Dr. Charles Ballard says taxes have been reduced too much
MARQUETTE -- In the wake of the recession, Governor Rick Snyder is making some serious changes to Michigan's economy to revive it, and some of those changes have been controversial.
But Michigan State University economics professor, Dr. Charles Ballard, is in Marquette on Monday, helping Northern Michigan University students and the Economic Club of Marquette make sense of it all. He stepped onto campus this morning with one main message to students: stay on your path to education.
He says with all of the cuts to K-12 schools, it's no longer possible for people to succeed with just a high school education. Ballard says more school cuts could devastate our economy, and on Monday he told NMU students this morning that their education is everything.
"If we want to be at the top, we have to have a highly educated work force," said Ballard.
He also said that although the state of our economy has improved over the past year, as seen in the growing auto industry, there's still a lot of work to be done. And while Governor Snyder has made some positive changes by reducing the corporate income tax, he says his most recent bill has it all wrong. The bill will give emergency financial managers more power, including the power to eliminate collective bargaining; yet another blow to education.
"The emergency financial manager act certainly looks like a sort of back door method of reducing the ability of employees to bargain collectively, and I'm very concerned about that. We may end up slashing teacher pay in some of these districts," Ballard said. "But my concern is the farther you push along those lines, the more difficult it will be to find highly qualified people to do the very important work of teaching."
Ballard thinks the solution to solving our economic woes lies in our taxes. He says they've been reduced too much in the last decade.
"Nobody likes paying taxes, but I want the roads to be plowed in the winter, I want the roads to be paved in the summer, and I want to have good schools for our kids," he said. "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."
Ballard claims he's not in favor of huge tax increases, he just wants taxes to be restored to what they used to be. He says taxes have gradually gone down by about nine billion dollars in the last ten years.
Ballard wrapped up his visit in the U.P. by attending the Economic Club of Marquette's meeting as the keynote speaker.
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