more than a dozen states tapped their well-heeled residents for temporary income tax hikes from 2006-2009. But while most of those states let their temporary tax increases lapse as scheduled, New York and California this month went back to the well....
The common thread is that each state's finances are worse than most other states, and their Democratic leadership has felt pressure from the Occupy Wall Street movement and other progressives....
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