Professors' solution to 'uprooting systemic racism': Tax the rich

Two San Francisco State University professors wrote in a recent opinion editorial that “uprooting systemic racism will require profound changes in public policy,” which could include imposing more taxes on the rich. 

Professor of political science Ron Hayduk and assistant professor of international relations Anthony Pahnke wrote that states must have a “fully funded public sector.” To rid America of systematic racism, they say, schools must have adequate funding to be able “to address everything from the achievement gap to unconscious bias...”

To avoid any budget cuts to the education sectors, Hayduk and Pahnke propose that the state “increase taxes on the states’ corporations and millionaires and billionaires.” This includes possibly a 2 percent income tax for people making more than $1 million dollars each year, or a wealth tax of 1 percent for millionaires and 1.5 percent for billionaires.

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One solution, the professors propose, is to tax corporations that have “increased the value of their services” during the pandemic. Corporations that have increased their revenue should be held accountable by creating “an “excess” profits tax.” Hayduk and Pahnke claim that “increasing the taxes on the rich actually helps them” because their extra taxes would fund a better education system for people they employ.

These increases in taxes will not cause the wealthy to move out of California, they claim. According to previous studies, “ the state’s economic elite stayed put” when California raised taxes in the past. There is broad support, they say, to raise taxes, since “public opinion consistently and overwhelmingly supports taxing the rich, across parties.”

“Fully funding our schools is our best economic development strategy, as well as central to any coordinated effort to challenge systemic racism in our society,” Hayduk and Pahnke wrote.

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