Category: About me

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Classism and Johnny Doc

  By A political memoir, Politicians

Someone asked me privately about my claim that classism has something to do with the attitudes of some people toward John J. Dougherty. “What makes you think that?” she said. Well, a number of years ago ago I got accused by a fairly wealthy person in Northwest Philadelphia of supporting the “corrupt Dougherty-Brady” wing of the Democratic Party because I opposed the neo-liberal darling of the upper middle class in a citywide primary race. This was at a time when Dougherty and Brady were not only factional opponents in the Democratic Party but barely on speaking terms. What would lead someone to talk about the Dougherty-Brady wing of the party, other than ignorance? What did they have in common at the time? You tell me. Continue reading

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A minimum wage hike would reverse 40-year pay stagnation for working people

  By Minimum Wage, PBPC Blog posts, Published op-eds

Originally published in The Morning Call on March 11, 2021 Raising the minimum wage is about helping low-income workers do better — but not just that. It is about changing the rules of our economy so that we all do better, now and in the future. To all do better we must reverse the 40-year trend that has seen skyrocketing incomes and wealth for the owners and executives of the largest corporations while income for working people and the middle class has been stagnant. This transformation was not the necessary result of a free market economy. The economy is a human creation subject to the rules we choose. Political and legal changes made at the behest of the corporate elite deliberately tilted the economy to their advantage and against the working and middle classes, as well as small businesses. What were those changes? First, lawmakers allowed the value of the… Continue reading

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The minimum wage was created during the Great Depression. We need to raise it during the Pandemic Recession

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Published op-eds

Originally published at the PA Capital-Star on March 7, 2021 Opponents of raising the minimum wage seem to have an inexhaustible supply of concerns which they repeat no matter how often we present evidence that refutes them.  The latest one is the claim that we cannot raise the minimum wage during the COVID-19 recession. Raising the minimum wage during a recession, they say, will stall our recovery.  This might sound plausible for a second—or until one remembers that the minimum wage was created during the Great Depression by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA). After a slow recovery from the Great Depression, the economy went into reverse in 1937 and the beginning of 1938. The reason is clear. In 1936, President Franklin Roosevelt started to listen to orthodox economists worried about the budget deficit. Taxes were raised, government spending was cut and the U.S. government had a balanced budget in 1937. The Federal Reserve raised interest rats as well, hurting the economy.  But the economy suffered. Unemployment, which was still high… Continue reading

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Pa. is in the throes of a COVID-19 recession. Wolf, lawmakers need to step up for working families

  By COVID-19, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Published op-eds

Originally published at the PA Capital-Star November 17, 2020 By Marc Stier No matter where we live, what we look like, whether we are native–born or immigrants, or whether we are struggling or getting by, the COVID-19 recession is a threat to all of us. We need the state government to do more for families and small businesses to meet that threat. Yet the recession will cost the state at least $3.3 billion in revenues—and perhaps more—over two years. Squaring this circle would be difficult at any time, but the General Assembly must act by Nov. 30 when the stop-gap budget enacted in May, covering about about half of the General Fund,  runs out. Democratic and Republican senators appear close to a compromise that avoids a budget impasse at this dangerous time even as it leaves many problems unresolved. Our understanding is that it would fund a full-year General Fund budget at the same level as in fiscal 2019-2020 with some adjustments… Continue reading

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Considering Vulnerability

  By About me, Life Stories, Philosophy, Published Op-Eds

Originally published in the Jewish Exponent, May 31, 2019 I’ve been thinking a lot about vulnerability since I hurt my back last summer. Since then, aside from three-week periods after I got two spinal injections a few months apart, I’ve stood and walked with pain and have had trouble moving around. And that’s left me feeling vulnerable. Feeling vulnerable in ways I never have before has made me think more about the role the sense of vulnerability and invulnerability plays in our lives. I’ve especially thought about those who are a lot more vulnerable than I was either because of physical limitations or because they face more challenges than I do — women, people of color, those who are disabled, those whose sexual identity and presentation is not traditional. It has occurred to me that my current sense of vulnerability, like the confidence I once had, is a bit of… Continue reading

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How the ‘Fair Share Tax’ will restore fairness to our tax system

  By Pennsylvania Budget, Public Policy, Published op-eds

Originally published in the Pennsylvania Capitol-Star, April 24, 2019 Pennsylvania politics remains divided. One side, composed of mostly conservatives, believes that the key to prosperity is to cut taxes for the rich, cut spending for everyone else and—although they don’t say it too loudly—keep wages low. The other side, composed of mostly liberals, believe that a prosperous Pennsylvania needs to close our public investment deficit. They point out that state spending as a share of gross state product has fallen by 12 percent compared to the years 1997-2011. That has left us with: With a Democratic governor and a Republican-controlled General Assembly, neither side is getting what they want this year. And thanks to robust revenues, the governor’s austere budget—but not as austere as Republicans want—may be settled without too much stress. But that means that partisan gridlock is making it impossible for our government to make a real choice between the two visions of Pennsylvania’s… Continue reading

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I Was HOJO Girl Number 14

  By About me, Feminism, Racial Justice, White Supremacy and Structural Racism

                      At the start of the summer of 1973, the year after my parents sold our hotel where I worked every summer from the time I was 11 to 16, I needed a job. When the new owners of the hotel called our house to ask where the switches were to turn on the lamp posts on the sidewalks, I said would work for them as a handyman which is what I had done at the hotel, among other things,  for two summers. I did have the capacity to fix many things, especially plumbing, and I knew the physical plant of the hotel. But they wouldn’t pay me the $125 a week I asked for so I need another alternative. Since I had some experience in the dining room and my cousin and some of her and my friends worked… Continue reading

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Is this the year Pa. resolves its perennial budget crisis?

  By Budget, PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Published op-eds, Taxation

This piece originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 28, 2016. Many of us who write about budget politics have a keyboard shortcut to enter “Pennsylvanian Budget Crisis” into a document. Year after year, we write in December about the upcoming crisis and again in July (or sometimes far later) about how the crisis has been temporarily averted. It is crisis time again. But perhaps this is the year we can change the script. There are new ways to do something that has eluded us in the past – solve the crisis on a long-term basis without imposing harsher new taxes on working people and the middle class.   Before coming to our long-term solution to the crisis, first a word about its dimension and cause. The Independent Fiscal Office has projected that the deficit for the current fiscal year, ending June 30, will be $500 million while the deficit… Continue reading

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Pennsylvania Needs a Fairer Tax System

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Budget, Published op-eds

Originally published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 26, 2016 Our proposal would be more equitable while also helping to close the deficit Pennsylvania faces another budget crisis. The combined deficit for this year and next is roughly $3 billion. It’s time all Pennsylvanians — and especially the members of our General Assembly — recognize that recurrent budget crises won’t stop until we fix our upside-down tax system. Federal tax rates are higher for those with higher incomes than those with lower incomes. However, combined state and local taxes, because they rely on property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes that do not have steeply graduated rates, often tax those with low incomes at roughly the same percentage as those with high incomes. Pennsylvania is worse than most states on this score. It is one of what the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy calls the “terrible 10” when it comes… Continue reading

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Dorothy Stier 1930-2016

  By Family Stories

My mother came of age in a unique time for women. She went to college at the end of the World War II when, largely in response to the fear of unemployment on the return of servicemen from the war, women were being strongly encouraged to limit themselves to the role of homemaker. And that was perhaps especially true for college educated women. Working class women, even then, often had to work. But as the middle class expanded in the post-war years, the middle class idea of marriage became ever stronger. So women like my mother were encouraged by parents, like my grandparents, who tremendously valued education, to get a very good education. And they were then encouraged to stay at home with their children rather than enter the work world. Despite some appearances, my mother never really fit that mold. She worked almost her entire life. She was a telephone operator… Continue reading