To the editor:
Public education in Massachusetts faces continuing challenges, for our students, our educators, and our educational facilities. Concerns about mental and physical health are compounded by the daily difficulties in finding qualified teachers, paraprofessionals, and substitutes. Amazingly, many institutions cannot even provide some full-time employees a living wage or health and retirement benefits.
Public services like education depend on taxes. The Commonwealth’s tax structure struggles to support meeting these challenges. Yet in a state with a combined annual income of $600 billion, we surely have enough resources. Upon further review, it’s demonstrably obvious that not everyone has been paying their fair share. For the bottom 90 percent of Massachusetts wage earners, income grew only about 5 percent from 1988 to 2015, while for the top 5 percent, income grew 86 percent, and for the top 1 percent, an amazing 150 percent. The wealthiest also reaped nearly all — 83 percent — of the benefits from the 2017 tax bill. Furthermore, the wealth of the 19 billionaires in Massachusetts increased by $17 billion during the first three months of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s time for the top earners to pay their fair share.
The Fair Share Amendment is a state constitutional amendment that establishes an annual dedicated revenue stream for public education, public transportation, and infrastructure. By assessing a 4-percent surtax on income solely above 1 million dollars, it will raise an additional $1–2 billion annually. The Fair Share Amendment will relieve pressure to cannibalize budgets that provide for critical needs, services, and programs while earmarking this new revenue for two fundamental contributors to a healthy economy and productive lives — education and infrastructure — and relieve the pressure of graduating future generations into a life with crushing debt.
We will all do better when we all do better. Taxes are the cost of a civilized society, and all should share them, fairly. Yet now they are overwhelmingly borne by the workers while avoided by the wealthy. It is high time the highest income brackets contributed their fair share. It’s time we put our collective resources to work where our espoused and constitutionally enshrined interests and values are. Please vote for the Fair Share Amendment on November 8.
Sincerely,
Neil Clarke
MTA Senate District Coordinator
