Figure 1: Annual Enrollment at Public Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts by academic year. Source: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
The disquieting rise of adjunct positions at universities is creating what some have called an “army of temps” and others “the lowest rung in a caste system.” But at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts, one could more accurately call them “disposable.”
Adjunct faculty often teach introductory courses. They teach as few as one class per semester on a temporary basis. Many of these faculty members end up teaching at multiple colleges to make ends meet.
Since the 1970’s, these types of positions have gradually taken over higher education. Colleges and universities are replacing tenure-track positions with adjuncts who do the job at a lower cost.
With today’s declining enrollments, colleges cut adjunct faculty positions before cutting professor. Adjunct faculty are simply more disposable.
Figure 2: A graph showing the number of professors vs. adjunct faculty at public colleges in Massachusetts. Notice that the decrease in adjunct faculty is more significant than the decrease in “professor” positions. “Professor” positions are any position that includes the word “professor” or “prof” to exclude adjunct, part-time, visiting and emeritus professors. Included in “professor” positions are associate, assistant, and interim professors. The data comes from the Massachusetts Comptroller’s Office and position titles are reported by the colleges. One challenge in creating this graph was determining which positions to include and exclude since positions titles are reported differently by every college. One college might use the title “professor” while another college might report the same position as “assistant mathematics prof.” The data presented here is publicly available through the Pioneer Institute’s MassOpenBooks website.
Enrollment at public colleges in Massachusetts has been declining since 2015. Over five years, enrollment decreased by 10.4 percent, or around 30,000 students, according to the US Department of Education (see Figure 1).
As enrollment declines, so does the number of adjunct faculty. From 2015-2021, enrollment decreased 10.4 percent, the number of adjunct faculty decreased 20.4 percent, and the number of professors decreased by only 4.0 percent (see Figure 2). This change shows that public colleges in Massachusetts are reducing adjuncts much more quickly than professors.
Pay has also improved more slowly for adjunct positions. From 2015-2021, pay increased 13.8 percent for professors and only 8.4 percent for adjuncts at public colleges in Massachusetts. The average pay for an adjunct position is slightly less than $12,000 in 2021, far below the average for professor positions.
Figure 3: This graph shows how the number of adjunct faculty has changed at the institutional level and only includes institutions for which sufficient data is available. Springfield Technical Community College is in red to draw attention to it as one of the few public institutions in Massachusetts that has increased its number of adjunct faculty since 2015. The data presented here is publicly available through the Pioneer Institute’s MassOpenBooks website.
Not every public college in Massachusetts is cutting adjunct positions at the same rate. The biggest decreases have been from the institutions with the largest number of adjunct faculty. Those colleges are Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massasoit Community College in Brockton, and the University of Massachusetts system (UMass). These three alone account for over half the decrease in adjunct positions at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts.
One notable outlier is Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), which has increased its adjunct faculty by almost 70 percent since 2015. At the same time, professor positions at STCC decreased by almost 25 percent: well above average. This suggests that STCC is replacing some of its long-term positions with adjuncts.
STCC’s increase in adjunct faculty is surprising because the college’s enrollment is down by 31.2 percent since 2015. Perhaps STCC is trying to cut costs by replacing professors with adjunct instructors, but it is not easy to tell by only looking at the numbers.
Declining enrollment at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts has coincided with faculty cutbacks. On average, adjunct instructors have taken a bigger hit than professors. Their pay has increased more slowly, and there are far fewer positions for adjuncts than there were in 2015. These cutbacks are understandable, given current trends in higher education.
Colleges with lower enrollments are making cut-backs that disproportionately impact adjunct professors. That means the field is increasingly inhospitable for young people trying to pursue a career in higher education.
About the Author:
Joseph Staruski is a government transparency intern with the Pioneer Institute. He is currently a Master of Public Policy Student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was previously an opinions columnist with the Boston College student newspaper The Heights and an Intern with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook. He has a BA in Philosophy and the Growth and Structure of Cities from Haverford College. Feel free to reach out via email, linkedin, or write a letter to Pioneer’s Office in Boston.
This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of both the venture-backed Gaming Revolution for International Development and the not-for-profit Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development, both with the acronym GRID. GRID, the for-profit arm, is democratizing the creation of video games with a software-as-a-service platform called Breshna, while the not-for-profit arm creates low-cost social impact games that educate, engage and empower people towards positive behavior change. Nusrat, economist-turned-tech entrepreneur, stands out as a Muslim immigrant woman in tech. She aims to empower the world’s 3.2 billion smartphone users, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Mariam Nusrat is the Founder of GRID – Gaming Revolution for International Development, a tech start-up that aims to unleash the power of video games to educate, engage and empower people for positive behavior change. The team has built Breshna, a platform that creates purposeful video games with no-code, at low-cost & lightning speed. Mariam is on the Forbes Next 1000 List and a recipient of the Clinton Global Initiative University Honor Roll Alumni Award. She has presented GRID at several high-level forums including two sessions moderated by President Clinton at CGIU Meetings and two Tedx events. Since its launch, GRID has received extensive media attention with articles in Huffington Post, Washington Post, Daily Mail UK, Yahoo News and other mainstream news channels, and was included in the DC Inno 50 on Fire companies.
Recent Episodes:
Punishing tax on small businesses and retirees unlikely to significantly increase transportation and education funding
BOSTON – If adopted, a constitutional amendment to hike state taxes that will appear on the ballot in November could erase the hard-earned progress Massachusetts has achieved toward economic competitiveness over the last 25 years and may not result in any additional education and transportation funding, according to a new book from Pioneer Institute, entitled Back to Taxachusetts?: How the proposed tax amendment would upend one of the nation’s best economies, which is a distillation of two dozen academic studies.
“People — even some in the media and business community — don’t understand the tax and what it does,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute. “This book explains the many forms of income it will sweep up, the real people and businesses it will affect, and the fact that, despite misleading promotional language from the Attorney General, it will likely result in little to no increase in education and transportation funding.”
A tax on small businesses, homeowners and retirees
The amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution would have a particularly significant impact on retirees and small businesses. It would affect a long list of “income” categories, including salary, capital gains (on the sale of investments, homes, businesses and other assets), dividends, IRA and 401K distributions, interest, royalties, and commissions. In any one year, should the totality of these income streams exceed $1 million, the state would increase existing income taxes by 4 percent on the excess.
“Pass-through” companies such as partnerships, limited liability corporations, subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships are taxed via individual returns. These mostly small businesses, nearly two thirds of which are subchapter S corporations, employed almost half of all private, for-profit employees in Massachusetts in 2019.
Passage of the constitutional amendment would force many pass-through businesses to pay the new 4 percent tax on top of the existing 5 percent income tax. Subchapter S corporations, which currently pay Massachusetts’ unique “stinger tax” of up to 3.9 percent, would face a total state tax burden of up to 12.9 percent, a rate higher than large corporations pay.
In addition, adopting the tax hike amendment would give Massachusetts the nation’s highest short-term capital gains tax (16 percent) and the highest long-term capital gains tax in New England.
“[Massachusetts’ tax proposal] would impose a one-time ‘retirement tax’ on many sellers of homes and small businesses, and encourage our most productive residents to leave,” said Richard Schmalensee, former Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “[A]ll without guaranteeing an increase in spending on transportation or education.”
The book reveals just how wide a net the tax casts well beyond “millionaires.” In fact, the tax hike amendment falls primarily on households selling a family home or business to finance retirement. Nearly half of all parties affected by the tax earn $1 million or more only once in a decade; over 60 percent do so only twice.
The tax would apply to more residents every year. To adjust for inflation, the tax amendment uses the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which has lagged well behind household income and wages in Massachusetts. State legislative salaries, on the other hand, are tied to median household income, which has risen much faster.
“Proponents call this the “Fair Share Amendment,” suggesting that it applies to some nebulous fat cat,” said Pioneer Research Director Greg Sullivan, who, with Andrew Mikula and Liam Day, authored Back to Taxachusetts? “But the fact is that the large majority of affected parties will be retirees or small businesses — families that paid down their mortgages and loans and most often never made anything close to a million.”
Fewer jobs, people and employers vote with their feet
We don’t need to look far to see the proposed tax’s likely economic impact. From 2008 to 2020, Connecticut, which is still recovering from years of “tax the rich” policies and today boasts the second highest state and local tax burden per capita (Massachusetts ranks 14th):
As Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has said, “It’s really dumb to [raise taxes on wealth] just by the state” and doing so would “totally disadvantage the state. [Connecticut] already [has] some of the highest income tax rates in the country and we pay a price for that.”
Many large employers left the Constitution State, including GE and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which relocated to Massachusetts. Between 2012 and 2018 Connecticut experienced the second worst net out migration of high-income taxpayers.
Among many other tax hikes, Connecticut increased its highest income tax rate from 4.5 percent to 6.99 percent between 2003 and 2018, while Massachusetts reduced its rate from 5.6 percent to 5.1 percent. Because of its lackluster economy, Connecticut could only muster 22 percent growth in the state budget from 2008 to 2020, while Massachusetts, with strong economic growth, saw its budget grow 63 percent.
“A stable tax environment, together with Massachusetts’ innovation economy, resulted in a significant rise in jobs and wages in Massachusetts,” Sullivan said. “Massachusetts’ economic growth field budget growth at three times the rate in Connecticut — generating revenue that public sector leaders could invest in public priorities like education and transportation.”
If the tax hike amendment passes, Massachusetts will have a higher top-end rate than Connecticut.
A Blank Check
Proponents claim the tax will increase public spending on education and transportation. The Attorney General is fighting a court battle to preserve that fiction, even though the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices made clear in a 2018 hearing on the question that legislators can really spend state revenues on whatever they want.
“Both in their brief and in response to a direct question from the then-chief justice of the SJC, the Attorney General’s Office, which was arguing in favor of the surtax, made it clear that while revenue from the tax had to be used for education and transportation, nothing prevented state legislators from reducing education and transportation funding from other sources by an equal or greater amount,” Sullivan.
That’s pretty much what happened in California. After a 2012 tax hike “to fund education,” lawmakers left in just enough of the funding from other sources to meet state-mandated minimum funding levels. Much of the money previously dedicated to education was redirected to the state payroll, which increased at twice the national average rate from 2012 to 2020.
The provision “became a funding cap, not a floor,” said California policy consultant Kevin Gordon.
During debates on the proposed constitutional amendment, Massachusetts legislators made their intentions crystal clear twice rejecting amendments that would ensure that new tax revenues added to existing education and transportation expenditures. Both amendments were rejected by 4:1 margins.
Timing is everything
The tax hike amendment has been in the works — and its wording has not changed — since 2015. In the interim, the policy environment has changed in three significant ways.
First, the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), adopted in 2017, now limits federal deductions for payment of state and local taxes (SALT) to $10,000. Prior to TCJA, the federal SALT deduction allowed those likely affected by the proposed tax hike amendment to write off a large percentage of their state tax burden on their federal tax bill. That write-off is now largely gone and translates to paying up to nearly 150 percent more in state income taxes.
Second, the vote on the tax amendment comes as Massachusetts is awash in money. The Commonwealth is generating multi-billion dollar annual budget surpluses and is trying to figure out how to spend billions more in federal pandemic relief.
“State revenues in April outpaced budget projections by $2 billion,” said Stergios. “That’s more than the state would raise through the tax hike proposal in an entire year — and it is all because of economic growth and job creation.”
Third, the tax hike would kick in at a time when both employers and employees are more mobile than ever before. Despite doing far better than Connecticut, Massachusetts still saw an annual loss of nearly $1 billion in adjusted gross income due to net out migration, more than 70 percent of it to Florida and New Hampshire.
Prior to the pandemic, about 3.6 percent of employees worked from home at least half the time. Post pandemic, a Harvard Business School study estimates that 16 percent of employees will be telecommuters, while an Upwork survey puts the number at 22 percent.
“The rise of Zoom and remote work has made it even easier for businesses and highly skilled workers to leave Massachusetts for low or no-income tax states like New Hampshire, Florida, and Texas,” said Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser.
As Massachusetts contemplates raising taxes, state competition is fierce. Neighboring New Hampshire, which has no income tax, just voted to phase out its tax on interest and dividends. In 2021, 16 states cut income taxes; 13 more have income tax cuts in the works. In a world in which technology makes it possible to work from anywhere, the cost of living and doing business is more important than ever before.
Because it is a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, should it pass and lead to the expected negative impact on economic growth, repeal would be next to impossible.
Authors
Gregory Sullivan is Pioneer’s Research Director. Prior to joining Pioneer, Sullivan served two five-year terms as Inspector General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and was a 17-year member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Greg holds degrees from Harvard College, The Kennedy School of Public Administration, and the Sloan School at MIT.
Andrew Mikula is an economic research analyst and candidate for a Master’s in Urban Planning at Harvard University. Mr. Mikula was previously a Lovett & Ruth Peters Economic Opportunity Fellow at Pioneer Institute and studied economics at Bates College.
Liam Day is a leader in the non-profit space in San Francisco and a writer. His experience in Boston includes serving as a youth worker and teacher, government service at the Boston Public Health Commission, including directing Child and Adolescent Health, and Director of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at Pioneer.
About Pioneer
Pioneer Institute develops and communicates dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life in Massachusetts and beyond. Success for Pioneer is when the citizens of our state and nation prosper and our society thrives because we enjoy world-class options in education, healthcare, transportation and economic opportunity, and when our government is limited, accountable and transparent. Pioneer believes that America is at its best when our citizenry is well-educated, committed to liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise, and both willing and able to test their beliefs based on facts and the free exchange of ideas.
Praise for Back to Taxachusetts?
“The rise of Zoom and remote work has made it even easier for businesses and highly skilled workers to leave Massachusetts for low or no-tax states like New Hampshire, Florida, and Texas. This book is a must-read for anyone thinking about voting in favor of amending the Constitution to make Massachusetts less business-friendly.”
– Edward Glaeser, Harvard University
“What could possibly go wrong? The authors identify a myriad of potential unintended consequences from establishing a graduated income tax in Massachusetts. Along the way, they reveal the dynamism of the state’s economy and its people. This book is a must-read for the people of the Commonwealth at this pivotal moment.”
– Sara Johnson, economist
“Economic success is increasingly a hunt for talent. Back to Taxachusetts? asks a critical question at a critical time — namely, with remote work and wealth mobility at a historic high, why would Massachusetts choose to put itself at a disadvantage in recruiting and retaining a talented workforce?”
– Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University
“The data presented in Back to Taxachusetts? are compelling and frightening. The public must consider the negative effects of this surtax, and the numerous examples of how it backfired elsewhere before making the same mistake here in the Commonwealth.”
– John Regan, Associated Industries of Massachusetts
“Even if you support progressive taxation, this fact-based book will persuade you to oppose Massachusetts’ surtax proposal. It would impose a one-time “retirement tax” on many sellers of homes and small businesses, and encourage out-migration of our most productive residents — all without guaranteeing an increase in spending on transportation or education.”
– Richard Schmalensee, Sloan School of Management, MIT
“Massachusetts has finally established itself as a good place to do business. This has taken a lot of time and effort. It has also produced tremendous dividends for the Commonwealth. The notion of returning to Taxachusetts is simply wrongheaded and deleterious.”
– William Achtmeyer, Acropolis Advisors
“Pioneer nailed it. This comprehensive study mirrors what I regularly faced while competing with other states for business development: Taxes matter. At 5%, Massachusetts is disadvantaged against some states but better than others. At 9%, forget about playing offense, we will be perpetually on defense as our golden egg laying geese take flight to lower cost harbors!”
– Jay Ash, Massachusetts Competitive Partnership
“The effects of tax policies and regulations on small businesses and business formation are well known. Pioneer’s study effectively lays out the consequences of the constitutional tax amendment on entrepreneurs and should be heeded.”
– John Friar, Executive Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University
“Pioneer Institute has done it again with Back to Taxachusetts? Their findings on the tax amendment proposal are a clear warning about what can go wrong when taxes are set by slogans and emotion rather than research.”
– Peter Forman, South Shore Chamber of Commerce
“Opinion leaders across the Commonwealth must read this book and understand the consequences of passing this massive tax hike. Without clear voter education, small business owners will be asking their legislators, associations and chambers of commerce ‘where were you and why didn’t you warn me?’”
– Jon B. Hurst, Retailers Association of Massachusetts
“This book reveals truths that proponents don’t want you to know. The tax ensnares unintended people, even retirees. Promised higher spending on education and transportation evaporate. Experiences from other states warn of big taxpayers leaving even faster. The more you tax an activity, the less of it you get. This economic rule may be hard for tax proponents to admit, but it’s not too hard for voters to understand.”
– Marc A. Miles, PhD, Former Assistant State Treasurer, State of New Jersey
“If you’re somebody who cares about the future of our state, this book gives you all you need to make an informed decision on the graduated income tax proposal. As the authors show again and again, the tax will wreak havoc on the state’s competitiveness and economic well?being.”
– Brian Shortsleeve, co-Founder, M33 Growth
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“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Figure 1: Annual Enrollment at Public Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts by academic year. Source: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
The disquieting rise of adjunct positions at universities is creating what some have called an “army of temps” and others “the lowest rung in a caste system.” But at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts, one could more accurately call them “disposable.”
Adjunct faculty often teach introductory courses. They teach as few as one class per semester on a temporary basis. Many of these faculty members end up teaching at multiple colleges to make ends meet.
Since the 1970’s, these types of positions have gradually taken over higher education. Colleges and universities are replacing tenure-track positions with adjuncts who do the job at a lower cost.
With today’s declining enrollments, colleges cut adjunct faculty positions before cutting professor. Adjunct faculty are simply more disposable.
Figure 2: A graph showing the number of professors vs. adjunct faculty at public colleges in Massachusetts. Notice that the decrease in adjunct faculty is more significant than the decrease in “professor” positions. “Professor” positions are any position that includes the word “professor” or “prof” to exclude adjunct, part-time, visiting and emeritus professors. Included in “professor” positions are associate, assistant, and interim professors. The data comes from the Massachusetts Comptroller’s Office and position titles are reported by the colleges. One challenge in creating this graph was determining which positions to include and exclude since positions titles are reported differently by every college. One college might use the title “professor” while another college might report the same position as “assistant mathematics prof.” The data presented here is publicly available through the Pioneer Institute’s MassOpenBooks website.
Enrollment at public colleges in Massachusetts has been declining since 2015. Over five years, enrollment decreased by 10.4 percent, or around 30,000 students, according to the US Department of Education (see Figure 1).
As enrollment declines, so does the number of adjunct faculty. From 2015-2021, enrollment decreased 10.4 percent, the number of adjunct faculty decreased 20.4 percent, and the number of professors decreased by only 4.0 percent (see Figure 2). This change shows that public colleges in Massachusetts are reducing adjuncts much more quickly than professors.
Pay has also improved more slowly for adjunct positions. From 2015-2021, pay increased 13.8 percent for professors and only 8.4 percent for adjuncts at public colleges in Massachusetts. The average pay for an adjunct position is slightly less than $12,000 in 2021, far below the average for professor positions.
Figure 3: This graph shows how the number of adjunct faculty has changed at the institutional level and only includes institutions for which sufficient data is available. Springfield Technical Community College is in red to draw attention to it as one of the few public institutions in Massachusetts that has increased its number of adjunct faculty since 2015. The data presented here is publicly available through the Pioneer Institute’s MassOpenBooks website.
Not every public college in Massachusetts is cutting adjunct positions at the same rate. The biggest decreases have been from the institutions with the largest number of adjunct faculty. Those colleges are Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massasoit Community College in Brockton, and the University of Massachusetts system (UMass). These three alone account for over half the decrease in adjunct positions at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts.
One notable outlier is Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), which has increased its adjunct faculty by almost 70 percent since 2015. At the same time, professor positions at STCC decreased by almost 25 percent: well above average. This suggests that STCC is replacing some of its long-term positions with adjuncts.
STCC’s increase in adjunct faculty is surprising because the college’s enrollment is down by 31.2 percent since 2015. Perhaps STCC is trying to cut costs by replacing professors with adjunct instructors, but it is not easy to tell by only looking at the numbers.
Declining enrollment at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts has coincided with faculty cutbacks. On average, adjunct instructors have taken a bigger hit than professors. Their pay has increased more slowly, and there are far fewer positions for adjuncts than there were in 2015. These cutbacks are understandable, given current trends in higher education.
Colleges with lower enrollments are making cut-backs that disproportionately impact adjunct professors. That means the field is increasingly inhospitable for young people trying to pursue a career in higher education.
About the Author:
Joseph Staruski is a government transparency intern with the Pioneer Institute. He is currently a Master of Public Policy Student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was previously an opinions columnist with the Boston College student newspaper The Heights and an Intern with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook. He has a BA in Philosophy and the Growth and Structure of Cities from Haverford College. Feel free to reach out via email, linkedin, or write a letter to Pioneer’s Office in Boston.
This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of both the venture-backed Gaming Revolution for International Development and the not-for-profit Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development, both with the acronym GRID. GRID, the for-profit arm, is democratizing the creation of video games with a software-as-a-service platform called Breshna, while the not-for-profit arm creates low-cost social impact games that educate, engage and empower people towards positive behavior change. Nusrat, economist-turned-tech entrepreneur, stands out as a Muslim immigrant woman in tech. She aims to empower the world’s 3.2 billion smartphone users, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Mariam Nusrat is the Founder of GRID – Gaming Revolution for International Development, a tech start-up that aims to unleash the power of video games to educate, engage and empower people for positive behavior change. The team has built Breshna, a platform that creates purposeful video games with no-code, at low-cost & lightning speed. Mariam is on the Forbes Next 1000 List and a recipient of the Clinton Global Initiative University Honor Roll Alumni Award. She has presented GRID at several high-level forums including two sessions moderated by President Clinton at CGIU Meetings and two Tedx events. Since its launch, GRID has received extensive media attention with articles in Huffington Post, Washington Post, Daily Mail UK, Yahoo News and other mainstream news channels, and was included in the DC Inno 50 on Fire companies.
Recent Episodes:
Punishing tax on small businesses and retirees unlikely to significantly increase transportation and education funding
BOSTON – If adopted, a constitutional amendment to hike state taxes that will appear on the ballot in November could erase the hard-earned progress Massachusetts has achieved toward economic competitiveness over the last 25 years and may not result in any additional education and transportation funding, according to a new book from Pioneer Institute, entitled Back to Taxachusetts?: How the proposed tax amendment would upend one of the nation’s best economies, which is a distillation of two dozen academic studies.
“People — even some in the media and business community — don’t understand the tax and what it does,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute. “This book explains the many forms of income it will sweep up, the real people and businesses it will affect, and the fact that, despite misleading promotional language from the Attorney General, it will likely result in little to no increase in education and transportation funding.”
A tax on small businesses, homeowners and retirees
The amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution would have a particularly significant impact on retirees and small businesses. It would affect a long list of “income” categories, including salary, capital gains (on the sale of investments, homes, businesses and other assets), dividends, IRA and 401K distributions, interest, royalties, and commissions. In any one year, should the totality of these income streams exceed $1 million, the state would increase existing income taxes by 4 percent on the excess.
“Pass-through” companies such as partnerships, limited liability corporations, subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships are taxed via individual returns. These mostly small businesses, nearly two thirds of which are subchapter S corporations, employed almost half of all private, for-profit employees in Massachusetts in 2019.
Passage of the constitutional amendment would force many pass-through businesses to pay the new 4 percent tax on top of the existing 5 percent income tax. Subchapter S corporations, which currently pay Massachusetts’ unique “stinger tax” of up to 3.9 percent, would face a total state tax burden of up to 12.9 percent, a rate higher than large corporations pay.
In addition, adopting the tax hike amendment would give Massachusetts the nation’s highest short-term capital gains tax (16 percent) and the highest long-term capital gains tax in New England.
“[Massachusetts’ tax proposal] would impose a one-time ‘retirement tax’ on many sellers of homes and small businesses, and encourage our most productive residents to leave,” said Richard Schmalensee, former Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “[A]ll without guaranteeing an increase in spending on transportation or education.”
The book reveals just how wide a net the tax casts well beyond “millionaires.” In fact, the tax hike amendment falls primarily on households selling a family home or business to finance retirement. Nearly half of all parties affected by the tax earn $1 million or more only once in a decade; over 60 percent do so only twice.
The tax would apply to more residents every year. To adjust for inflation, the tax amendment uses the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which has lagged well behind household income and wages in Massachusetts. State legislative salaries, on the other hand, are tied to median household income, which has risen much faster.
“Proponents call this the “Fair Share Amendment,” suggesting that it applies to some nebulous fat cat,” said Pioneer Research Director Greg Sullivan, who, with Andrew Mikula and Liam Day, authored Back to Taxachusetts? “But the fact is that the large majority of affected parties will be retirees or small businesses — families that paid down their mortgages and loans and most often never made anything close to a million.”
Fewer jobs, people and employers vote with their feet
We don’t need to look far to see the proposed tax’s likely economic impact. From 2008 to 2020, Connecticut, which is still recovering from years of “tax the rich” policies and today boasts the second highest state and local tax burden per capita (Massachusetts ranks 14th):
As Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has said, “It’s really dumb to [raise taxes on wealth] just by the state” and doing so would “totally disadvantage the state. [Connecticut] already [has] some of the highest income tax rates in the country and we pay a price for that.”
Many large employers left the Constitution State, including GE and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which relocated to Massachusetts. Between 2012 and 2018 Connecticut experienced the second worst net out migration of high-income taxpayers.
Among many other tax hikes, Connecticut increased its highest income tax rate from 4.5 percent to 6.99 percent between 2003 and 2018, while Massachusetts reduced its rate from 5.6 percent to 5.1 percent. Because of its lackluster economy, Connecticut could only muster 22 percent growth in the state budget from 2008 to 2020, while Massachusetts, with strong economic growth, saw its budget grow 63 percent.
“A stable tax environment, together with Massachusetts’ innovation economy, resulted in a significant rise in jobs and wages in Massachusetts,” Sullivan said. “Massachusetts’ economic growth field budget growth at three times the rate in Connecticut — generating revenue that public sector leaders could invest in public priorities like education and transportation.”
If the tax hike amendment passes, Massachusetts will have a higher top-end rate than Connecticut.
A Blank Check
Proponents claim the tax will increase public spending on education and transportation. The Attorney General is fighting a court battle to preserve that fiction, even though the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices made clear in a 2018 hearing on the question that legislators can really spend state revenues on whatever they want.
“Both in their brief and in response to a direct question from the then-chief justice of the SJC, the Attorney General’s Office, which was arguing in favor of the surtax, made it clear that while revenue from the tax had to be used for education and transportation, nothing prevented state legislators from reducing education and transportation funding from other sources by an equal or greater amount,” Sullivan.
That’s pretty much what happened in California. After a 2012 tax hike “to fund education,” lawmakers left in just enough of the funding from other sources to meet state-mandated minimum funding levels. Much of the money previously dedicated to education was redirected to the state payroll, which increased at twice the national average rate from 2012 to 2020.
The provision “became a funding cap, not a floor,” said California policy consultant Kevin Gordon.
During debates on the proposed constitutional amendment, Massachusetts legislators made their intentions crystal clear twice rejecting amendments that would ensure that new tax revenues added to existing education and transportation expenditures. Both amendments were rejected by 4:1 margins.
Timing is everything
The tax hike amendment has been in the works — and its wording has not changed — since 2015. In the interim, the policy environment has changed in three significant ways.
First, the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), adopted in 2017, now limits federal deductions for payment of state and local taxes (SALT) to $10,000. Prior to TCJA, the federal SALT deduction allowed those likely affected by the proposed tax hike amendment to write off a large percentage of their state tax burden on their federal tax bill. That write-off is now largely gone and translates to paying up to nearly 150 percent more in state income taxes.
Second, the vote on the tax amendment comes as Massachusetts is awash in money. The Commonwealth is generating multi-billion dollar annual budget surpluses and is trying to figure out how to spend billions more in federal pandemic relief.
“State revenues in April outpaced budget projections by $2 billion,” said Stergios. “That’s more than the state would raise through the tax hike proposal in an entire year — and it is all because of economic growth and job creation.”
Third, the tax hike would kick in at a time when both employers and employees are more mobile than ever before. Despite doing far better than Connecticut, Massachusetts still saw an annual loss of nearly $1 billion in adjusted gross income due to net out migration, more than 70 percent of it to Florida and New Hampshire.
Prior to the pandemic, about 3.6 percent of employees worked from home at least half the time. Post pandemic, a Harvard Business School study estimates that 16 percent of employees will be telecommuters, while an Upwork survey puts the number at 22 percent.
“The rise of Zoom and remote work has made it even easier for businesses and highly skilled workers to leave Massachusetts for low or no-income tax states like New Hampshire, Florida, and Texas,” said Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser.
As Massachusetts contemplates raising taxes, state competition is fierce. Neighboring New Hampshire, which has no income tax, just voted to phase out its tax on interest and dividends. In 2021, 16 states cut income taxes; 13 more have income tax cuts in the works. In a world in which technology makes it possible to work from anywhere, the cost of living and doing business is more important than ever before.
Because it is a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, should it pass and lead to the expected negative impact on economic growth, repeal would be next to impossible.
Authors
Gregory Sullivan is Pioneer’s Research Director. Prior to joining Pioneer, Sullivan served two five-year terms as Inspector General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and was a 17-year member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Greg holds degrees from Harvard College, The Kennedy School of Public Administration, and the Sloan School at MIT.
Andrew Mikula is an economic research analyst and candidate for a Master’s in Urban Planning at Harvard University. Mr. Mikula was previously a Lovett & Ruth Peters Economic Opportunity Fellow at Pioneer Institute and studied economics at Bates College.
Liam Day is a leader in the non-profit space in San Francisco and a writer. His experience in Boston includes serving as a youth worker and teacher, government service at the Boston Public Health Commission, including directing Child and Adolescent Health, and Director of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at Pioneer.
About Pioneer
Pioneer Institute develops and communicates dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life in Massachusetts and beyond. Success for Pioneer is when the citizens of our state and nation prosper and our society thrives because we enjoy world-class options in education, healthcare, transportation and economic opportunity, and when our government is limited, accountable and transparent. Pioneer believes that America is at its best when our citizenry is well-educated, committed to liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise, and both willing and able to test their beliefs based on facts and the free exchange of ideas.
Praise for Back to Taxachusetts?
“The rise of Zoom and remote work has made it even easier for businesses and highly skilled workers to leave Massachusetts for low or no-tax states like New Hampshire, Florida, and Texas. This book is a must-read for anyone thinking about voting in favor of amending the Constitution to make Massachusetts less business-friendly.”
– Edward Glaeser, Harvard University
“What could possibly go wrong? The authors identify a myriad of potential unintended consequences from establishing a graduated income tax in Massachusetts. Along the way, they reveal the dynamism of the state’s economy and its people. This book is a must-read for the people of the Commonwealth at this pivotal moment.”
– Sara Johnson, economist
“Economic success is increasingly a hunt for talent. Back to Taxachusetts? asks a critical question at a critical time — namely, with remote work and wealth mobility at a historic high, why would Massachusetts choose to put itself at a disadvantage in recruiting and retaining a talented workforce?”
– Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University
“The data presented in Back to Taxachusetts? are compelling and frightening. The public must consider the negative effects of this surtax, and the numerous examples of how it backfired elsewhere before making the same mistake here in the Commonwealth.”
– John Regan, Associated Industries of Massachusetts
“Even if you support progressive taxation, this fact-based book will persuade you to oppose Massachusetts’ surtax proposal. It would impose a one-time “retirement tax” on many sellers of homes and small businesses, and encourage out-migration of our most productive residents — all without guaranteeing an increase in spending on transportation or education.”
– Richard Schmalensee, Sloan School of Management, MIT
“Massachusetts has finally established itself as a good place to do business. This has taken a lot of time and effort. It has also produced tremendous dividends for the Commonwealth. The notion of returning to Taxachusetts is simply wrongheaded and deleterious.”
– William Achtmeyer, Acropolis Advisors
“Pioneer nailed it. This comprehensive study mirrors what I regularly faced while competing with other states for business development: Taxes matter. At 5%, Massachusetts is disadvantaged against some states but better than others. At 9%, forget about playing offense, we will be perpetually on defense as our golden egg laying geese take flight to lower cost harbors!”
– Jay Ash, Massachusetts Competitive Partnership
“The effects of tax policies and regulations on small businesses and business formation are well known. Pioneer’s study effectively lays out the consequences of the constitutional tax amendment on entrepreneurs and should be heeded.”
– John Friar, Executive Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University
“Pioneer Institute has done it again with Back to Taxachusetts? Their findings on the tax amendment proposal are a clear warning about what can go wrong when taxes are set by slogans and emotion rather than research.”
– Peter Forman, South Shore Chamber of Commerce
“Opinion leaders across the Commonwealth must read this book and understand the consequences of passing this massive tax hike. Without clear voter education, small business owners will be asking their legislators, associations and chambers of commerce ‘where were you and why didn’t you warn me?’”
– Jon B. Hurst, Retailers Association of Massachusetts
“This book reveals truths that proponents don’t want you to know. The tax ensnares unintended people, even retirees. Promised higher spending on education and transportation evaporate. Experiences from other states warn of big taxpayers leaving even faster. The more you tax an activity, the less of it you get. This economic rule may be hard for tax proponents to admit, but it’s not too hard for voters to understand.”
– Marc A. Miles, PhD, Former Assistant State Treasurer, State of New Jersey
“If you’re somebody who cares about the future of our state, this book gives you all you need to make an informed decision on the graduated income tax proposal. As the authors show again and again, the tax will wreak havoc on the state’s competitiveness and economic well?being.”
– Brian Shortsleeve, co-Founder, M33 Growth
Related Posts:
With Declining Enrollment, Public Colleges in Massachusetts Cut Back Adjunct Faculty Positions
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, Blog: Economy, Blog: Education, Blog: Higher Education, Blog: Transparency, Higher Education, News, Transparency /by Joseph StaruskiNational Trends
Figure 1: Annual Enrollment at Public Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts by academic year. Source: US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.
The disquieting rise of adjunct positions at universities is creating what some have called an “army of temps” and others “the lowest rung in a caste system.” But at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts, one could more accurately call them “disposable.”
Adjunct faculty often teach introductory courses. They teach as few as one class per semester on a temporary basis. Many of these faculty members end up teaching at multiple colleges to make ends meet.
Since the 1970’s, these types of positions have gradually taken over higher education. Colleges and universities are replacing tenure-track positions with adjuncts who do the job at a lower cost.
With today’s declining enrollments, colleges cut adjunct faculty positions before cutting professor. Adjunct faculty are simply more disposable.
What is happening in Massachusetts?
Figure 2: A graph showing the number of professors vs. adjunct faculty at public colleges in Massachusetts. Notice that the decrease in adjunct faculty is more significant than the decrease in “professor” positions. “Professor” positions are any position that includes the word “professor” or “prof” to exclude adjunct, part-time, visiting and emeritus professors. Included in “professor” positions are associate, assistant, and interim professors. The data comes from the Massachusetts Comptroller’s Office and position titles are reported by the colleges. One challenge in creating this graph was determining which positions to include and exclude since positions titles are reported differently by every college. One college might use the title “professor” while another college might report the same position as “assistant mathematics prof.” The data presented here is publicly available through the Pioneer Institute’s MassOpenBooks website.
Enrollment at public colleges in Massachusetts has been declining since 2015. Over five years, enrollment decreased by 10.4 percent, or around 30,000 students, according to the US Department of Education (see Figure 1).
As enrollment declines, so does the number of adjunct faculty. From 2015-2021, enrollment decreased 10.4 percent, the number of adjunct faculty decreased 20.4 percent, and the number of professors decreased by only 4.0 percent (see Figure 2). This change shows that public colleges in Massachusetts are reducing adjuncts much more quickly than professors.
Pay has also improved more slowly for adjunct positions. From 2015-2021, pay increased 13.8 percent for professors and only 8.4 percent for adjuncts at public colleges in Massachusetts. The average pay for an adjunct position is slightly less than $12,000 in 2021, far below the average for professor positions.
Institutions with Big Changes
Figure 3: This graph shows how the number of adjunct faculty has changed at the institutional level and only includes institutions for which sufficient data is available. Springfield Technical Community College is in red to draw attention to it as one of the few public institutions in Massachusetts that has increased its number of adjunct faculty since 2015. The data presented here is publicly available through the Pioneer Institute’s MassOpenBooks website.
Not every public college in Massachusetts is cutting adjunct positions at the same rate. The biggest decreases have been from the institutions with the largest number of adjunct faculty. Those colleges are Bristol Community College in Fall River, Massasoit Community College in Brockton, and the University of Massachusetts system (UMass). These three alone account for over half the decrease in adjunct positions at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts.
One notable outlier is Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), which has increased its adjunct faculty by almost 70 percent since 2015. At the same time, professor positions at STCC decreased by almost 25 percent: well above average. This suggests that STCC is replacing some of its long-term positions with adjuncts.
STCC’s increase in adjunct faculty is surprising because the college’s enrollment is down by 31.2 percent since 2015. Perhaps STCC is trying to cut costs by replacing professors with adjunct instructors, but it is not easy to tell by only looking at the numbers.
Conclusion
Declining enrollment at public colleges and universities in Massachusetts has coincided with faculty cutbacks. On average, adjunct instructors have taken a bigger hit than professors. Their pay has increased more slowly, and there are far fewer positions for adjuncts than there were in 2015. These cutbacks are understandable, given current trends in higher education.
Colleges with lower enrollments are making cut-backs that disproportionately impact adjunct professors. That means the field is increasingly inhospitable for young people trying to pursue a career in higher education.
About the Author:
Joseph Staruski is a government transparency intern with the Pioneer Institute. He is currently a Master of Public Policy Student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He was previously an opinions columnist with the Boston College student newspaper The Heights and an Intern with the Philadelphia Public School Notebook. He has a BA in Philosophy and the Growth and Structure of Cities from Haverford College. Feel free to reach out via email, linkedin, or write a letter to Pioneer’s Office in Boston.
Mariam Nusrat Takes Gaming to New Heights
/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, JobMakers /by Editorial StaffThis week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of both the venture-backed Gaming Revolution for International Development and the not-for-profit Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development, both with the acronym GRID. GRID, the for-profit arm, is democratizing the creation of video games with a software-as-a-service platform called Breshna, while the not-for-profit arm creates low-cost social impact games that educate, engage and empower people towards positive behavior change. Nusrat, economist-turned-tech entrepreneur, stands out as a Muslim immigrant woman in tech. She aims to empower the world’s 3.2 billion smartphone users, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Mariam Nusrat is the Founder of GRID – Gaming Revolution for International Development, a tech start-up that aims to unleash the power of video games to educate, engage and empower people for positive behavior change. The team has built Breshna, a platform that creates purposeful video games with no-code, at low-cost & lightning speed. Mariam is on the Forbes Next 1000 List and a recipient of the Clinton Global Initiative University Honor Roll Alumni Award. She has presented GRID at several high-level forums including two sessions moderated by President Clinton at CGIU Meetings and two Tedx events. Since its launch, GRID has received extensive media attention with articles in Huffington Post, Washington Post, Daily Mail UK, Yahoo News and other mainstream news channels, and was included in the DC Inno 50 on Fire companies.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m Denzil Mohammed, welcome to JobMakers.
Denzil Mohammed:
What is the average age of a gamer? Someone who plays video games, bet you didn’t guess 35. That’s right. The profile of gamers today span every demographic, not just kids, but it doesn’t have to be just fun and games. What if we could be educated from gaming? What if we could have social justice impact from gaming and what if we could become the game creators ourselves from Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of both the venture act gaming revolution for international development and the not-for-profit gaming revolution for inspiring development. Both of course, with the acronym GRID, these things are reality. GRID, the for profit arm is democratizing the creation of video games with a software as a service platform called Breshna and the not-for-profit arm creates low cost social impact games that educate, engage and empower people towards positive behavior change. However, this economist turned tech entrepreneur stands out: a Muslim immigrant woman in tech, Mariam is doing it and aims to empower as many of the 3.2 billion smartphone users worldwide. As you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers, Mariam Nusrat,immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of GRID. Welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?
Mariam Nusrat:
Thank you so much Denzil. I’m excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And I’m excited to have a conversation with you.
Denzil Mohammed:
I’m excited to meet you because you have such a cool product. Tell us a little bit about your business and your particular market. What does grid stand for? First of all?
Mariam Nusrat:
Absolutely. So GRID is an acronym that actually stands for two legal entities. So gaming revolution for international development, which is a C corp. It’s a tech startup building the TikTok for video games. So basically BRNA is a platform that allows anyone to create their own video games without any coding, without any design skills, anyone can come on and make their own video games, be it entertainment games, or education games or marketing games. But this is like, imagine if you wanted to make a super Mario for math learning, you can go on to bra now and create that. And bra itself means lightning in the PTO language, which is my mother tongue. So it’s video games without any coding and it lightning speed. So that’s grid on the C Corp and then gaming revolution for inspiring development is our not for profit arm. And that’s where we create low cost mobile games for positive behavior change. So grid stands for gaming revolution for international or inspiring development.
Denzil Mohammed:
That is very, very cool. And you, you just mentioned international development, you’re an economist, an educational specialist you’ve worked in international development. How did you end up in gaming?
Mariam Nusrat:
Yeah, then <laugh> I often ask myself the same question. So it’s like, you know, my, I I’ve done my, my bachelors was an econ. My master, my first master’s from lumps was an econ. My second master’s at GW was in international development studies. There is no computer science, no game development in any of that. And I worked for 12 years at the world bank across 22 different countries. Sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, middle east as an education specialist, as a policy maker in the education space. And eight years ago, one of the things I realized was that purposeful communication. So if you wanna raise awareness on education or health or behavior change or financial literacy, it’s often here’s a brochure. Here’s a web website. Maybe if things get really exciting, here’s a video, but that’s not how behavior change happens. Right? If we look at the Western world, what Fitbit did for health, where it completely gamified health, what I grew up playing games like SIM city, where I was learning about urban planning without even knowing I was learning about urban planning, we just don’t see video games being mainstreamed for behavior change so that I was actually undoing my second master’s degree.
Mariam Nusrat:
So I was a consultant at the world bank, a student at GW. And that’s when I said, you know what? I don’t see video games being mainstream for a purpose beyond entertainment. So I’m gonna make a gaming studio where we’re gonna create mobile games for positive behavior change. So I put together a team of game developers and designers, and we started creating one of our first game was actually a menstrual health game, a period game, a mobile game, which was in English or do Swahili Nepalese. And basically the big idea was to build awareness around reproductive health and menstrual health. So that, that was kind of the beginning of gaming. It came from a pain point of making purposeful communication, fun,
Denzil Mohammed:
Making personal, purposeful communication, fun. I love that. And this ties into something that I think is sort of inherent in you. And maybe you got it from your parents. You once mentioned that the idea of public service is something you got from your parents. So why is it important to you to use technology in this way?
Mariam Nusrat:
Yeah, absolutely. So dental I grew up, my, my dad was in the public service all his life. So I saw, I mean, I I’m, I’m, I’m, I’ve seen policy and public service as I’ve been growing up. Right. And one of the things that my father and this is like, I mean, I think I was in third grade and he came back from, from an executive course and he literally had these three newspaper cuttings. Okay. The first one had the logo of lumps, which is the top business school in Pakistan, Lahore university of management sciences. The second one was a logo of London, school of economics. And the third one was a logo of the world bank. I’m in third grade. And this guy is like, all right, child, you’re gonna go, you’re gonna go to alums. You’re gonna do your bachelor’s in econ.
Mariam Nusrat:
Then you’re gonna do your master’s in econ. And then you’re gonna go work at the world bank. And I’m like, whoa. And then he held my fist and he was like, the world is in your hands. And he was like, no matter, like it is directly proportional to the hard work that you put in. So I think that lens of public service international development policy was something that was really like built into my DNA. But over time, one of the things I realized is that I have the solutions oriented approach to things. And I think the more and more I discover technology in my daily life and video games as a K, like, you know, how are we not unleashing the power of video games for a purpose beyond entertainment? Like, look at the time that we spend on games, there are 1 billion video game players playing video games for one hour on average around the world, right? Like 1 billion people for one hour, every single day they’re playing video games can be unleashed this time for a purpose beyond entertainment. So that was kind of what led me to it. So I think the pain point I realized to my nurture and training, but the solutions came from my passion for technology.
Denzil Mohammed:
And I think you mentioned at some point that the average gamer is a 35 year old woman on the subway playing candy crush.
Mariam Nusrat:
Yeah. And I think we’re also one of the most overlooked demographics in video games, right? Like when you, when you think about a gamer, it’s often the 22 year old in a basement playing column duty for seven hours. But actually the fastest growing genre of games is the hyper casual genre of games, which is mobile games. So like, you know, games like candy crush and games like angry birds you know, people spend a lot of their time waiting. So on average, a Western, a person in the Western world spends seven years of their life waiting for stuff to happen. You’re on the Metro waiting, you’re at the DMV office waiting you’re, you’re like in the line, you wait for things to happen. And that’s where people weave in video games, right? So games become a part of their daily routine. And I believe that brash now is empowering that 35 year old woman to not just play her own games, but also to make them it’s like, be it just like the talk for video games. So it’s about this idea of there’s 1 billion players around the world. Can we also have 1 billion makers that can tell their story through video games?
Denzil Mohammed:
Oh, that is so cool. And I brought up the 35 year old woman on this, on the subway, because just to show the cross section of people you can reach. And you mentioned TikTok. And I think about my eight year old and 10 year old nephews who spend so much time on take TikTok and non video games, but they’re very, they learn a lot from some of these videos, you know, they come with all sorts of trivia and they get interested in animals or climate change, things like that. So they are, they are open to learning from these things from this kind of technology. So I really am happy that you brought that up. As we brought up your parents let’s take it back. You mentioned alums, it’s a university in Pakistan. You are from Pakistan and you still identify as Pakistani. Can you describe for listeners what life was like in Pakistan growing up?
Mariam Nusrat:
Yeah, absolutely. So dental, I was born in cueta, which is actually like you know, one of the most conservative provinces within Pakistan. My, my, my mom is originally from that province. And my dad is he migrated from India, you know, right. When he was young and everything. So it’s like, so, and, and then I grew up in the capital, which is a Stavan and often, you know it’s actually funny Denzel I’ve had, I’ve had interviews where it’s been like, oh, you were the suppressed woman in Pakistan. And what does life feel like in America? But actually, I mean, I grew up with a father who, who just believes in empowering daughters. And I think that level of confidence that my dad put into me this idea that there is no ceiling that I cannot push through with hard work, with the right amount of passion.
Mariam Nusrat:
I mean, we grew up as as a, as a middle income family, but our education was the top priority. So my, my parents were just investing in our education, private schools, whatever it took, French classes, swimming classes, like whatever it took. Right. I mean, even in Pakistan it was like, Hey, I mean, that is the biggest investment. They could make it wasn’t buying properties. Even today, they live in a rental house, but for us, the biggest thing was it wasn’t buying cars. It wasn’t buying properties, it was putting money into our education and that’s been the biggest investment that they could’ve made. So that’s, that’s kind of what life looked like. I think I, I hope that I’ve made them, I, I think I’ve made them very, very proud. They do say I’ve made them very, very proud. But it’s also very Asian parents. Like I, I remember I was on stage with president Clinton and, you know, as part of the Clinton global initiative university and I called my dad and I was like, that was so cool. Did you see that it got livestream on state? It was like, that was amazing. What a great honor now make sure the next one is a sitting president. <Laugh> all right. I guess we’re on it, but yeah,
Denzil Mohammed:
Difficult to please guide, but you know, as, as a past interviewer interviewee set on this podcast, you know, if you’re gonna dream, don’t just dream hair dream higher.
Mariam Nusrat:
My first few years at in the us are complete blur because I think I overworked and I, I over studied. But you know, I think there’s that I’ve always approached every single day with the three piece. And I think it’s perseverance passion and purpose. Right. If you show up every single day working towards a goal with the passion, I think it just becomes relatively easy and relatively fun. And then you just have enjoy the ride along the way.
Denzil Mohammed:
I don’t imagine that you came to the us with the intention of being a business owner or certainly not gaming. So what was it like when you first started? How did you get funding? You know, how did you go about scaffolding this business?
Mariam Nusrat:
Absolutely. So Dan I’ll actually touch on a little bit, like the very beginning and then bring you to this actual, like the C Corp, which is the venture bank business business, where we have venture funding and investors and all of that, because that’s, that’s a really exciting part to it. But I think, you know, when, when, when I started off, like I, I had achieved the dream that my dad set for me, which was work at the wall bank. Right. So I was on this path of like, alright, you know, economist, senior economist, education, specialist, manager, country, director, vice president, like that’s, I mean, I had it all charted out for me and everything. So I think this idea of starting grid and kind of in the beginning, like a site gig. Oh, okay. That’s cute. You know, you’re making video games, that’s cool and everything, but it started to take a life of its own.
Mariam Nusrat:
Right. And I did it as a side gig for a while and everything. But last year when we started building Braham under a C Corp, it was like, okay, this is getting real. And we’re gonna go raise funding for this. And we’re gonna raise venture capital. And when I started them’s light, I mean, I’m an east coast founder with no business, no tech background. Like I did not know the difference between a VC and an angel. And today it’s really, really cool. We’ve raised 2.5 million in venture capital over this last span of seven months. And we have on our cap table this is something that I can actually share now. I mean, we have on our cap table, the American billionaire bill Atman, or for instance, we have, you know, I mean, some really cool web three crypto funds, web two funds.
Mariam Nusrat:
So it’s, it’s really been a really epic journey and everything. And I think what, the way I approach it is, is, you know, I mean, I know nothing, but there’s so much to learn and that’s the exciting part of it, right? I mean, we live in the world of the internet. Twitter is out there. We’ve been building in public, we’ve been making connections. I think what COVID did was really bring people to the virtual world. So the opportunities that were at first limited to Silicon valley, all of a sudden became global. You did not have to be in the bay area to go meet someone. You could just get on the zoom. So I think I’ve, I’ve had 320 investor meetings where you just knock on doors and you get a lot of nos, but then once the dominoes start falling, you get a lot of yeses. And you know, I mean, all of those, mostly out of those, I think 90% of those have been virtual. People have never met in real life. I have investors in our cap table that I still haven’t met. Right. And everything. And I think that is just such a cool opportunity where it’s not just where you are as an immigrant in America, you could be in anywhere any part of the world right now and have access to the same opportunities.
Denzil Mohammed:
What did it feel like? However, going and asking for any being an immigrant, having an accent.
Mariam Nusrat:
Absolutely. So I think dental, I, I, I, I have to admit, right. The imposter syndrome is very real, right. Saying, Hey, you know what I mean, do I belong? I mean, do I belong in the gaming industry? Do I belong in the web three world? I mean, the blockchain industry tech sector is just expanding and growing so rapidly. And I mean, do I belong in any of these spaces? And I think honestly the biggest barrier is your own mental barrier, right? I mean, being able to say, okay, you know what, I I’m, I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna show up with authenticity and I’m gonna show up with my passion and then let the space decide whether they wanna accept me or not. And I’ve, I’ve just seen such, such an insane amount of acceptance and this, and this is the beautiful thing about America is I do believe that the, if you want, there’s a community that gets created around you and then they rally you and they mobilize you. Right. It’s like, I mean, and at that point, I do think it becomes irrespective of your gender, the color of your skin, the religion you are, because at that point, it is that married based hard work, that sheer passion that just runs through. And then, and then everyone just rallies behind you. So I think and I think immigrants have that resilience and that grit to, to have that passion showed true. So I, I think, I think it’s been really interesting.
Denzil Mohammed:
Give us some examples of your favorite or most impactful or original games and the issues that they tackled
Mariam Nusrat:
The most creative ones are like, you know, I mean, someone will make like a simple birthday wish, you know, for, for their mom where it’s like, Hey, here’s a video game that I made, like, you know, to wish my mom, but I think the ones that are the closest to my heart, I mean, entertainment is awesome. But I think the ones that are closest to my heart are the climate are the social impact ones. So games around women in tech games, around drug use games around structural racism games around this idea of, you know, it’s like startups and entrepreneurship or I think the, the most favorite ones are the math learning games that are being used in schools. We have a teacher in South Africa and a teacher in east Asia, like in, and they both collaborate and they swap these games. Right.
Mariam Nusrat:
So it’s like, I mean, look at, look at the connections over here. And like, you know, each of their students will make games and then they’ll swap them. But then I also had a father who made a, a period game because you know, he’d lost his wife. So he’s single parenting, a daughter who just reached puberty and he had no idea how to talk to her about periods. So he came on bra nine and created a game around menstrual health to kind of break that barrier because then the father and daughter were just playing a game. And it wasn’t something that was stigmatized to talk about. So I think video games have such an powerful communication aspect, and we just wanna empower everyone to tell their own story to video games.
Denzil Mohammed:
So where do you see business going as you forge ahead and, and skate?
Mariam Nusrat:
So that’s kinda crazy. I’m an avid user of Canva and Melanie Perkins. I mean, you know, she’s, she’s a woman she’s Australian it’s like, so I’m an avid user of Canva and Canva democratized design for people who had no design skills. Right. And everything. And I think Melanie Perkins, I mean, she started that business at the age of 17. She started with school books, like basically designing school books. And now that business is valued at $40 billion. And I think that if you look at the business side of it, like one of the goals I have, and, and they always say, if you visualize your goals, so I have my whole IPO speech and what I’m gonna wear and everything sorted out. But I mean, one of the biggest things I wanna do is be the first immigrant woman who IPOs a decacorn at NASDAQ.
Mariam Nusrat:
I mean, forget decor, a woman, a an immigrant woman, the first white woman to IPO a unicorn at, at NASDAQ was Bumble’s founder. And that was only a few years ago. So that representation has just not happened. And I absolutely want to be the first or among the first. I want a bunch of us to show up there, ringing that IPO be. And I think that’s definitely on the business side, but at the end of the day, my biggest vision is what we are building for. And what I’m building for is a world where everyone can tell their story to video games. When I grew up, when I was playing video games, I always saw the New York city skyline and the yellow cab and the white dude. And the first time I saw Arabic in a video game, unfortunately, was in the context of terrorism, right?
Mariam Nusrat:
Like it was, it was the person you were shooting at the Muslim you were shooting at. And I think for me, it’s just so important that video games are such a cool tool for communication, but why should the rest of the world play games that have been made in one part of the world? Why can we not flip the script and have if there’s 1 billion players around the world, why should there not be 1 billion makers of video games that tell their own stories in their own language, with their own music, with their own avatars and with their own content. And that’s, that’s the world I wanna build.
Denzil Mohammed:
So how do you feel at the end of the day about the United States as the place that gave you this opportunity to build a community and build a business and build a nonprofit?
Mariam Nusrat:
I really do think that there’s something in the DNA, there’s something in the water in America where we, where, you know, just cultures collide and, and experiences collide around a shared goal. Right? So if you have a clear vision, and if you are able to communicate that vision and say, I am gonna go for build this world that has never been built before, there is something about innovation that excites this country, and it’s, it’s just everyone in this country where they just like rally around you. Right. And I think that, that excitement and that ecosystem, like if you think about it, regulatory ecosystem, how easy is it? It is to like, you know, register an LLC, how easy is it to like, you know, be able to engage people. I mean, compared to some of the other regulatory environments, like being able to fundraise, being able to do, like, bring on investors, being able to work across state lines. I really, really do think that this country is set up the, the, the, you know, the DNA is set up for innovation.
Denzil Mohammed:
You weren’t inhibited by the fact that you were a woman that you were Muslim, that you had an accent that you have a, a different name.
Mariam Nusrat:
I see it as a strength. You know, I, I personally think like, you know, the fact that I’m a woman, the fact that I, that I have these lived experiences, a lot of times the, every single solution that I’ve come up with, it’s been the way I’ve looked at the pain point, right. It’s my lived experiences that have led to that diverse perspective where I’ve been like, oh, interesting. Maybe if we could do education like this, or maybe if we could leverage, like I played SIM city and how about we do it like this? And I think it’s that diversity of perspective that leads to innovation. So I actually see it as a strength.
Denzil Mohammed:
Oh, wow. This was really inspiring. Miriam Nusra immigrant for Pakistan and founded CEO of GRID. Thank you so much for joining us and the Jobmakers podcast.
Mariam Nusrat:
Thank you so much, Zel. It’s an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Denzil Mohammed:
Jobmakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute a think tank in Boston and Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s inspiring story of immigrant entrepreneurship. Remember, you can subscribe to JobMakers on apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us a rating and a review I’m Denzil Mohammad. See you next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.
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Book Reveals How Tax Hike Amendment Would Damage Commonwealth’s Economic Competitiveness
/in Economic Opportunity, Economic Opportunity, Featured, Graduated Income Tax, Massachusetts Economy, Pioneer Research, Press Releases: Economic Opportunity /by Editorial StaffPunishing tax on small businesses and retirees unlikely to significantly increase transportation and education funding
BOSTON – If adopted, a constitutional amendment to hike state taxes that will appear on the ballot in November could erase the hard-earned progress Massachusetts has achieved toward economic competitiveness over the last 25 years and may not result in any additional education and transportation funding, according to a new book from Pioneer Institute, entitled Back to Taxachusetts?: How the proposed tax amendment would upend one of the nation’s best economies, which is a distillation of two dozen academic studies.
“People — even some in the media and business community — don’t understand the tax and what it does,” said Jim Stergios, executive director of Pioneer Institute. “This book explains the many forms of income it will sweep up, the real people and businesses it will affect, and the fact that, despite misleading promotional language from the Attorney General, it will likely result in little to no increase in education and transportation funding.”
A tax on small businesses, homeowners and retirees
The amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution would have a particularly significant impact on retirees and small businesses. It would affect a long list of “income” categories, including salary, capital gains (on the sale of investments, homes, businesses and other assets), dividends, IRA and 401K distributions, interest, royalties, and commissions. In any one year, should the totality of these income streams exceed $1 million, the state would increase existing income taxes by 4 percent on the excess.
“Pass-through” companies such as partnerships, limited liability corporations, subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships are taxed via individual returns. These mostly small businesses, nearly two thirds of which are subchapter S corporations, employed almost half of all private, for-profit employees in Massachusetts in 2019.
Passage of the constitutional amendment would force many pass-through businesses to pay the new 4 percent tax on top of the existing 5 percent income tax. Subchapter S corporations, which currently pay Massachusetts’ unique “stinger tax” of up to 3.9 percent, would face a total state tax burden of up to 12.9 percent, a rate higher than large corporations pay.
In addition, adopting the tax hike amendment would give Massachusetts the nation’s highest short-term capital gains tax (16 percent) and the highest long-term capital gains tax in New England.
“[Massachusetts’ tax proposal] would impose a one-time ‘retirement tax’ on many sellers of homes and small businesses, and encourage our most productive residents to leave,” said Richard Schmalensee, former Dean of MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “[A]ll without guaranteeing an increase in spending on transportation or education.”
The book reveals just how wide a net the tax casts well beyond “millionaires.” In fact, the tax hike amendment falls primarily on households selling a family home or business to finance retirement. Nearly half of all parties affected by the tax earn $1 million or more only once in a decade; over 60 percent do so only twice.
The tax would apply to more residents every year. To adjust for inflation, the tax amendment uses the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, which has lagged well behind household income and wages in Massachusetts. State legislative salaries, on the other hand, are tied to median household income, which has risen much faster.
“Proponents call this the “Fair Share Amendment,” suggesting that it applies to some nebulous fat cat,” said Pioneer Research Director Greg Sullivan, who, with Andrew Mikula and Liam Day, authored Back to Taxachusetts? “But the fact is that the large majority of affected parties will be retirees or small businesses — families that paid down their mortgages and loans and most often never made anything close to a million.”
Fewer jobs, people and employers vote with their feet
We don’t need to look far to see the proposed tax’s likely economic impact. From 2008 to 2020, Connecticut, which is still recovering from years of “tax the rich” policies and today boasts the second highest state and local tax burden per capita (Massachusetts ranks 14th):
As Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont has said, “It’s really dumb to [raise taxes on wealth] just by the state” and doing so would “totally disadvantage the state. [Connecticut] already [has] some of the highest income tax rates in the country and we pay a price for that.”
Many large employers left the Constitution State, including GE and Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which relocated to Massachusetts. Between 2012 and 2018 Connecticut experienced the second worst net out migration of high-income taxpayers.
Among many other tax hikes, Connecticut increased its highest income tax rate from 4.5 percent to 6.99 percent between 2003 and 2018, while Massachusetts reduced its rate from 5.6 percent to 5.1 percent. Because of its lackluster economy, Connecticut could only muster 22 percent growth in the state budget from 2008 to 2020, while Massachusetts, with strong economic growth, saw its budget grow 63 percent.
“A stable tax environment, together with Massachusetts’ innovation economy, resulted in a significant rise in jobs and wages in Massachusetts,” Sullivan said. “Massachusetts’ economic growth field budget growth at three times the rate in Connecticut — generating revenue that public sector leaders could invest in public priorities like education and transportation.”
If the tax hike amendment passes, Massachusetts will have a higher top-end rate than Connecticut.
A Blank Check
Proponents claim the tax will increase public spending on education and transportation. The Attorney General is fighting a court battle to preserve that fiction, even though the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices made clear in a 2018 hearing on the question that legislators can really spend state revenues on whatever they want.
“Both in their brief and in response to a direct question from the then-chief justice of the SJC, the Attorney General’s Office, which was arguing in favor of the surtax, made it clear that while revenue from the tax had to be used for education and transportation, nothing prevented state legislators from reducing education and transportation funding from other sources by an equal or greater amount,” Sullivan.
That’s pretty much what happened in California. After a 2012 tax hike “to fund education,” lawmakers left in just enough of the funding from other sources to meet state-mandated minimum funding levels. Much of the money previously dedicated to education was redirected to the state payroll, which increased at twice the national average rate from 2012 to 2020.
The provision “became a funding cap, not a floor,” said California policy consultant Kevin Gordon.
During debates on the proposed constitutional amendment, Massachusetts legislators made their intentions crystal clear twice rejecting amendments that would ensure that new tax revenues added to existing education and transportation expenditures. Both amendments were rejected by 4:1 margins.
Timing is everything
The tax hike amendment has been in the works — and its wording has not changed — since 2015. In the interim, the policy environment has changed in three significant ways.
First, the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), adopted in 2017, now limits federal deductions for payment of state and local taxes (SALT) to $10,000. Prior to TCJA, the federal SALT deduction allowed those likely affected by the proposed tax hike amendment to write off a large percentage of their state tax burden on their federal tax bill. That write-off is now largely gone and translates to paying up to nearly 150 percent more in state income taxes.
Second, the vote on the tax amendment comes as Massachusetts is awash in money. The Commonwealth is generating multi-billion dollar annual budget surpluses and is trying to figure out how to spend billions more in federal pandemic relief.
“State revenues in April outpaced budget projections by $2 billion,” said Stergios. “That’s more than the state would raise through the tax hike proposal in an entire year — and it is all because of economic growth and job creation.”
Third, the tax hike would kick in at a time when both employers and employees are more mobile than ever before. Despite doing far better than Connecticut, Massachusetts still saw an annual loss of nearly $1 billion in adjusted gross income due to net out migration, more than 70 percent of it to Florida and New Hampshire.
Prior to the pandemic, about 3.6 percent of employees worked from home at least half the time. Post pandemic, a Harvard Business School study estimates that 16 percent of employees will be telecommuters, while an Upwork survey puts the number at 22 percent.
“The rise of Zoom and remote work has made it even easier for businesses and highly skilled workers to leave Massachusetts for low or no-income tax states like New Hampshire, Florida, and Texas,” said Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser.
As Massachusetts contemplates raising taxes, state competition is fierce. Neighboring New Hampshire, which has no income tax, just voted to phase out its tax on interest and dividends. In 2021, 16 states cut income taxes; 13 more have income tax cuts in the works. In a world in which technology makes it possible to work from anywhere, the cost of living and doing business is more important than ever before.
Because it is a proposed amendment to the state Constitution, should it pass and lead to the expected negative impact on economic growth, repeal would be next to impossible.
Authors
Gregory Sullivan is Pioneer’s Research Director. Prior to joining Pioneer, Sullivan served two five-year terms as Inspector General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and was a 17-year member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Greg holds degrees from Harvard College, The Kennedy School of Public Administration, and the Sloan School at MIT.
Andrew Mikula is an economic research analyst and candidate for a Master’s in Urban Planning at Harvard University. Mr. Mikula was previously a Lovett & Ruth Peters Economic Opportunity Fellow at Pioneer Institute and studied economics at Bates College.
Liam Day is a leader in the non-profit space in San Francisco and a writer. His experience in Boston includes serving as a youth worker and teacher, government service at the Boston Public Health Commission, including directing Child and Adolescent Health, and Director of Communications and Strategic Partnerships at Pioneer.
About Pioneer
Pioneer Institute develops and communicates dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life in Massachusetts and beyond. Success for Pioneer is when the citizens of our state and nation prosper and our society thrives because we enjoy world-class options in education, healthcare, transportation and economic opportunity, and when our government is limited, accountable and transparent. Pioneer believes that America is at its best when our citizenry is well-educated, committed to liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise, and both willing and able to test their beliefs based on facts and the free exchange of ideas.
Praise for Back to Taxachusetts?
“The rise of Zoom and remote work has made it even easier for businesses and highly skilled workers to leave Massachusetts for low or no-tax states like New Hampshire, Florida, and Texas. This book is a must-read for anyone thinking about voting in favor of amending the Constitution to make Massachusetts less business-friendly.”
– Edward Glaeser, Harvard University
“What could possibly go wrong? The authors identify a myriad of potential unintended consequences from establishing a graduated income tax in Massachusetts. Along the way, they reveal the dynamism of the state’s economy and its people. This book is a must-read for the people of the Commonwealth at this pivotal moment.”
– Sara Johnson, economist
“Economic success is increasingly a hunt for talent. Back to Taxachusetts? asks a critical question at a critical time — namely, with remote work and wealth mobility at a historic high, why would Massachusetts choose to put itself at a disadvantage in recruiting and retaining a talented workforce?”
– Laurence Kotlikoff, Boston University
“The data presented in Back to Taxachusetts? are compelling and frightening. The public must consider the negative effects of this surtax, and the numerous examples of how it backfired elsewhere before making the same mistake here in the Commonwealth.”
– John Regan, Associated Industries of Massachusetts
“Even if you support progressive taxation, this fact-based book will persuade you to oppose Massachusetts’ surtax proposal. It would impose a one-time “retirement tax” on many sellers of homes and small businesses, and encourage out-migration of our most productive residents — all without guaranteeing an increase in spending on transportation or education.”
– Richard Schmalensee, Sloan School of Management, MIT
“Massachusetts has finally established itself as a good place to do business. This has taken a lot of time and effort. It has also produced tremendous dividends for the Commonwealth. The notion of returning to Taxachusetts is simply wrongheaded and deleterious.”
– William Achtmeyer, Acropolis Advisors
“Pioneer nailed it. This comprehensive study mirrors what I regularly faced while competing with other states for business development: Taxes matter. At 5%, Massachusetts is disadvantaged against some states but better than others. At 9%, forget about playing offense, we will be perpetually on defense as our golden egg laying geese take flight to lower cost harbors!”
– Jay Ash, Massachusetts Competitive Partnership
“The effects of tax policies and regulations on small businesses and business formation are well known. Pioneer’s study effectively lays out the consequences of the constitutional tax amendment on entrepreneurs and should be heeded.”
– John Friar, Executive Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University
“Pioneer Institute has done it again with Back to Taxachusetts? Their findings on the tax amendment proposal are a clear warning about what can go wrong when taxes are set by slogans and emotion rather than research.”
– Peter Forman, South Shore Chamber of Commerce
“Opinion leaders across the Commonwealth must read this book and understand the consequences of passing this massive tax hike. Without clear voter education, small business owners will be asking their legislators, associations and chambers of commerce ‘where were you and why didn’t you warn me?’”
– Jon B. Hurst, Retailers Association of Massachusetts
“This book reveals truths that proponents don’t want you to know. The tax ensnares unintended people, even retirees. Promised higher spending on education and transportation evaporate. Experiences from other states warn of big taxpayers leaving even faster. The more you tax an activity, the less of it you get. This economic rule may be hard for tax proponents to admit, but it’s not too hard for voters to understand.”
– Marc A. Miles, PhD, Former Assistant State Treasurer, State of New Jersey
“If you’re somebody who cares about the future of our state, this book gives you all you need to make an informed decision on the graduated income tax proposal. As the authors show again and again, the tax will wreak havoc on the state’s competitiveness and economic well?being.”
– Brian Shortsleeve, co-Founder, M33 Growth
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