Considering the business world a money cow is completely naive. Advocating taxing more on “rich” people is way too liberal. The “rich”, if just defined by this amusing “above average” standard, are simply hard working people that are so often over-taxed. The “poor”, on the other hand, ironically include so many people who chose not to break a sweat on meaningful things. Taxing more (on business or hard working people) would kill the economic future for this state It is time to reverse the ill-desgined incentive and get the lazy asses to work. It is on this aspect that Mr. Philips is competely wrong. But please forgive him, he is an sociologist.

On the other hand, academic market is so much different from the regular job market. There are so much more that need to be changed before a competitive market can be expected. The pay for CSU faculty is so much below the national average of comparable positions. There is not much room for CSU faculty to move. CA government employees are over-paid in so many cases, unfortunately, the CSU faculty do not belong to the group.

I happened to believe that many campuses and programs of CSU offer excellent quality of education. Uniform paycut would undermine the good quality programs and campuses while keeping the poor ones alive. For programs that do not attract public interestes at all or for campuses that constantly fail to attract students, maybe it is time to re-org. I just do not see the point of sinking the whole boat because the under-performers can not be touched. I believe Mr. Philips is right on this point.

The purely bearucratic administration and the out-dated union are more to blame than the faculty. Efficiency is nowhere to be seen under the influence of the two forces.

You should please check with one of your legal colleagues….I don’t need your permission to post an email you send to me. Your numerous public postings put you in the public domain, and since YOU contacted ME and I made no warranties before, during, or after our communication and you made no request to the contrary, I am under no obligation to keep your correspondence private. I don’t know you (and clearly you don’t know me despite your ability to google my email address***), so please do not presume that anything you send me is “personal”. And please don’t threaten me, ever. I find that very rude.

Am I supposed to be surprised that you are a strong supporter of progressive taxation? You in CA already have one of the most progressive tax codes in the US. Would you like a more progressive tax code? Perhaps you should move to Sweden or Finland. The FACTS are that CA consistently ranks as one of the least business-friendly states in the country (you remember businesses, don’t you, they are those institutions that create JOBS for people). California’s real budget problems are largely due to the exodus of companies from the state over the last 20 years and the ongoing exodus of high wage earners, entrepreneurs, and other creators of jobs and prosperity to other places today. The semiconductor industry has left CA for OR, AZ, and TX. The movie industry has left, deciding to film more and more often in WA, Vancouver, and other locales. Startups are being created in Research Triangle Park, NC and Austin, TX and other similar locales at a much greater rate than within Silicon Valley or CA today. CA is a failed state due to an ill-advised proposition system that allows the public to support any special interest project without identifying the funding to support it, along with a collection of public unions (including yours) that have a stranglehold on the state’s finances.

You’ve failed to answer my question, why is it that the “rich” should be paying more?

You are correct to call the CSU system “Major” with the word in parentheses. Other than being the largest university system in the country, there is nothing “major” about the CSU system nor Sonoma State. With over 2 MM alumni, the best the system can do is laud Steven Speilberg, Peter Ueberroth, and Rosario Marin? These are great men and women, but let’s face it, the “hit rate” of accomplished alumni is rather low for a “major” university system. The list of significant research coming out of the 47,000 faculty members is similarly thin. More importantly, my point in an earlier post deserves reiteration–without the MASSIVE SUBSIDY provided by the citizens of the State of California, most of the CSU system would not exist. Certainly the CSU system fills an important social role, but all it really does is provide an average (at best) education at a far below average cost (thanks to that taxpayer subsidy). It’s a great deal for CSU students.

That someone in your area cannot afford an average home speaks less to the average salary level and more to the travesty that Proposition 13 has created for the state since its inception. Public policy that you probably support, correct? Let me presume to offer you some advice: instead of living in one of the nicest communities on Earth (Sonoma County), perhaps you should consider relocating to Chico, Humbolt, Fresno, or one of the many other CSU campuses located in a less expensive area. If enough of your colleagues did the same, the FREE MARKET would force the university administration you hold in such low regard to raise your salaries….

Please don’t end our dialogue, I do enjoy it so much.

Best regards.

***that’s a nice picture you copied, but do you really think that you are corresponding with an NBA basketball player who shops for Stanley furniture using online chat boards?????

Dear Peter,

Of course it’s a fact that tax cuts over the past 15 years have benefited the rich more than the poor….that’s because the rich pay nearly all of the taxes. Your argument is a tautology. When the richest 15% pay 85% of the taxes, any tax cut is going to benefit them more in terms of dollars. What you fail to mention–but what is also a fact–is that the state tax code has gotten MORE progressive over the same 15 years. So, as a proportion of taxes, and despite benefiting from tax cuts, the rich pay a greater share today than they did 15 years ago.

Do you have any basis for your assertion that the “rich should be paying more” or is that just an idle claim?

I am not wrong about state salaries. Check your facts. Turns out you’re actually one of the “rich” people you spend so much time complaining about. The average FT faculty member at Sonoma State made over $68,000 last year (source: stateuniversity.com), ranking your campus 594th out of 2000 colleges and universities in the US. So, your claim is completely bogus. Interestingly, the average FT faculty member at Sonoma State makes about 10% more than the California median income and a whopping 40% more than the US median income (source: US Census Bureau)–which means that the average person in CA or the US would call YOU “rich”. And that’s even before accounting for the tenure system and generous, union-backed benefits you enjoy. Moreover, since you’re a fully-tenured professor, you probably make well above this average.

In addition to being rich, it turns out that you are actually OVERPAID. While Sonoma State ranks 594th in terms of faculty compensation, it only ranks 641st (at the same service) for school quality nationwide. So, perhaps you should spend more time with your students in the classroom instead of complaining about state budget issues that seem too complex for you to understand or to opine on in an unbiased fashion.

Thank you for the dialogue, and best regards.

Dear Mr. Foster,

You wrote,
“he richest 1% of tax filers in CA pay nearly half of all taxes in the state, and the richest 15% pay over 80%. The reasons for the decreases State tax revenues have grown faster than inflation plus population growth in CA since 1990 but spending has grown even faster–the problem in CA is SPENDING, not taxes. ”

The rich should be paying more, but that doesn’t change the fact that the cuts in taxes over the past 15 years have benefited this segment almost entirely.

You are wrong about state salaries. We are the lowest paid university professors compared to all other major systems.

So we will just have to disagree,

Sincerely,

Peter Phillips

State employees are a big reason for this out of control spending. CA has among the most expensive state government workers in the country. CA accounts for 9% of US state employees, but 12% of US state government pay! What’s more, CA taxpayers fund 55% of the budget for the CSU system (where Phillips works), versus an average funding level of 30% elsewhere in the US. The heavily unionized state education system has one of the highest per student spending rates in the US, and still gives us a quality of education for our children ranked 48th out of 50 states.

So now you know Phillips agenda–he writes to keep state unions strong and salaries up not because he’s interested in what’s best for California, but because he’s interested in what’s best for himself. Phillips is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

In the interest of full disclosure, please allow me to state up front that I consider myself a politically unaffiliated conservative who is not a resident of California. Having said that, I have been watching California’s budget woes in the media as it represents a microcosm of what could happen in the nation as a whole.

I felt compelled to comment on your article for two main reasons.

The first is that your article appears to start out with the intention of being a fact based journalistic report; however, your piece also contains several opinion statements which, at least to me, makes this an editorial or commentary.

For instance, you state:

“Unions and working people need to say no to massive state budget cuts, and fight for every service and job possible. We must say no to voluntary furloughs and push for new taxes on the wealthy and largest corporations. CSU Professors should be the leaders for working people in the State. We must stand firm on no concessions, no furloughs, and no cuts in classes for our students.”

Clearly, you are not reporting facts in this paragraph but are stating an opinion and, since you appear to be one of the faculty potentially affected, a personal opinion at that. Perhaps I missed the intent of your article; and, if so, I suggest that you make it clear when you are reporting versus editorializing.

Secondly, if the aim of this project is to report in an unbiased manner, why ignore the other half of the story? You make some points about California’s budget crisis resulting from its tax policy; however, you completely ignore the issues of spending or other potential revenue sources. What about California’s cap on property taxes? What about potential revenue from offshore oil leases? What about cutting spending on entitlement programs? It’s as if you feel that the only solutions to California’s budget woes are “progressive” whether it be taxing the rich and corporations or furloughing management. We have to remember that every budgetary issues has two sides: income and spending. One person’s essential service or job is another person’s wasteful spending.

The bottom line for California and the nation as a whole is that hard choices have to be made. Responsible leaders (whether in government, industry or unions) know this and lead from the front. They show the people working under them or for them that they are going to make greater sacrifices than they are asking of others (Lee Iaccoca’s turn around of Chrysler comes to mind). We as citizens have to take responsibility for our choices, good and bad. If we have chosen our leaders poorly, if we have demanded entitlements far beyond our ability to support, if we have abdicated our freedoms in favor of comfort, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Over twenty-five CSU faculty have responded to the op-ed below calling for a negative vote on furloughs. Responses are running 5-1 opposing the furlough plan. The common negative response seems to be mostly that if we don’t give in to furloughs a lot of our colleagues will be laid off. Unfortunately this is true, but over 1,000 lecturers have already been laid off in the past year, and many more will face lay-off wither we approve furloughs or not.

According to the California Budget Project, tax cuts enacted in California since 1993 cost the state $11.3 billion dollars annually. Had the state continued taxing corporations and the wealthy at rates equal to those fifteen years ago we would not have a budget crisis today.

The massive cuts to the CSU are not here just because of the recession. The recession had been long predicted. As working class faculty it is up to us to declare that there has been a deliberate effort to create an artificial-fiscal crisis in order to force massive give backs by unionized state workers.

Several faculty have declared that given the cost of living in California that they are barely making it and a 10% cut will mean that they are unable to meet their basic expenses. Many lecturers, like my friend Larry Bensky a nineteen-year instructor at CSU Eastbay, have been told they will not be back in the fall. Under the artificial state fiscal crisis, we will continue to see a systematic laying off of lecturers as we have in the past year.

The CSU system will not be able to immediately lay-off 9,000 lecturers and still offer adequate classes for students currently enrolled. If the unions bail out the state with voluntary wage reductions we are only delaying the inevitable without challenging the capital class in California. We must stand together in partnership with students to both challenge our elected officials and if need be move to a more open withdrawal of our labor to protect our lecturer colleagues and our students.

We have yet to hear that anyone is proposing a graduated progressive furlough plan for which management personnel and presidents would have the highest percent salary declines, and the lowest paid faculty/employees the least or none at all. When such a move happens then perhaps we should support a temporary suspension of our agreed salary increases under the union contract. In the mean time we haven’t seen the state honoring our hard-won contract with promised cost of living increases and instead we are being asked to take reductions. It is time to say no, enough is enough!