Joshua McCaherty and Lyman Stone for the Tax Foundation: The Empire Center, a nonpartisan think tank in New York, released a report today suggesting that New York has lagged behind the rest of the nation in making new millionaires. From 2011-2012, the United States on the whole saw a 29 percent increase in the number of millionaire tax filers. New York, however, saw only a 14.6 percent increase in the same period, the lowest rate of growth in the country.
The report further points out that New York had also “trailed the national rate of increase in the number of taxpayers earning AGI of $200,000 or more.” Authors E.J. McMahon and Daniel Russo argue that these are troubling indicators and point to weaknesses in the state’s economic growth and wealth creation. In fact, there is good reason to believe taxes may play a role in slowing the rate at which states gain new millionaires.
One deterrent for the state’s wealth creation is its “Millionaires Tax.” As we have written before, some states have been more willing to raise income taxes by designing the increase to affect only a small subset of high-income earners. The income level at which the new top rate applies is often a sharp jump from where the top rate previously applied. In the case of New York, rates jump from 6.85 percent to 8.82 percent on incomes over $1 million. …
With New York having some of the most burdensome taxes in the country on individuals who may be most sensitive to taxes, it makes sense that growth in millionaires would be slower. Throughout the nation, more burdensome taxes are associated with slower formation of millionaires.
THE GREAT SQUEEZE
Diana Carew for the Progressive Policy Institute: The new joint Brookings-Federal Reserve study takes a deep dive into the troubling fall in the labor force participation rate for young people aged 16-24 since the mid-1990s. The study concludes that: “Some crowding out of job opportunities for young workers [is] associated with the decline in middle-skill jobs and thus greater competition for the low-skilled jobs traditionally held by teenagers and young adults.”
I’ve been writing about this for two years – calling this phenomenon the “great squeeze.” The premise of the great squeeze is simple: the slow-growth economy, coupled with a skills mismatch, is forcing more college graduates and experienced professionals to take lower-skill jobs for less pay. This is hitting those with less education and experience the hardest – young people, who are being forced down and out of the labor force.
That’s why we still see historically high numbers of young people neither enrolled in school nor in the labor force, particularly during the summer. In fact, the latest numbers for July show that more than 8.1 million people aged 16-24, 4.9 million of whom were teenagers, were neither enrolled in school nor in the labor force. This is 1.8 million more young people than in July 2000, and still 1.3 million more than in July 2007.
TIME TO STOP REVENGE PORN
Mary Anne Franks for the Brookings Institution: In the first week of September 2014, over 100 celebrities discovered that their most private, intimate images had been exposed to the general public. This is an experience familiar to thousands of private citizens. The non-consensual disclosure of sexually explicit images, often called “revenge porn,” has been on the rise over the last decade. …
Federal law prohibits computer hacking, but disclosing information obtained through illegal cyber-attacks is not. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act punishes unauthorized access to computers, but it is silent with regard to subsequent disclosures of information obtained by such access. The same is true for most state anti-hacking laws. That means that the people gleefully sharing these images have little reason to restrain themselves, despite the fact that every disclosure of these images harms the victims. It also means that online sites and forums can openly dedicate themselves to the solicitation and celebration of non-consensual pornography, turning sexual humiliation into an industry. Every state criminalizes individual acts of voyeurism, and yet crowd-sourced voyeurism is beyond the law. This must change.
Both federal and state criminal laws punish unauthorized disclosures of financial, medical and business information. The circulation of credit card numbers, health records or trade secrets without proper authorization all carry serious criminal penalties. Violations of sexual privacy, however — violations not of mere property but of bodies themselves — can be committed with near impunity.
