Jeff Millman: A tax cut to fight for this election year

The Pennsylvania gubernatorial campaign is more a battle between us, the city-dwellers, and the suburbanites that surround us than it is a battle between the two candidates. Sidelined as spectators, Republican Mike Fisher and Democrat Ed Rendell have picked their winner; it's not you.

In their economic plans released last week, both candidates stress a reduction in property taxes, heeding the clamor from the suburbs. But they're hush on what we want.

Still, despite the best efforts of both to suffocate it, the wage tax issue always seems to creep back into the debate. Fisher's plan to reduce property taxes -- except in Philadelphia -- increases the wage tax. At the same time, Rendell refuses to support State Senate Bill 1372, which would lower the Philadelphia's wage tax by 23 percent. They were hoping you wouldn't notice.

What makes the wage tax interesting is not that it is a cornerstone issue of the campaign, because it's not. It's not the contrast between the positions of Fisher and Rendell, because they're the same. What makes the wage tax compelling is that unlike nearly everything else in this election, this issue directly affects most of us.

Candidates, and more specifically, their campaign consultants, will only confront issues that reliable voters care about. College students and recent graduates are not reliable voters: only 33 percent of us vote in presidential-year elections and 17 percent in off-year elections. Senior citizens are especially reliable voters, which is why most campaigns focus on them and their issues, such as Medicare, prescription drug coverage, estate tax reform and Social-Security. Issues that affect younger voters don't register on their radar.

This election gives Penn students and graduates an opportunity to do something rare -- use our voice to enact meaningful change to our own lives. Give Harrisburg a mandate for wage tax reduction.

The wage tax is 4.54 percent of the salary of everyone who work in Philadelphia. The city, like most, does not get as much back in services from the federal and state governments as its contributes in tax dollars. The wage tax tries to cover this imbalance.

It helps provide resources such as state-of-the-art transportation, communications, sewage, water and civic protection from the police and fire departments and hospitals. According to Mayor John Street, these amenities help attract businesses to Philadelphia, which in turn create jobs and eventually provide more revenue to improve upon an already great city.

After four years at Penn, we've become comfortable with Philly and the great culture and diversity this city offers. Yet businesses, who should find comfort in doing business among us by reducing its transportation costs to serve a large urban marketplace, are discouraged by the wage tax. Businesses are moving to the suburbs or to neighboring cities in Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland, where some corporations receive tax holidays.

This is a problem for students and graduates because there are fewer jobs here. And it's creating a problem for Philadelphia because the city is getting older and people are leaving. The challenge is to make it tax-neutral compared with its surroundings to prevent this exodus of business and valuable human capital, and to maintain its vital services to support all of us.

The wage tax is passed along to the consumer by making everything in the city more expensive. If we eliminate the wage tax, we will make Philadelphia a more attractive city, where everybody's standard of living can increase. And especially for young people, who pay rent as opposed to property taxes, a lower wage tax is critical.

We want to start out our professional careers in a city where there is more action and more opportunity. We're young, smart and nimble. We don't need to settle down with nice lawns and good schools. If the city gives tax incentives to businesses so they can hire us to stay where we are already comfortable, we will get more attached and commit to this city for a lifetime.

Now let's pinch ourselves, because it's not that simple and far more political. Those reliable voters, those seniors, the ones who are shown the carrot everyday by the candidates, they're quite happy with the wage tax, thank you. Their fat pensions go untouched by the wage tax. They pay higher consumer costs, but they generally don't recognize that, and they will vote, reliably, to keep the wage tax.

But seniors and their candidates have shown us the political door that we usually can never find. This wage tax is the issue, finally, in a campaign that affects young people more than any other. There is not much of a choice between the candidates, yet we have no choice but to move forward. As Penn students and graduates, we should be leaders among our peers and raise our political voice so Election Day matters to us and not just our grandparents.

Jeff Millman is a senior Philosophy, Politics, and Economics major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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