Here’s the tale of the tape for Technicolor Inc., the latest company to get a tax freeze from Memphis and Shelby County:
Annual revenues for Technicolor Inc: $3 billion
Median salary for new Memphis jobs: $26,000
Poverty level for family of five: $25,790
Here’s a recent email from Robert Bain to us that seems relevant:
Ouch.
Just yesterday, in case I wasn’t clear, I was correlating how so many with low pay and no benefits part-time jobs combined with major companies that get PILOTs to offer those same low pay no benefit jobs result in Memphis and Shelby County perpetuating the poverty index that persists here. A poverty index that makes for the financial problems of the Med and well as so many other issues here.
Today, just one day later, I pick up my morning Commercial Appeal and find an editorial, of all places, making a plea for the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board taking a look at a request for an additional tax freeze at Technicolor.
You have to read it for yourself as I am not certain that I can convey (like the Commercial Appeal’s editorial board) why “the company deserves a fair hearing” while in the next sentence they mention “taxpayers who must pick up the slack.”
There is something decidedly broken when we hear about companies getting tax freezes and additional tax freezes after promising to “create” some number of new jobs at “an average wage of”. First we should be asking how many of those new jobs actually happen and are maintained year-by-year over the time of the tax freeze and, of equal importance, the breakdown of the average annual wage – what is made by a hand full of executives and what by the majority of employees; which jobs are permanent and which temporary; which jobs are full-time and which are part-time; and (yes) which have benefits and which don’t; which results in some going to St. Francis and some others going to the Med.
The Commercial Appeal, it seems, would provide a tremendous public information service if they investigated just what these companies contribute to the local economy compared to what they cost the local economy if I’m correct that between them and their employees little to no taxes are being paid yet the demand for public services is increased by their presence.
In this instance, the company IDB is twisting our arms behind our backs with a threat of instead increasing their capacity in its Michigan operations. I could be wrong in this, but the draw is not just the tax freeze they might get there or here, it is also the proximity to FedEx and the low wage base we have here that doesn’t co-exist in Michigan.
Last night I couldn’t make it to the New Path Politics: Stirred & Shaken discussion. Hopefully, they decided to get stirred up and shake up issues just like this one as, other than universal quality pre-K and the City Council versus MCS debacle, I can’t think of anything more worthy of serious attention by serious minds; serious, that is, in improving all of Memphis rather than their personal position here.
Whoa! When did we start measuring poverty for a family of FIVE? It used to always be four! Is the size of families in “poverty” getting bigger or are those using the stats just playing with the numbers?
If the size of the families in poverty are getting bigger, we have some serious soul searching and “tough love” to do.
As to tax freezes, yea, they’ve gotten out of hand.