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News & ArtsMonday, January 30, 2012
Tech Microsoft: Tax the Poor to Educate Our Workforce
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 8:21 AM
Microsoft VP Brad Smith has an op-ed in the Seattle Times pointing out, as the state supreme court recently ruled, that Washington State is failing its paramount duty to fund basic education. Smith explains: It's hurting companies like Microsoft that require competent local workers. "Washington's employers want to hire Washington students.... But Washington's education system is failing in this regard," Smith laments.
Oh victim of victims! Woe is Microsoft!
Smith conveniently neglects to mention that Microsoft and its executives were the leading funders of a 2010 campaign to stop an income tax on the wealthy—a tax on the upper echelons of companies like Microsoft—that would have dedicated the overwhelming cut of its revenue to funding basic education. Now Smith says we should consider more taxes that disproportionately hit the poor.
"A temporary sales-tax increase, as Gov. Chris Gregoire has proposed, is one important option worth considering," Smith says.
To his credit, Smith also calls for performance reforms. That's well and good, but the primary crisis in Washington is caused by a systemic revenue shortfall. (State general fund revenues as a share of the overall state economy have shrunk from 6.9 percent of personal income in 1995 to 4.7 percent last year, according to the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council.) And now Smith—and Microsoft—wants more regressive taxes in the state that already has the most anti-poor tax structure in the country.
Sorry, Brad, but these arguments—taxing the rich is bad, taxing the poor is great—would be more credible if they weren't coming from people who make six or seven figures a year. Microsoft wants a well-educated workforce, first and foremost, to provide an affordable labor market and make itself a profitable company. There's nothing wrong with Microsoft profiting and hiring locals—that's what we all want. But we're not quite so stupid (yet) that we forgot Microsoft has contributed to the problem we're into today. If Microsoft wants to be part of the solution—part of truly making this state a good place for workers and business—it would come out for specific progressive tax reforms, not making the current tax structure worse for the poor.
Also, as far as I can tell, it was Ballmer who was against the income tax, not Microsoft (a HUGE proponent of light rail, btw).
You stated it yourself. This is an op ed, not a statement from the company. I know it doesn't have Steve Jobs' golden dangling dead balls attached to it, but sheesh. That company does more for the local community that most others. My shitty high school go all new computers donated by MS back in 2001 for example.
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Tangentially related, but apparently the Gates Foundation is now giving grants to right-wing lobbying groups, as they both overlap in promotion of for-profit education.
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Why wouldn't they want to encourage more local tech talent, though?
Reading between the lines of all that was said, the corporate dream for the future of education is company sponsorships of certain educational tracks. So like, if they see a promising computer scientist, they will usher that student into an elite program designed to mentor them and bring them into the business world. Essentially, all Microsoft wants is more programmers that they don't have to buy Visas for.
They don't give a shit about a well-rounded education for everyone.
Meanwhile, Seattle Public Schools are stuck with computers that are so old they can no longer play Youtube.
The hypocrisy of fighting fair and adequate taxation while demanding better public education reminds me of earlier, uh, let's say "incivic" behavior by our homegrown 800-pound gorilla.
A couple of years ago, the story broke -- on a British tech news site, if I remember correctly; it was barely mentioned here at home -- that Microsoft had "avoided" $1 billion in state software license royalty taxes by transferring paper ownership of its software licenses to an affiliated corporation set up for that purpose in Nevada. A week later Microsoft spokesmen were afforded generous coverage in local broadcast and print news to demand that the state increase capacity on SR-520 and replace the Evergreen Point floating bridge so that commuting would be easier for MS workers.
Another story that also didn't get much local coverage was that MS successfully lobbied the legislature to grant *resident* university tuition to its *nonimmigrant* alien workers. So, instead of paying its nonimmigrant alien workers a high enough salary to pay nonresident tuition out of pocket, Microsoft wanted Washington taxpayers to pick up the difference. (If MS were to directly reimburse or subsidize nonimmigrants' tuition, those workers would be barred from converting to immigrant status later on, which would close a major source of legal immigrant labor. I'm not sure why Washington taxpayers should be paying to complete the education of foreigners so they can take American jobs, but MS apparently made a convincing case to our legislators that it was win-win, at least for MS and the legislators in question.)
As for this round of post-injury insult, I don't know what to think. I suspect MS executives and high-level employees would in fact like to live in a state with a decent public education system; they just don't want to help pay for it. On the other hand, having a crappy, underfunded public education system just gives MS that much more justification for continuing to import foreign workers educated (for the most part) on someone else's dime. And on the other hand, they don't want to have to pay high enough wages so that all of their employees can send their kids to private schools. So yeah, I'm guessing they want to hike the sales tax and make the little people pay.
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