I wonder if opportunites for America's poor would be improved if we didn't accept 30 Million of Mexico and Central Americas poor as illegal aliens in this country? Higher wages and more opportunities for citizens entitled to a helping hand.

Panel members weren’t arguing that the system has deliberately been stacked against the poor; they merely pointed to one of many ways in which it’s skewed toward the rich.

Those panel members should have addressed how the system here has been deliberately stacked against the poor.

The state and local tax structure government managers have put into place here deliberately targets the individuals and families with the least economic means. It is meant to impact that cohort disproportionately heavily. Moreover, the effects of implementing the most regressive tax regime in the country have bad secondary effects on our local economy, providing another barrier to those seeking to help themselves via obtaining employment.

Consider the effects of our local tax policies as they relate to two categories of taxpayers. We have some large corporations for whom these are the best of times. Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks are profitable, and doing some local hiring. Each of them is the recipient of large state and local tax expenditures (aka, preferential tax treatment/engineered loopholes). Moreover, each sells nationally and internationally. That means: 1) it is of no consequence that the local economy has been doing poorly (with high unemployment) for years, and 2) they don’t have to collect and remit high (10%) sales taxes from their customers. That’s a recipe for economic success.

Now consider the overly-regressive taxing targeting the individuals and families with the least economic means, that is, the working poor this panel was talking about. That is the demographic targeted for particularly heavy taxing by our state and local government leadership. The nearly 10% sales tax is designed to hit those with the least the hardest. Also, there’s an economics principle called the multiplier effect. Money spent locally sloshes around many times in the local economy. Not enough of that happens here because high regressive taxes act as an economic anchor. Local small businesses can not afford to hire new employees. New businesses will open elsewhere, where the private sector spending is more robust. This dynamic will continue for decades, and get worse and worse because of how regressive taxes are tied to long term bonds whose proceeds don’t do much for the local economy.

The regressive tax structure here acts as a heavy, wet blanket on the economic engine that drives other local economies out of recessions: consumer spending. Moreover, consider how much of the regressive tax revenue confiscated for “transit” in particular is lost to the local economy, immediately. Sound Transit can’t ship sales tax revenue out of the local private sector fast enough. It makes huge payments to bondholders, non-local contractors, and engineering firms. Vast sums are sent off to BNSF and Amtrak. Oversees contractors get hundreds of millions of dollars for railsets and tunnel boring machines. The size of Sound Transit’s payments to entities such as other local governments, state governments, and indirectly to unions are staggering – far larger than its peers make.

The heavy sales taxes imposed here for transit are a significant anomaly. Other regions impose little or no direct new taxes targeting people for buses and trains. The working poor here though are an intentionally-disfavored group when it comes to fiscal policy, especially in terms of transit taxing. The fact that this panel only addressed benefits governments could provide that demographic, and not the bad impacts of our skewed taxing regime, is a significant oversight. Lower and middle class families and individuals are a deliberately-disfavored group here, despite the fact that spending by them is what the political leadership is counting on to increase the region’s economic prosperity. That’s a “disconnect” at least one of these panelists should have noted.

Outlaw all public employee unions and drastically overhaul the "non-profit" section of the tax code and, maybe, the "very poor" have a chance. Currently, though, there are too many financial interests in keeping them as clients.

": If to achieve economic security all adults must be employed, who will care for the children? " (Marcia Meyers quote). Surely this must be the most profound question of the piece. Economically, the case for mothers working was at least partly based on the belief that a relatively well compensated parent could afford to have someone of lesser economic value care for the child. Under this assumption professional day care would make sense only for someone who commands a much higher salary than a day-care worker. Income is seductive, sometimes imperative, but in the long view there can be nothing more important to society than raising the children, right? I'm pretty sure caring for children is boring but is it so excruciating that we must turn it over to the government? I guess all children would then start with the same handicap; is that the goal?

An extremely well-researched and written article, Judy, one which will serve as a reference for many who are concerned with this issue.

Crossrip, everything you said is correct as far as the effects of our non-system on poor people, but there's no real evidence that poor people are deliberately targeted, as opposed to wealthy people being deliberately privileged.

Thanks for looking at this, Judy. As Plotnick pointed out in his opening presentation, the poverty rate has been dismayingly consistent ever since
the Great Society efforts of the 1960s attempted to reduce it. I have spent some time looking at the issue, individually and with others, and
have believed for some time that we were on the right track in the 1960s with focused efforts in education and job training which were cut back, first, because of Vietnam War spending and, then, by differing priorities by later administrations. All kinds of demographic and other societal changes have made the issue even more difficult in recent years.

Comments about Washington state policy are particularly relevant. Our principal elected officials like to think of themselves as progressive and/or liberal yet they hand out huge tax subsidies to favored companies and industries, cutting a huge hole in the public revenue base, and continue to finance the state and its localities with highly regressive taxes. Poor and low-income people are hit hardest in that kind of environment. Of course the strongest antidote to poverty is a good job.
That means we need policies which stimulate economic growth and, then, provide our citizens with education and skills which qualify them for jobs.
These are the fundamentals but we seem consistently unable to pursue them.

I'm with Sarah90 but would go one step farther: the poor are not targeted for good or ill, they are simply ignored, more or less as they always have been.

To TVD, be careful about the vague belief in the abstract "good jobs" as a solution. These aren't just sitting there waiting to be created by smart politicians or professors of public policy. Making a drone is a "good job," created by a public policy to go to war; educating a chemist to create a new GMO food is a "good job" for destroying the natural food supply. I'm not exactly sure that's the solution. Good jobs that are moral are difficult things to create in the modern world. Unlike our generation, TVD, we need to think beyond mere income as the defining characteristic of a "good job."

--there's no real evidence that poor people are deliberately targeted, as opposed to wealthy people being deliberately privileged.

--the poor are not targeted for good or ill, they are simply ignored, more or less as they always have been.

Those two are trying to suggest what goes on here is benign.

Every time the state legislators enact regressive taxes, and delegate authority to local governments for sales taxes and car tab taxes, they are deliberately targeting the poor. Every time local government heads impose sales taxes, pledge sales taxes as security to bonds, implement car tab taxes, etc. they are deliberately intending to cause disproportionately heavy taxing on those with the least wealth. Those facts are axiomatic.

I hardly meant that wealthy people being privileged over poor people is a benign practice. I'll try to be more clear: as bkochis says, rather than being targeted, the poor are ignored -- they are not considered part of our human community. That's extremely dangerous, both to poor people and to the nation as a whole.

The consensus of comment seems to be that the "poor" (not exactly defined) are worse off in Washington than they are in, for example, Oregon or California. That may be true but I have never seen it demonstrated with any kind of objective evidence. If you can't get a job I guess that makes you poor; are poor people who live on food stamps, unemployment benefits or disability checks more poor than someone with a job that pays minimum wage? well, yes probably , because the minimum wage employee still has access to food stamps. None of us pay sales taxes on rent or food. I think Washington's tax structure is unfair to property owners and makes corrupt bargains with some employers but I note that the critics of Washington's tax structure generally do not identify those states that more nearly approach perfection.

Washington's tax structure is not unfair to property owners. No state is unfair to property owners, because property owners may take a nice deduction on their federal taxes (even property owners who have multi-million dollar houses, and those who have second homes). Property owners who are landlords pass their property taxes on to their tenants.

Washington's tax structure is unfair to people who are poor, because our tax system does not provide for a reliable safety net. If you don't think that's true, check the state budget cuts which have happened over the last few years, and will be worsened in a few weeks by our current legislative session.

Everyone must pay their fair share of federal income taxes yet half of the population pays $0.00 in federal income tax.

Thanks for writing, animalal. About half of those who pay no federal income taxes don't earn enough for IRS taxes to kick in. About 22% are senior citizens living on tax-exempt Social Security payments. About 15% are low-wage family earners who receive an Earned Income Tax Credit against what they owe. http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Donald-Marron/2011/0728/Why-do-half-of-Americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax

And then there are the corporations which pay no federal income tax on their multibillion-dollar profits, and individuals like Mitt Romney who pay a lower percentage of their multibillion-dollar income than does someone with a $30K yearly income.