The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser

Tag: Marty Schladen

  • It’s Time for Free Lunches in Ohio Public Schools

    girls sitting by the table eating
    Photo by Yan Krukau on Pexels.com

    I have firsthand experience with poverty and lacking food or money for lunch at school. Neither of my parents were all that concerned about whether I had lunch at school. Some days, I didn’t eat lunch. Other days, I either packed a lunch (if food was available), stole money from my dad to pay for lunch, or “borrowed ” money from my wealthy friends whose fathers worked for Marathon Oil. What follows is an article by Marty Schladen about the push to make lunch FREE for all Ohio students.

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    Many people might not be aware of this, but a big majority of Ohio’s public-school students already receive free breakfast and lunch at school.

    Making free meals available to all students wouldn’t only produce benefits equal to the costs, it would produce social benefits with a net worth of about $520 million a year, according to an economic analysis released last Monday.

    Lower-income Americans have lost significant ground over the past 40 years. In some ways, that trend might be accelerating.

    More than 1 in 4 Ohioans are now poor enough to be on Medicaid, for example, and their access to education is diminishing.

    Even adjusting for inflation, college tuition has tripled. Meanwhile, when also adjusted for inflation, the maximum available Pell Grant hasn’t budged.

    Education is a powerful predictor of future earnings. Yet even after the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in Ohio schools sits at 25.6% — up nine percentage points from its pre-pandemic level in 2018-2019.

    And more than half a million Ohio kids — 1 in 5 — are dealing with food insecurity.

    And the state’s schools reported that in the 2021-2022 school year, more than 26,000 of their kids “lacked a fixed, regular, and adequate place to sleep,” the Ohio Housing Finance Agency reported. 

    The Columbus firm Scioto Analysis examined what would happen if a relatively modest step were taken to help the state’s children.

    Already, more than 60% of students whose schools participate in the national school lunch program are getting free meals.

    What would happen if the state just paid so all students could get them?

    State Sens. Louis Blessing III, R-Colerain Township, and Kent Smith, D-Euclid, earlier this year introduced a bill that would extend free meals to all Ohio school kids. But it was assigned to a committee and died. 

    At $300 million a year, the program was relatively inexpensive — given that the legislature’s Republican leadership found twice that amount to give the billionaire Haslam family to move the hapless Browns outside Cleveland city limits.

    Three days after receiving the gift, the Tennessee-based moguls bought a $25 million mansion — in Florida.

    The Scioto Analysis study used the projected cost of the Blessing bill as a starting point and tried to compare the costs to the benefits.

    An obvious benefit would be to ensure that more kids had access to healthy meals.

    “… a study comparing schools that offered universal free school meals… to similar schools that did not offer universal free school meals found that children in schools with universal free school meals had lower household food insecurity,” the report said.

    “U.S. data found that universal free school meals provided through the Community Eligibility Provision would make 3% of previously food-insecure children in participating schools food-secure.”

    Another benefit would be that if all kids got free meals, then no one would be stigmatized as poor for getting them. 

    That one might be hard to measure, but anybody who’s been to school knows how cruel children can be.

    With a quarter of kids already chronically absent, the last thing they need is another reason to want to avoid school.

    Other potential benefits are easier to quantify: Money and time saved by families, reductions in obesity, greater administrative efficiency for schools that don’t have to keep track of whose meal bills are paid, and improved lifetime earnings by kids who are well nourished and ready to learn.

    The analysis said that last benefit would by far be the most valuable, determining it would create $552 million in annual economic benefit. 

    In all, it said, universal school meals would create $52o million more in annual benefits than the program would cost.

    “Based on the available research about the health, educational, and economic benefits of universal free school meals for students of all incomes — even those who are already eligible for free meals through existing programs — I believe universal free school meals are a worthwhile investment for Ohio,” Emily Cantrell, the policy analyst who wrote the report, said in an accompanying blog post. 

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.

  • Ohio’s Regressive Tax Code Code Continues to Punish Poor Ohioans

    class warfare

    By Marty Schladen, Ohio Capital Journal, Used with Permission

    When the United States adopted an income tax in 1913, a major purpose was to make the system progressive and ease growing inequality. More than a century on, Ohio’s system of taxation is having the opposite effect — it’s taxing poor residents much more heavily than the rich and driving further inequality, according to a report released this month.

    In fact, Ohio has the 15th-most unequal system of taxation, according to the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy’s 7th annual analysis, “Who Pays?” 

    The Buckeye State also has the dubious distinction of having the 12th-highest state and local tax rate — 12.7% — for the poorest 20% of households, the report said. That was more than double the rate — 6.3% — paid by the 1% of households with the highest incomes in Ohio. Additionally, the poorest 80% of households paid at least 10% in state and local taxes, which means the bulk of Ohioans face significantly heavier burdens than their richest neighbors.

    Ohioans are hardly alone. The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy report said that in 41 states, the highest 1% are taxed at lower rates than everyone else and that 34 — including Ohio — tax the bottom 20% at a higher rate than any other income group.

    Not only do low and middle-income households pay more of state and local taxes as a share of their own income, nationally they also pay more in terms of their share of their states’ overall incomes, the report said.

    “In other words, not only do the rich, on average, pay a lower effective state and local tax rate than lower-income people, they also collectively contribute a smaller share of state and local taxes than their share of all income,” it said. “This limits states’ ability to raise revenue, particularly as inequality increases. Research shows that when income growth concentrates among the wealthy,  state revenues grow more slowly, especially in states that rely more heavily on taxes that disproportionately fall on low and middle-income households.”

    Poverty and inequality are serious problems in Ohio. For example, Medicaid, the state/federal health program for the poor, serves almost a third of Ohioans.

    Many also lack the most basic necessities. 

    The U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey in October estimated that 357,000 Ohioans often or sometimes didn’t have all the food they need. It also estimated that members of 62,000 households who rent thought it was very or somewhat likely they would be evicted in the next two months. 

    Even so, they’re being asked to shoulder more of the burden for state and local government than the richest Ohioans.

    The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy report looked at all state and local taxes people pay, including those on income and property and user fees such as sales and gasoline taxes. Since user fees are the same regardless of income, the less you earn the more of a percentage they take up of your income.

    Many economists say relying too heavily on such taxes serves to make the poor poorer.

    The federal income tax was proposed as a way of raising revenue — and to address growing inequality. President William Howard Taft, an Ohio Republican, in 1909 proposed a constitutional amendment allowing for it. The amendment was ratified in 1913, and in the debate leading up to ratification many representing agrarian interests said making things more equal was the entire point.

    ​​“The purpose of this tax is nothing more than to levy a tribute upon that surplus wealth which requires extra expense, and in doing so, it is nothing more than meting out even-handed justice,” said Rep. William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray, D-Okla.

    At the height of the push, Ohio voters in 1912 gave their OK for a state income tax by a 52-48 margin. But it wasn’t until 1971 that the General Assembly adopted it, and opponents have been chipping away and doing other things to reduce the burden on the wealthy ever since.

    For example, a tax break benefitting people who can run their income through a limited liability company is costing the state $1 billion a year, despite doing little to fulfill promises to juice the Ohio economy.

    In addition, the budget passed by the legislature and signed into law last year reduced the top tax rate in Ohio from 3.99% to 3.75% and then will consolidate the top two brackets and reduce them to 3.5%.

    The moves seem likely to make worse what the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy found in its analysis.

    “Forty-four states’ tax systems exacerbate income inequality,” it said. “When the lowest-income households pay the greatest proportion of their income in state and local taxes, gaps between the most affluent and everyone else grow larger.”

    Bruce Gerencser, 69, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 48 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

    Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.

    You can email Bruce via the Contact Form.