Famous Florida destinations

 By Andy Marlette

So-called "freedom" under Republicans

 

Go now, before it's too late

 From Doonesbury (Gary Trudeau)

In 41 US states, the 1% have lower tax rates than the poor

From CommonDreams

Nearly every state and local tax system in the U.S. is fueling the nation's inequality crisis by forcing lower- and middle-class families to contribute a larger share of their incomes in tax than their rich counterparts, according to a new study published Tuesday.

Titled Who Pays?, the analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) examines in detail the tax systems of all 50 U.S. states, including the rates paid by different income segments.

In 41 states, ITEP found, the richest 1% are taxed at a lower rate than any other income group. Forty-six states tax the top 1% at a lower rate than middle-income families.

"When you ask people what they think a fair tax code looks like, almost nobody says we should have the richest pay the least," said ITEP research director Carl Davis. "And yet when we look around the country, the vast majority of states have tax systems that do just that."

"There's an alarming gap here between what the public wants and what state lawmakers have delivered," Davis added.

In recent years, dozens of states across the U.S. have launched what the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently called a "tax-cutting spree," permanently slashing tax rates for corporations and the wealthy during a pandemic that saw billionaire wealth skyrocket and company profits soar.

A report released last week, as Common Dreams reported, showed ultra-rich Americans are currently sitting on $8.5 trillion in untaxed assets.

According to ITEP's new study, tax systems in just six states—California, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont—and the District of Columbia are progressive, helping to reduce the chasm between rich taxpayers and other residents.

Massachusetts, which has one of the more equitable tax systems in the nation, collected $1.5 billion in revenue last year thanks to its recently enacted millionaires tax, a measure that improved the state's ranking by 10 spots in ITEP's Tax Inequality Index. Minnesota has also ramped up its taxes on the rich over the past several years while expanding benefits for lower-income families, ITEP's study observes.

But the full picture of U.S. state and local systems is grim. In 44 states, tax laws "worsen income inequality by making incomes more unequal after collecting state and local taxes," ITEP found.

Florida has the most regressive tax code in the U.S., with the richest 1% paying a mere 2.7% tax rate while the poorest 20% pay 13.2%.

Florida is among the U.S. states that don't have personal income taxes, which forces them to rely on consumption and property taxes that are "nearly always regressive," ITEP notes in the new analysis.

"Eight of the 10 most regressive tax systems—Florida, Washington, Tennessee, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana—rely heavily on regressive sales and excise taxes," the study says. "As a group, these eight states derive 52% of their tax revenue from these taxes, compared to the national average of 34%."

Aidan Davis, ITEP's state policy director, said that "we've seen a lot of states shift their tax systems to become even more regressive in recent years by enacting deep tax cuts for the wealthiest."

The report points to Kentucky's adoption of a flat tax and repeated corporate tax cuts, which "delivered the largest windfall to families in the upper part of the income scale and have been paid for in part through new or higher sales and excise taxes on a long list of items such as car repairs, parking, moving services, bowling, gym memberships, tobacco, vaping, pet care, and ride-share rides."

Davis said that "we know it doesn't have to be like this," arguing there is a "clear path forward for flipping upside-down tax systems and we’ve seen a handful of states come pretty close to pulling it off."

"The regressive state tax laws we see today are a policy choice," said Davis, "and it's clear there are better choices available to lawmakers."

We need a wealth tax.

Florida Keys face stark reality

 From The Guardian

Long famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved.

Following a grueling seven-hour public meeting on Monday, held in the appropriately named city of Marathon, officials agreed to push ahead with a plan to elevate streets throughout the Keys to keep them from perpetual flooding, while admitting they do not have the money to do so.

The string of coral cay islands that unspool from the southern tip of Florida finds itself on the frontline of the climate crisis, forcing unenviable choices upon a place that styles itself as sunshine-drenched idyll. The lives of Keys residents – a mixture of wealthy, older white people, the one in four who are Hispanic or Latino, and those struggling in poverty – face being upended.

“The water is coming and we can’t stop it,” said Michelle Coldiron, mayor of Monroe county, which encompasses the Keys. “Some homes will have to be elevated, some will have to be bought out. It’s very difficult to have these conversations with homeowners, because this is where they live. It can get very emotional.”

Once people are unable to secure mortgages and insurance for soaked homes, the Keys will cease to be a livable place long before it’s fully underwater, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami. “People don’t have a concept of what sea level rise will do to them. They just can’t conceive it,” he said.

On Monday, the county gave details of its plan to spend $1.8bn over the next 25 years to raise 150 miles of roads in the Keys, deploying a mixture of new drains, pump stations and vegetation to prevent the streets becoming inundated with seawater. The heightened roadways are eagerly anticipated by residents who told the meeting of cars being ruined by the salt water and of donning boots to wade to front doors.

“The roads are shot, they’re full of cracks, the water is permeating up,” said Kimberly Sikora, who lives in a vulnerable neighborhood of Key Largo called Stillwright Point that is still awaiting a full road elevation proposal. “I’m just looking for some kind of relief.”

Another resident, Robert Schaller of Twin Lakes, an area further along in the planning process, muttered that he “should’ve done my due diligence” when buying his house last year. “I literally stand on my balcony and watch the water come up through my street,” he said. “It’s coming up right through the pavement.”

The pancake-flat Keys are in jeopardy from rising seas that are, as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) scientist told the county commissioners in the Monday meeting, accelerating upwards as the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt away. Human-caused global heating means an extra 17in of sea level rise by 2040, according to an intermediate Noaa projection used by the county.

Compounding this problem, the islands’ porous limestone allows the rising seawater to bubble up from below, meaning it just takes high tides on sunny days to turn roads into ponds, while global heating is also spurring fiercer hurricanes that can occasionally crunch into the archipelago.

Yet, despite this, the Keys electorate remains staunchly Republican

The threats faced by the Keys are shrugged off by some of its wealthy retirees who view the situation with a certain fatalism, while others in this Republican-voting bastion openly question the science. Eddie Martinez, one of the county’s five elected commissioners, challenged the Noaa scientist, William Sweet, on his sea level rise projections on Monday.

The sea level rise to date is “really a nothing number”, said Martinez, who told Sweet: “You’re a little bit more on this CO2 side, I’m more on the actual measurement side.” Another commissioner, David Rice, said that “predicting the future is probably best done with a crystal ball” and speculated that global temperatures could change following several volcanic eruptions.

“There are people who don’t want to sell because they love it here, others who want to get out while they can and those in complete denial who call you a troublemaker who is driving down property values by talking about it,” said George Smyth, a retiree who moved to Key Largo a decade ago for the quiet, slow-paced lifestyle. In 2019, his neighborhood spent 90 days partially submerged in water.

Other new realities are more laborious – Smyth has to wash his car continually to rid it of salt water and has to pay for trucks to unload piles of crushed-up rocks around his property as a buffer against the encroaching tides. While Smyth doesn’t class himself as particularly wealthy, these protections are beyond the means of low-income Keys residents, many of whom live in exposed mobile homes dotted along the islands.

Smyth fears that the county will require poorer residents to stump up the money for the roads, rather than put a levy on the tourists that flock to the Keys. “We feel we are being held hostage,” he said. “I feel sorrow for what is coming and the loss of what is a wonderful community.”

But the mayor defiantly insists the Keys can be saved, even if it is currently unclear how. “We know we live in paradise and we want to keep it that way,” said Coldiron.

What's happening in the Florida Keys is also happening in Miami.  

Covid: a tale of two states

From Open Mind (Tamino):

Disastrous.

Hurricane Dorian #ClimateEmergency

Read the Guardian's live blog here. 

The strongest hurricane ever.  Global heating (perhaps) didn't cause this particular hurricane, but it almost certainly made it worse.

What are you going to do about it, world?  When are you going to start reducing emissions, people of the world?  How bad must it get before we act?  And will it be too late by then? 

I despair.  Mankind is soooo stupid.

Hurricane Dorian seen from the Space Station

Hurricane Dorian approaches the US coast

Starhopper completes 150 metres "hop"

Starhopper, the cutback version of SpaceX's Starship (BFS) lifted off at Boca Chica, Texas, slowly rose to 150 metres, then moved sideways to the landing pad.  If you watch the video closely, you can see the single Raptor engine gimballing and the cold-air thrusters at the top of the aircraft firing to keep the rocket vertical and to push it sideways over the landing pad.  Extraordinary.

This successful test means that Starship Mk1 and Mk2, one of which is being built at Boca Chica and another at Cocoa, Florida, will be able to do the next tests, which will take each prototype to much higher altitudes.  They will each be fitted with 3 Raptor engines.  If those tests are successful, SpaceX will then test suborbital launches and then orbit.  The next really big hurdle is re-entry, when the spacecraft will have to face temperatures in the thousands of degrees.  If that works, SpaceX plans to make its first commercial launches in 2021.   This rapid progress means an uncrewed mission to Mars in 2022, a circumlunar expedition in 2023 and a crewed mission to Mars in 2024 are all on track. 

Musk will be updating us all in a few weeks about the latest design for the Starship and Super Heavy, and perhaps the timetable too. 

An extraordinary and magnificent achievement.