In response to no public demand
whatsoever, I took up as my column topic this week (“Masters of the new
machine,” out February 5) our new governor’s
interesting remarks on public sector pay.
One or two further points might be
made. I would accept Mr. Ruaner’s insistence that state workers take less from
the public purse if he would agree to pull his hand out of it. He could forego
the mortgage interest subsidy on one of his several second homes. He could not
claim some of the management
fee waivers that allow his income from his private equity firm to be taxed at only 15 percent — roughly half the rate
that a veteran school teacher is taxed — rather than the 35 percent that
income in his bracket is taxed at. He could stop exploiting tax rules about the
reporting of business “losses” – rules that the elites paid congress to write —
that saved him having to pay any Social Security or Medicare taxes in 2010 and 2011 even
though his combined adjusted gross income for those years was about $55
million.
A
dollar a year? Mr. Rauner is costing the public more than that.
This article appears in Jan 29 – Feb 4, 2015.
