Stop making working Minnesotans carry the load
Rural Minnesotans are paying more and getting less, and day to day life feels precarious. Higher electric bills. Skyrocketing gas prices. Smaller grocery carts. Hospitals cutting services (or closing). Schools scraping by. If you’re doing your part, working hard, and paying your taxes, you shouldn’t be falling behind. Life shouldn’t have to feel this hard for so many Minnesotans. It’s not right, and it didn’t happen by accident.
- The system is tilted toward the richest of the rich. The rest of us pay our taxes, but the biggest corporations and richest people keep finding ways to pay less. Something is wrong when a nursing assistant pays a bigger share of their paycheck than a billionaire.
- It’s time to put working people first. No more corporate welfare. No more special tax breaks for billionaires and giant corporations. Whether it’s a hedge fund manager or a Big Tech data center, everyone should play by the same rules and pay their fair share. Because if you do your part, you ought to be able to get ahead, not just get by.
The rest of us pay our taxes. But the biggest corporations and richest people seem to keep finding new ways to avoid paying their fair share, while making even more money than ever. Something’s backwards when a nursing assistant pays a much bigger share of their paycheck in taxes than a billionaire. That’s not right, and it didn’t happen by accident.
On top of that, now some of the wealthiest companies in the world are asking for huge tax breaks for massive data centers, the same pitch sold for decades: give a big company tax breaks and the jobs will make it worth it. But with this new crop of data centers, the tradeoff looks even worse. Communities are being asked to give up millions in tax revenue for projects that create few long-term jobs while taking on new demands for water, electricity, and other local resources. And at the end of the day, schools, roads, and public services still need to be funded. It’s the same story sung to a slightly different tune for property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes: hardworking Minnesotans pay; the richest of the rich don’t. But this isn’t the end of the story. We can fix it.
The people we elect must stop the corporate welfare and handouts to billionaires. They must make the richest of the rich pay taxes like the rest of us do. This isn’t revolutionary; it’s just fair.