1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910458674503321

Autore

Newman Katherine S.

Titolo

Taxing the Poor : Doing Damage to the Truly Disadvantaged / / Katherine S. Newman, Rourke O'Brien

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA : , : University of California Press, , [2011]

©2011

ISBN

1-283-27800-6

9786613278005

0-520-94893-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (263 p.)

Collana

Wildavsky Forum Series ; ; 7

Disciplina

336.20086 9420973

Soggetti

Poor - Taxation - Southern States

Poor -- Taxation -- Southern States

Poor - Taxation - United States

Poor -- Taxation -- United States

Poverty - Southern States

Poverty -- Southern States

Poverty - United States

Poverty -- United States

Political Science

Law, Politics & Government

Public Finance

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Tables -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter One. The Evolution of Southern Tax Structures -- Chapter Two. Barriers to Change: Inertia, Supermajorities, and Constitutional Amendments -- Chapter Three. The Geography of Poverty -- Chapter Four. Tax Traps and Regional Poverty Regimes -- Chapter Five. The Bottom Line -- Conclusion: Are We Our Brothers' Keepers? -- Appendix I. How Many Lags of x? -- Appendix II. Tables -- Notes -- Index



Sommario/riassunto

This book looks at the way we tax the poor in the United States, particularly in the American South, where poor families are often subject to income taxes, and where regressive sales taxes apply even to food for home consumption. Katherine S. Newman and Rourke L. O'Brien argue that these policies contribute in unrecognized ways to poverty-related problems like obesity, early mortality, the high school dropout rates, teen pregnancy, and crime. They show how, decades before California's passage of Proposition 13, many southern states implemented legislation that makes it almost impossible to raise property or corporate taxes, a pattern now growing in the western states. Taxing the Poor demonstrates how sales taxes intended to replace the missing revenue-taxes that at first glance appear fair-actually punish the poor and exacerbate the very conditions that drove them into poverty in the first place.