The explosion of income and wealth among New Mexico’s richest, the dramatic drop in their personal state income tax rates, our state lawmakers’ budget cuts for the past three years, the cutting of public services, and the cutting of education for the middle class, working poor, and poor are coming home to roost.
What’s happened to the average New Mexican, whose pay has been stagnant for the last 30 years? Today’s 30-year-old male, if he has a job (more than 45 percent of young people in Northern New Mexico don’t), is earning the same pay as a 30-year-old male earned 30 years ago, adjusted for inflation.
Although women in New Mexico are doing better than they did 30 years ago, their pay still trails men’s.
According to expert national and state economists (Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, Gerry Bradley), the bottom 90 percent of New Mexicans now earn, on average, about $280 more per year than they did 30 years ago. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century.
Our families are only doing better because so many of us now must rely on two incomes.
Where did the money go?
New Mexico’s economy is more than twice as large now as it was 30 years ago. So, where did the money go?
The richest New Mexicans’ share of income (annual net incomes of $72,000 or more) has doubled: from about 9 percent in 1977 to over 20 percent now. The richest one-tenth of 1 percent’s share of income has tripled.
Given this explosion of income for the wealthiest New Mexicans, we might think our state’s personal income tax system would demand a larger share from them. But we would be wrong.
New Mexico’s state senators and representatives cut personal state income taxes for the rich in 2003. The wealthiest New Mexicans also spend only about 4.5 percent of their income on all state taxes combined, while the rest of us pay about 10 percent of our income.
Even before the recession, the share of New Mexico’s total income that went to the middle class, working poor, and poor had shrunk. Our tax burden had grown. We were paying a bigger chunk of our incomes in payroll taxes and sales taxes than decades before. Then came the 2008 stock market crash, the recession, and lower state tax revenues.
All levels of New Mexico’s state government are squeezed. The middle class, working poor, and poor can’t pay more in taxes. But our lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, seem to lack the guts to support the obvious: Restore personal state income tax rates on the rich to 2003 levels, and close out-of-state corporate income tax loopholes.
Enough
Three years of state budget cuts have resulted in the elimination of thousands of K-12 and higher education employee positions. More public services and public service jobs have been cut, too. But the richest New Mexicans and out-of-state corporations are allowed by our lawmakers to continue to enjoy state income-tax cuts and corporate income tax loopholes.
This is where some Democrats and most Republicans want New Mexico to be: Blame state government, blame public employees, and blame unions. Pit public- and private-sector employees against one another, divide the voters, waste critical time on wedge issues, frustrate the public, promote the false idea that we’re in a zero-sum game. Promote that New Mexico can’t afford to do anything, but cut education and public services again.
The overwhelming majority of New Mexicans see how the richest among us, and out-of-state corporations, are doing. We see their tax cuts, their tax giveaways and tax exemptions. We see and feel results of budget cuts to our schools, colleges, universities and public services.
We see. We say, “Ya Vasta! Bastante!”
New Mexicans, demand that state senators and representatives raise these revenues before they go home March 19:
- Restore state personal income tax rates on the richest New Mexicans.
- Require out-of-state corporations to pay state income taxes on profits earned in the Land of Enchantment.
If our lawmakers do this, they will help restore balance to a distribution of income and wealth that’s dangerously out of whack in New Mexico.
Dare Martinez to veto revenue-raising bills
The people, especially the north, have heard enough excuses from lawmakers. We say, “Stand-up to Governor Martinez!” Put these revenue-raising bills on her desk. We dare her to veto them.
New Mexicans, especially the north, dare Gov. Martinez to run to for re-election on her vetoes of revenue-raising bills. If she does, the odds are overwhelming that she will be the first Hispanic female one-term governor of New Mexico.
“John Adams,” with Red Chili Revolution Productions, is a native New Mexican born in Roosevelt County. He works in the north. He is a public employee union member with 44 years teaching experience at university and secondary levels. For now, “John Adams” conceals his full identity due to retaliatory threats to “cease and desist” from using social media as a means for organizing, advocating and pressuring our state lawmakers to raise revenues.