Proof Wisconsin Is Not Broke

Other people have posted this report already, but just in case you missed it, you should definitely take a look. A local non-partisan research organization, the Institute for One Wisconsin, disproved Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's claim that Wisconsin is broke. In fact, Wisconsin's GDP has risen over the past two decades, its revenues that haven't kept pace!

Some other tidbits from the report:

• Wisconsin's debt "has approximately kept pace with our GDP over the last 20 years."
• Wisconsin's revenues haven't kept pace with its GDP, and if it had, we would now have a budget surplus in the billions.
• In 1970, 50.6% of property tax revenue was from residential property. In 2008, it was 71%.
• In 1912, Wisconsin's corporate tax rate was 70%. Today it's less than one-tenth of that, 6.9%! We've drastically shifted the burden of taxes "from corporations and the wealthy to the middle and lower classes."
• We only have five income tax brackets. Someone who earns $300,001 a year pays the same percentage in taxes as someone who earns $300 million a year, 7.75%, while most of the rest of us pay about 6.5%.
• Over the past 40 years in Wisconsin, the wealthy have made the vast majority of income, but haven't paid close to that ratio in taxes.
• Wisconsin has one of the nation's lowest corporate taxes, and two-thirds of Wisconsin corporations do not pay any taxes.

It's a great easy-to-read report with lots of fun maps, graphs and charts. Read the report here.

Here are a few telling graphs from the report:

I also previously posted a nice graph showing middle class income shrinking with union membership

On another note, you can see where your federal tax dollars are spent at the government's 2010 Federal Tax Payer Receipt Site. We need something like this for Wisconsin.