New IWF tax expose: GE pays $0 state tax

General Electric is a major Wisconsin manufacturer of medical-imaging equipment, a good employer for an estimated 3,000 state workers, a boon to many communities and a stimulus for high-tech development in the state.

But even with these kudos to GE—America's largest manufacturing firm—there is a problem. GE has become the nation's No. 1 symbol of federal tax avoidance.

The Institute for Wisconsin's Future's latest tax newsletter provides the first national documentation of GE not paying income tax at the state level. GE has been become the national poster-child for corporate tax avoidance.

See other issues of WhoDoesNotPayTaxes?

Rutgers study finds that money matters
in those things that make education work

Have you noticed it is OK to bail out Wall Street with billions of taxpayers dollars, but we can’t “just throw more money” at the problems in public education. We can save the automobile industry with an infusion of cash, but we talk about closing schools that “don’t produce” on the test.

The argument from some so-called school reformers is that money isn’t really the issue. “They say that public spending on education has risen dramatically in recent decades, but the United States has still fallen behind other countries on international assessments,” according to Valerie Strauss in an article in The Washington Post.

Well, a new study by the Shanker Institute goes a long way toward putting that argument to rest, saying of course money matters: It’s not about throwing money at a problem. Instead, it is about providing the right number of resources so that children have the opportunity to succeed.
 
“Revisiting the Age-Old question: Does Money Matter in Education,” was written by Rutgers University Professor Bruce Baker. In a review of the research, he finds school resources that really make a difference─class size reduction and getting and keeping quality teachers, for instance ─ “are positively associated with student outcomes” and, on the whole “the things that cost money benefit students, and there is scarce evidence there are more cost-effective measures.”

Click here to read the WAES reaction to this story.

Green Bay finds that personal attention,
dealing with poverty decrease drop-outs

Once you cut through all of the political claptrap and philosophical nonsense, education isn’t rocket science. Kids are eager to learn and parents want their children to grow to be sound and successful. Educators want nothing better than to leave children better than when they found them, and communities want the next generation to be better prepared then they were.

What, then, is standing in the way?

The Green Bay Press Gazette comes as close to a good explanation as anyone else has, in a recent article describing how the district is trying to "help" kids stay in school and succeed. The answer: Treat them as individuals and address issues of poverty.

It’s time to take the politics out of play, because education isn’t a game and politicians have done enough harm. Instead, we just need to do what works ─ what experience, intuition, and research have proven ─ give kids the opportunities they need to succeed and, in most cases, they will.

What Americans keep ignoring
about Finland’s school success

Be more like Finland, education reformers in America say. We all agree the U.S. has to improve its schools and the Finns have one of the world’s reigning super powers.

We agree: Let’s model what we do after the Finnish system that was ranked number one by Newsweek last year, but also no private schools, values equity, has no standardized tests, has little school choice, doesn’t engage the private sector, and doesn’t even have the word “accountability” in the Finnish language.

In other words, if we want our schools to be more like Finnish schools, says a recent article in The Atlantic , we need to make some pretty drastic changes. For example, “decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.”

It’s hard to imagine Americans, especially our elected officials, making those changes, but that might very well be the key.

The Atlantic article, based on an interview with one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, said: “The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.”

Walker policies costing Wisconsin jobs

Gov. Scott Walker’s economic policies have caused so much job loss that Wisconsin is trailing the national pace of job creation.

That’s brought home by a new report from IWF, The Price of Extremism: Wisconsin’s economy under the Walker administration.

If only Wisconsin had matched the national pace of job creation since April, about 34,000 more families would have a breadwinner with a full-time job, the report says.

Wisconsin lags the national economy because of Walker’s “cuts only” approach to budgeting. His policies have pulled billions of dollars out of the state economy, the worst possible action he could have taken during a difficult economic period.
Walker’s cuts include:

• Cuts in state aid for important programs at the state and local level
• Cuts in aid to low-income families
• Cuts in take-home pay for hundreds of thousands of public employees
• Rejections of federal dollars.

The indirect ripple effects of these policies will alone cause the destruction of about 18,000 full-time jobs, according to IWF’s economic simulations.

The report also includes estimates of the impact on a number of individual counties.

Read The Price of Extremism: Wisconsin’s economy under the Walker administration
See the press release
How Gov. Walker’s policies impact your community — County-by-county breakdowns