While governors in so-called red states have labored to make the impossible Reagan dream of balancing their budgets by lowering taxes a reality, Governor Mark Dayton of Minnesota went in a totally different direction. He raised taxes. He raised the minimum wage. He promoted pay equity and online voter registration. He did all of this despite being himself a 1-percenter working for his first two years with a Republican legislature. From the GOP standpoint, it was a recipe for disaster. By now, Dayton should be the Minnesotan equivalent of Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis all rolled into one. Minnesota should be on life support, correct?
Wrong.
According to this article, everything is coming up roses in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Here are the two paragraphs that break the good news down into numbers:
Between 2011 and 2015, Gov. Dayton added 172,000 new jobs to Minnesota's economy -- that's 165,800 more jobs in Dayton's first term than Pawlenty added in both of his terms combined. Even though Minnesota's top income tax rate is the 4th-highest in the country, it has the 5th-lowest unemployment rate in the country at 3.6 percent. According to 2012-2013 U.S. census figures, Minnesotans had a median income that was $10,000 larger than the U.S. average, and their median income is still $8,000 more than the U.S. average today.
By late 2013, Minnesota's private sector job growth exceeded pre-recession levels, and the state's economy was the 5th fastest-growing in the United States. Forbes even ranked Minnesota the 9th-best state for business (Scott Walker's "Open For Business" Wisconsin came in at a distant #32 on the same list). Despite the fearmongering over businesses fleeing from Dayton's tax cuts, 6,230 more Minnesotans filed in the top income tax bracket in 2013, just one year after Dayton's tax increases went through. As of January 2015, Minnesota has a $1 billion budget surplus, and Gov. Dayton has pledged to reinvest more than one third of that money into public schools. And according to Gallup, Minnesota's economic confidence is higher than any other state.I should mention that "Pawlenty" refers to Tim Pawlenty, the former Republican governor who prided himself on fiscal conservatism and left Minnesota with an economic nightmare. In contrast, the across-the-board success of Dayton's approach is absolutely staggering. Touch it where you will, and you will find that it has produced success. The two numbers that jump out at me the most are the ones on job creation and filers in the top income tax bracket.
We are constantly being told by the trickle-down folks that jobs are created from the top of the economic pyramid, not the bottom. This is patent nonsense, and should have been refuted decades ago. No one is going to create a job unless they think there's enough consumer demand to pay for it. In fact, at the top of the pyramid, no one is going to create wealth at all if they don't absolutely have to. They will keep it, and spend it, on themselves, especially if government is craven enough to cut taxes for them. As I have said many times, and will go on saying so long as I have the strength to do it, progressive taxation is the only fair form of taxation there is. It requires those who have benefited the most from society to pay the most for maintaining it. It forces them to put their capital to work, in order to make money for themselves as well as for others. And it prevents them from using it to buy the government and supplant the public interest altogether with their interest.
Let's reduce this to simplest possible terms. Progressive policies work--especially tax policies. Minnesota certainly isn't suffering. It has more workers and more 1-percenters. It couldn't be more win-win if it tried. So why is the economic thinking of this country still stuck in the '80s? It's time to let that thinking go the way of mullets. In fact, its long past time.
All we can do now, though, is wait, pray, and work for the next election--which, hopefully, will lead to fewer Kansases and more Minnesotas.
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