Suchergebnisse

Why would businesses advocate for a tax increase? They may take such a position, this article argues, when tax cuts threaten their long-term economic interests. In 2012, Kansas eliminated taxes on many business owners but destabilized the economy and exposed small business to the harshness of market forces. Small businesses rely more on state services than large businesses and are more situated in local communities. The literature suggests two main reasons for small businesses' "enlightened self-interest" perspective. First, many benefited only marginally from the tax cuts. Second, the savings were offset by fiscal damage to state services that small businesses rely on. They advocated for higher taxes on themselves neither out of altruism nor entirely out of self-interest but recognizing that they had to pay taxes in order to stabilize the economic environment. In that position, small businesses in Kansas may occupy the moderating political role once occupied by a now-fractured corporate elite.

In 2012, Kansas Republicans, led by Governor Sam Brownback, passed a radical supply-side tax cutting package that cut income tax rates, eliminated the top income tax bracket, eliminated various deductions and credits, and (most controversially) fully eliminated state income tax on many business owners. However, five years later, a supermajority of Republicans and Democrats voted over Brownback's veto to repeal the tax cuts. This research asks: What would lead tax cutting Republicans to embrace a tax increase? To answer this question, this dissertation draws on over two years of ethnographic material, including 110 in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, and newspaper and legislative document analysis. This project argues the tax cuts in Kansas could not be sustained because there are social limits to supply-side tax reforms. In this project, I examine the structural and institutional conditions under which neoliberal tax reforms provokes a countermovement for social protection. I argue that this occurs in the absence of financialization, which has allowed Republicans nationally to continue to pursue massive tax cuts while paying very little political cost. However, in Kansas, the Republican Party paid a large political price for their devotion to the tax policy. As a consequence of this, economic policies were repoliticized and brought into the realm of public debate, thus fostering a renewed sense of 'fiscal citizenship' across the state. This dissertation explores this process of repoliticization and countermovement in three critical institutional areas impacted by the tax cuts: public education, small businesses, and economic forecasting.

Dr. Alex Stoner is assistant professor of Sociology at Salisbury University. His work focuses on critical theory and political economy of the environment. His work has appeared in journals such as Logos, and Critical Sociology. Dr. Stoner is also the recipient of the 2013 Albert Szymanski and T.R. Young Graduate Student Paper Award, given out by the American Sociological Association's Marxist Sociology Section. Dr. Stoner joined us to discuss his current work on the critique of the concept of the Anthropocene, as well as the need to develop a critical theory of the environment

In the context of tight state budgets, local education funding is increasingly important. This article examines the relationship between district-level demographic characteristics and voter support for tax increases to fund the local school district. Using district-level panel data on California school district elections and demographics from 1995 to 2014, we ask the following questions: (1) What is the relationship between demographics and support for school district tax measures? and (2) Does this relationship vary by the type of tax measure? Results suggest that voter support varies by district demographics. However, results differ for bond and property tax measures and suggest that the proportion of Black students increases the likelihood of passing a bond measure but reduces the likelihood of passing a property tax measure. This heterogeneity offers one potential explanation for contradictory evidence in the literature. Results have implications for racial inequality of educational resources between districts.

AbstractIn recent years, the deportation and detention of immigrants has become a common phenomenon around the world. In this article, we shed light on the global expansion of crimmigration (the increasingly blurring of lines between immigration and criminal laws) and examine in depth the United States as an example of this trend. Crimmigration scholarship has largely focused on the processes in which laws, media narratives, and political discourses criminalize undocumented immigrants. We summarize the literature that demonstrates how these processes are predicated on the racialization and gendering of certain immigrants, in the United States and elsewhere. Using the US case as an example, we discuss how criminalization practices are closely tied to for profit prison interests. Finally, we provide suggestions for future research to critically examine the criminalization of immigration and immigrants.

In the past two decades, the trend toward immigrant criminalization has increased dramatically. Drawing on analysis of recent immigration-related Executive Orders as well as interviews with Latino immigrants in Kansas, we argue that these expanded forms of immigrant criminalization amount to legal violence, with an unprecedented reach. Our focus on Kansas, a state that has not been at the forefront of anti-immigration laws like other states have, demonstrates this new reach. Our research demonstrates that the hypercriminalized immigration regime has direct implications for the everyday lives of immigrants.

AbstractThe immigration enforcement system today affects different subgroups of Latinos; it reaches beyond the undocumented to immigrants who hold legal statuses and even to the U.S.-born. States have enacted their own enforcement collaboration agreements with federal authorities and thus Latinos may have dissimilar experiences based on where they live. This article examines the effects of enforcement schemes on Latinos' likelihood of reporting crimes to police and views of law enforcement. It includes documented and U.S-born Latinos to capture the spillover beyond the undocumented, and it is based on four metropolitan areas—Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, and Chicago—to comparatively assess the effects of various enforcement contexts. Empirically, it relies on data from a random sample survey of over 2000 Latinos conducted in 2012 in these four cities. Results show that spillover effects vary by context and legal/citizenship status: Latino immigrants with legal status are less inclined to report to the police as compared to U.S.-born Latinos in Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix but not in Chicago. At the other end, the spillover effect in Phoenix is so strong that it almost reaches to U.S.-born Latinos. The spillover effect identified is possible due to the close association between being Latino or Mexican and being undocumented, underscoring the racialization of legal status and of immigration enforcement today.

Much of the research on human trafficking focuses on the prosecution of traffickers and protection of survivors after the crime has occurred. Less is known about the social disparities that make someone vulnerable to trafficking. This project examines human trafficking from a preventive focus, using data from a case study of service providers working with at-risk populations in the Kansas City, MO-KS area. The research team conducted 42 in-depth interviews with service providers working in the medical, educational, legal, and social services sectors from 2013 to 2016. Participants identified risk factors that could make someone vulnerable to labor or sexual exploitation. These factors clustered into four key areas: economic insecurity, housing insecurity, education, and migration. The research findings also suggest that human trafficking may be driven by an accumulation of risk factors that move vulnerable persons closer to labor exploitation and sex trafficking, fitting with a chain-of-risk model. We propose a model that reconceives of trafficking as a continuum that includes a range of vulnerabilities, violence, and traumas. In order to address human trafficking, policy makers and advocates need to focus on upstream prevention factors to address vulnerabilities that can lead to sex and labor exploitation.