New Hampshire is a wonderful place to live, work and raise a family, but there is always more work to do to expand opportunity for everyone, including small-business owners and low- to middle-income workers.
While New Hampshire is the sixth wealthiest state with the seventh most favorable overall business tax climate, we have the fastest growing rate of income inequality in the nation.
This week, the New Hampshire House considers a number of pieces of legislation having a direct impact on income inequality. We write to highlight a couple of those bills.
One effort will help address income inequality: House Bill 644. Another will exacerbate income inequality: so-called right-to-work.
First, the Orwellian named right-to-work will curtail the collective bargaining power of workers for better wages and benefits. Right now, no one is forced to join a union, but unions are forced to negotiate on behalf of every worker, regardless of whether they join the union. To do it well, it requires resources.
By legislatively mandating no payment to the union from these workers, so-called right-to-work only undercuts collective bargaining, making it more likely the special interest elite do even better while working families do even worse.
Second, HB 644 modernizes our tax code by closing the individual capital gains loophole, which allows us to pay for the tripling of exemptions to interest and dividends tax, to equalize and cut the capital gains tax for many small-business owners, and to provide $45 million in retirement relief to municipalities.
About 98 percent of the benefit of this loophole goes to the top 20 percent, including many Wall Street day traders. The average result is folks making more than $125,000 a year will pay a bit more and those making less than $125,000 a year will pay a bit less. And that doesn’t even account for the downward pressure on your local property taxes provided with much-needed retirement relief.
Our growing income inequality crosscuts party lines, and voters in both parties talk often about a perception that a wealthy and corporate elite play by a different set of rules and get everything they want, while middle-class Granite Staters are left with less opportunities and more local property taxes.
By voting in favor of HB 644 and against so-called right-to-work, the New Hampshire House can take meaningful steps to stem the growing tide of income inequality.
(Dick Ames is state representative for Dublin, Harrisville, Jaffrey and Roxbury. Dan Feltes is state senator for Concord, Henniker, Hopkinton and Warner.)