Category: Policy Paper

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on June 25, 2024. VIEW IN A PDF READER, PRINT, OR DOWNLOAD.     Americans suffer because we reward wealth more than work. Here’s how we got here and how we can create an economy that works for all of us. Introduction The pursuit of tax justice is now central to the work of both the Pennsylvania Policy Center and our advocacy arm Pennsylvanians Together. It is also the theme of our People’s Budget Summit this year. In developing this campaign, we needed to pull together a lot of research about  the history and politics of economic and tax policy over the last forty years.  Our executive director has been working on a long paper that surveys this broad topic, which should be read for release by the end of the summer. He was far enough along, however, to give a 15-minute talk previewing… Continue reading

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 8, 2023. November 8, 2023 Context A year ago, Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ruled that Pennsylvania violates its constitutional obligation to create a “thorough and efficient” system of school funding. In response, legislative leaders and Governor Shapiro have charged the Basic Education Funding Commission with providing a blueprint for General Assembly action that would meet our constitutional obligation. In in developing that blueprint, the General Assembly can learn from what other states have done. Seen from a national perspective, Judge Jubelirer’s decision is not an outlier. In response to similar court decisions, about half the states have added substantial state funding of K–12 education in the last thirty years.  In almost every case, the judicial decisions, like that of Judge Jubelirer, focused on the inequity in school funding created by over-reliance on locally raised revenues to pay for schools. Because Pennsylvania is… Continue reading