This is a completely idiotic idea, completely devoid of any sense at all. This is a tax shift onto the people that can least afford it. The current system (correctly) assesses the taxes on the buildings and improvements upon the land. If I own a vacant lot and get taxed at $1000 and a lot across town has a million dollar factory on it and gets taxed the same $1000, how is that fair or reasonable?

The first problem Erie has is the tax burden of the non profits. We have the hospitals, Gannon, Mercyhurst, Prep, Both federal and county courthouses, the zoo, Library and museum, the public dock, along with a church on every corner. All of those provide services to the entire county and region while the city residents bare the tax burden. Add to that the big industrial centers like GE, LORDS, etc. that are outside of the city. Now add the effects of LERTA and the issue is huge. The biggest solution would be a merger between the city and the county. Eliminate the city police department and move it to the county level. Eliminate the City fire department and make it county wide. Eliminate the City streets department and make it a county wide system. Taxes would go down in the city and up in the county. No more LERTA across the board. The only businesses I see taking advantage of LERTA are businesses that would have built here anyway. Does anyone think Walmart wouldn't have built without LERTA? Does anyone think the hotels wouldn't have been built on the Bayfront without LERTA?

If someone doesn't have a degree, experience or skills... then it really isn't underemployment.

a person getting out of high school with no experience with good benefits and getting paid like 17$/hr isn't under employment

You need one year at that level to be able to apply for supervisor which is about 20$/hr.

you need one year of that to be able to apply for administration officer at about 24$/hr

and you need one year of that to be able to apply for administration officer 2 and make as much as I do.

but good news, even with the "update" you still need years of experience to get into these jobs. Removing college degree requirements do not remove experience requirements

but for IT, let's look at what a generalist's requirements are currently. They start at 55k. three years of general IT experience support, one year at a trainee or technician, one year at IT specific.... plus an associate's degree, one year at help desk one year at ticketing.

So, even with the changes, you would still not be qualified for the job based on what you said. But if someone has an associates, did a couple years of help desky work and one year working at IT directly.... 55k .

MAGA no degree no brain

And no giving up the House without a fight...

Nope you’re good it scans. I turned 21 this last December and it worked.

Civil Service tests are still used--and unreliable! I applied for the same position in two service regions at the same time with the same answers to the same questions and got a score of 70 on one and 100 on the other...

There's a reason Walmart is one of the biggest lobbyists for welfare, specifically food and housing.

But I already have to work a part time job just to get by. I didn’t get hired to go to college, I think it’s disingenuous to say it’s okay to not have a degree then treat you a different way because of it once hired.

We have that here in Lancaster where 40k a year jobs are locked behind bachelor degree requirements. Then we wonder why there’s such a job shortage.

I like this at least in theory. It allows state employers to more freely consider an applicant’s education, job or military history and anything else relevant for hiring without blocking someone for lacking formal education.

I don’t know how much civil service tests are still used but they’re not a great tool. I got hired as a Case Manager many years ago based on my civil service test score and scored worse when I took it again after doing the job for two years!

How obtuse. Net salary. Go google it kiddo.

this is not really the place to be asking tax advice, but you can take deductions for the time you were self employed.

LERTA only works to an extent. How often is the land sold? That's when you make the revenue. Say a developer buys the land. They pay the tax 1 time. In 10 years when they will start owing property tax, they will sell the property to the tenant and move on. If the tenant is smart, they too move on.

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Meanwhile, what was built on that land? 5 warehouses? Cool none of them are paying a dime towards roads, schools, fire protection, none of it. It's still stuck on this idea that if you bring in businesses by promising low or no taxes that that is good for the communit, but it doesn't do anyone any good because the moment they are forced to start paying taxes they move somewhere else.

Given the cost of childcare it's certainly an easy choice for many low income parents. It costs tens of thousands per kid per year - frequently more than these people even take home for that years work.

At the end of the day, you and I will pay for these kids, it's just a choice of upstream by subsidizing childcare, or downstream by subsidizing all the issues resulting from absent parents and inadequate support. It's literally cheaper to support daycare than not, similar to how preventative healthcare is cheaper than responsive healthcare.

Edit - and if you're expecting people to stop having kids, that's just completely unrealistic

I was implying that The Mall is all KOP needs, it's a real monument to consumption and capitalism.

If the weather's good, Valley Forge National Park is right by there. Also in good weather, Elmwood Park Zoo (closed Jan/Feb) has Treetop Adventures with a ropes & zipline course.

Phoenixville nearby has a great bar & restaurant scene.

But that sounds like an awful long time being underemployed while you get the "experience". not quite 30 years ago I did some of that in the private sector (I spent maybe a year with the title of "programmer's assistant" while being the principal architect of a decent size system that a multi-billion dollar corporation depended on and could not function without) but very quickly was promoted out of that. For the past 20 years or so, most of my jobs in the private sector have on paper had the requirements of a master's level education and nobody bats an eye at the fact that my highest degree is a high school diploma.

I have mentioned this to people before and it breaks their mind.

Next thing people are pushing for is housing programs to help people buy houses because they can’t afford them, but then that makes more unfounded demand for the houses and drives up the price until regular people cannot afford a house without the subsidy.

(not saying that that is nessesarily the case right now in a lot of places, but most responsible people who are proactive and make long term plans but houses at some point)

There’s a college tuition benefit and AFSME has a partnered with colleges to get reduced tuition.

I thought about that but there all a 2-3 hour drive from me here in central pa

It really bugs me that so many people characterize government workers as people who just sit and do nothing. Most of the people I know of who work for government agencies work their asses off (if nothing else because they are perpetually understaffed), often with little appreciation for the work they do. They do it because they see value in making the world a better place (though if you can put up with the lousy pay and the inflexible bureaucracy, the health and pension benefits generally aren't bad). Yes there are places like the DMV where role of the line workers has been bikeshedded into something that approaches my definition of hell and with that on top of all of the austerity measures that have been put into place, you're not attracting anything approaching top talent. But there's a lot of people who do a lot of very important but very thankless jobs in the government and comments like the above aren't helpful.

Post office lost mine in 2020 (pre covid), it took two or three weeks

That's fair. I will say that depending on which jobs you wanted to get into, there were options previously available.

I got in with the state about 15 years ago with only an unrelated bachelor's but you could have gotten in at the same time as me at that job with X amount of experience rather than a bachelor's degree.

Many jobs allow you to ignore the educational requirements if you have the previous level experience, so you could have started as a lower level and worked your way up.

There have also been a ton of trainee/intern positions that turn into full time positions or allow you to move up.

Like, I was an income maintance caseworker. I got in with a bachelor's but you could have had four years of interview/benefits experience, you could have been a medical assistance technican .

So, someone without college could have been a cleric typist, eventually became a supervisor, eventually became a mapt, eventually a caseworker, and eventually to where I am now. ... and you could have started that with a ged or highschool diploma. it might take a bit more time but it also pays the bills, gets you the benefits and doesn't cost an arm or a leg.

Being a stay at home parent is a choice . But you don’t do it expecting tax payers to fund it

The truth of this is heartbreaking in the private sector and public sector. Hey let’s give a tax subsidy for this warehouse to creat jobs! Wait….those jobs don’t pay a living wage. Okay we’ll just provide welfare. So now we have a corporation paying no taxes and all of their employees draining the coffers at the same time. That’s totally gonna boost the economy and definitely won’t raise taxes on the average citizen!

Yeah but you're just focusing on after tax amount in my mind you're just writing off the other portion. It's out of sight out of mind. Even now most people don't have a concept other then when they randomly look at their pay stub.

You want the tax burden to lift from the workers to the corporations who lobby for the rules to avoid paying taxes, make the people see the full amount. Pay people their entire paycheck, no tax withholdings. Then make the stroke a check or transfer funds every month. The pressure for tax reform in this country might actually happen.

Then have people factor in what they spent that was taxed like sales tax, gas tax, etc. Add that in for their school and county tax and most people wouldn't imagine they're being taxed at such a high rate.

15% of the state's adult population has "some college but no degree" and another 10% have associate degrees. That's likely a large number of additional people who now meet the required qualifications for many of these roles. As a simple anecdote, I'm one of the 15% who never graduated college but have enough credit and experience that I would now meet minimum requirements for several of the jobs that previously required a bachelors degree.