Is Pennsylvania drowning in debt? The picture is not pretty. Forbes.com gives the state a two-star debt rating, with one star being the lowest and four the highest.
With $950 in debt per capita and more than $9,800 in unfunded pension liabilities per capita, Pennsylvania is similar to West Virginia, Portland, and Maine, among others. But New Jersey, New York, Ohio, California, Connecticut and Massachusetts, with a one-star rating, are much worse. Check out the above link for stats on all the states.
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It should not be comforting to anyone to say that we are one star rating better than NJ, NY, OH, CA, CO, or MA. These are all notoriously big spending states that spend what they don't have for sure. They spend on revenues they assume they'll keep getting, which in good times, works for awhile. A few years. Then pols get elected who think they can spend even MORE than that, on what they may not get even in good years. Then a recession hits, big or small. There is no reason PA has to be in a state of perpetual indebtedness to the point that the economy suffers.— CleanupPhilly- Let's ask ourselves honestly, let's take an objective measure, of what the state spends, and what it gets for what it spends. There is social spending in Philly that is just colossal waste. The state is stuck in simply assuming that Philly is Detroit and could never be NYC. But the economy all around the city is good. Enviable. The city drives out business and the state allows it to. This means Philly is a costly liability to PA when it could easily be an asset. Philly is owed $400 million in overdue property taxes, owed $1 billion in forfeit bail, and often the subject of scathing audits on remittances that never get paid like state inheritance taxes. All the state has to do is pass legislation to fix this. Let City Council worry about cell phones and plastic bags, where they have a 50% pass rate. That really is all they can manage. The city itself could "pay" better than any casino if the state did not have to spend so much money to support it, and it doesn't. Philly's like the adult child. You can stop paying our bills now. Really. We as a city have paychecks that we just leave in a drawer and never cash.— CleanupPhilly
- If we do measure what the state collects, the state 3.09% flat tax rate has Philadelphia's wage and school income tax rate beat, hands down. $950 per capita debt isn't so bad. That could be settled by: selling off the state store system (remember when Tom Ridge proposed selling off the state stores to build stadiums in towns the size of Altoona?), collecting mineral rights for Marcellus shale drilling. Fun fact: the Alaska Permanent Fund used to own the Aramark Tower on Market Street. Why can't PA settle this debt then set up a Pennsylvania Permanent Fund out of Marcellus shale mineral royalties?— phillygoat
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