Roads, education issues face SC Legislature

Tim Cook said recently on “60 Minutes” that Apple would prefer to return iPhone manufacturing to the U.S., but there aren't sufficient workers available who are trained in manufacturing skills. He further said the U.S. has only a couple dozen technical colleges that train students for manufacturing jobs, while China has a thousand schools training their workers.

And at present, there are over 5 million good-paying jobs open in the U.S. that can’t be filled due to a lack of qualified applicants and skilled workers who are readily available. Education can be an important economic driver, but seems to be given little priority in S.C. where ideology seems to reign supreme.

It was also interesting to note in a recent GOP debate much was said about the obligatory “tax cut” idea to grow the economy, but nothing about education as an economic engine. According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, there’s no evidence that cutting top marginal income rates spurs growth.

Studies over the past six decades have found that top tax rates “have had little association with saving, investment or productivity growth,” but reductions in the top marginal rates have led to greater income inequality. In other words, the “cuts don’t affect the size of the economic pie, but can affect how the pie is sliced.”

South Carolina will have over a billion dollars extra available for the 2017 budget due to our returning economy. Gov. Nikki Haley wants to use these extra funds to cut the top income tax rate, but says little about restoring educational funds that were cut during the recession. State funding to S.C. universities has similarly been seriously reduced, but again no word on restoring funds, only complaints about tuition increases.

The S.C. Department of Transportation has said we have a $1.4 billion annual shortfall, and some have proposed a 10-12 cents a gallon gas tax increase to pay toward improving our “D” classification roads system. Our gas tax has not been changed since 1987, and during these 29 years car mileage has improved about 50 percent, reducing revenues. Haley has proposed $340 million of one-time money and would agree to a 10-cent gas tax increase, if it is offset by reducing the top income bracket from 7 percent to 5 percent.

This “compensation” would be a windfall for the wealthy (some receiving tens of thousands of dollars) while those with lower income would see little or no benefit, even though they would pay the higher gas tax. To truly compensate, if it must be done, why not increase the income exemption from $5,000 to whatever is appropriate to cover the offset?. That way, all taxpayers would be compensated rather than just the wealthier ones. And instead of phasing in over several years, the new gas tax should be put in place now while gas prices are so low.

The writer lives in Myrtle Beach.

This story was originally published February 22, 2016 at 8:27 AM with the headline "Roads, education issues face SC Legislature."