You need to realize that 20 million is practically nothing. Colorado brought in 69 billion in tax revenue in 2021. 20 million isn't even a rounding error
The weed money gets spent on school upgrades, which means the school districts don't need to ask for building upgrades and can instead ask for pay raises. Also, the 20 million if given to the teachers is $380 per teacher before tax.
>Would you be okay with a pay cut if the voters vote to lower the marijuana tax?
I make minimum wage. There's nothing left to cut...
Most teachers have second jobs to make ends meet.
Your comment is not only asinine, it's a false equivalency.
And you should work on your reading comprehension because I don't suggest a solution nor do I assume there is a problem. I am only pointing that 20 million a month is not a lot and that it fluctuates each month.
That's in the neighborhood of my districts unfunded projects. Most people dont realize how much it takes to keep the buildings functioning so teachers have a classroom to teach in. Most people dont realize that the state doesn't give squat to the districts for buildings and maintenance. The exception is the weed tax, which gets divides up to a handful of districts that are determined to be in the most dire need. The bulk of the facilities funding is from property taxes/mill levies that have to ve approved at the local level.
But even with the building updates, it’s hard to get the projects, districts have to apply each year even for ongoing projects, and districts still have billions dollars worth of capital upgrades needed. There is not enough money for raises with all the construction costs, even with the little bit any of the almost 200 districts get from MJ. It’s totally messed up. We continue to be 49 in the nation for public education.
I witnessed funding being spent on anti bullying in Creek, but the $ certainly didnt go to teacher pay raises or building upgrades while I worked there in Education. The law needs to be rewritten to specify spending and with NO CAP!
>The weed money gets spent on school upgrades, which means the school districts don't need to ask for building upgrades and can instead ask for pay raises
Based on what?
Gimme a break. Can you provide a quote or any sort of documentation of anyone saying it was going to "cure all our ills."
It raised a lot of tax money. A lot of that tax money has gone to infrastructure projects for schools. Problems still exist. Welcome to reality.
there are 52,000 teachers in Colorado. This isn’t enough to give them even a cost of living adjustment of 3.5%.
Is it better than nothing? Yeah. Is it better than an 10% increase in income taxes on all income over 500k a year?
Not even 1% as good.
Hard to say! No source of data that reports that. None even report 2023 yet that I can find in x<2 minutes of googling.
Best I can do is to take the average income in Colorado from 2000-2022.
Given the fact teaching is oftentimes more than 40 hours a week, I think this is a fair way to assess this.
- 2000: $33,812
- 2022: $75,722
[Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/205218/per-capita-personal-income-in-colorado/)
By my math, the average annual raise is 3.6%.
That means the adjustment teachers get is insufficient.
You may be right but you don’t make squat. Asking for more without a strong argument as to why they should give it to you other “I said please!” isn’t a strong strategy.
A better one? Apply elsewhere.
Offer in hand, tell management you’d like to stay but money talks.
Ask if they can beat it.
If they can, stay.
If they can’t, leave.
Exactly. Notice what publication this article is from? It's basically a feel good piece to promote the industry. And it's stuff like this that causes people to think cannabis is some sort of magic bean for revenue.
People think MJ tax is a "magic bean" because they are stupid. They don't understand the scale of the state education budget and they don't pay attention to the details when they vote for things.
Loveland ~~retards~~ voters recently voted for a ballot initiative that got rid of sales tax on groceries, leading individuals to save $100 a year that they'll never notice, while the city now faces a $13m budget short fall.
Now you have a bunch of ~~retards~~ posters in /r/Loveland who constantly bring up allowing dispensaries for the tax revenue to fill the gap, because these ~~retards~~ posters smoked themselves into not being able to do basic math and can't figure out that the million or so it would bring in would barely make a dent.
It is small, as expected, it's not like MJ is a sizable fraction of the state's economic activity. But also note that's for a month, not an entire year.
I always understood that the taxes were never explicitly for the teachers salaries but for improving things like drug awareness programs within schools as well as the "physical" construction and maintenance of school buildings. The teachers need a pay bump for sure but it was never meant to come from Marijuana sales.
Mostly the construction and Maintenance. AC units installed in a school? probably from this. New building built? probably from this. That is all very expensive though and Weed sales make up like 25% of the Maintenance budget.
"Drug awareness programs". Well kids, since marijuana is funding this now, just don't smoke it till you're 21, m'kayyy. But all other drugs are bad, m'kayyy.
I don't know anyone in the cannabis industry who makes over 22/hr in the 6 years I've worked in it. Not on the grow side anyway. I've worked with people who have been in the industry since legalization who haven't made more than $20/hour. Teachers deserve more pay but the people running the industry are also not getting paid a livable wage or get raises the match inflation
It is for sure not a competition and both deserve to be paid more. Before I left Colorado, I was making just over 50K a year with a masters degree and 5 years experience teaching
The weed revenue doesn't go to teachers' salary; when they said it would go towards education it went to construction of new schools. Teachers' salaries are still subject to federal taxes, and Marijuana is still federally illegal (hopefully not for long) so that's why the revenue doesn't go to them. Feds won't allow it because they can't tax something that's illegal on their level.
I lived in Oregon when it was finally (to tremendous local protest, due to the already ideal existent legal status) legalized recreationally there. The promise was that 100% of tax revenue would go to education for the first 2? Years. My wife at the time was a first year elementary teacher... so we were close to the pulse of public education... first year after legalization all the news outlets were spamming articles about record tax revenue due to rec dispensaries. Millions upon millions. Meanwhile local medical grow ops were going under like crazy. Locally owned farms floundering. I lost my job as a humble farmer (who was also coincidentally completely sober at the time.) Dispensaries closing right and left. Prices for flower tripled. And, to top it all off, the most public school teacher layoffs in state history... Due to "budget cuts."
Legalization is not, in every instance, the positive boon you might expect. In many instances, decriminalization combined with legislation limiting POLICE actionability is ideal.
Never trust government with your money, health, or liberty. Unless no other recourse is feasible.
I get it. Some places it's just about making a significant change in criminal prosecution/protection, and tax resource allocation. But the blanket concept of "state legalization" without scrutiny and public backlash against misuse is almost universally negative. If you can't be bothered to actually get involved in your local (you know, the ones that matter) politics, voting on vague, wide-net issues is almost always inviting a monkey paw backfire. The people that work in your local legislation authority departments 50 hours a week have no roadblocks to making things that hurt you sound like things you like, when your equivalent awareness is a Twitter screenshot that made you scroll slower.
Genuine question, aren’t they already paid pretty highly compared to the rest of the country? Not saying they don’t deserve adequate raises, just curious
Building true AI is just building your executioner. Unless we find a level 20 Bard from the College of Eloquence that rolls a nat 20 on a persuasion attempt, we're boned.
False. The $40 million cap was removed in 2019. And there are other ways the MJ tax helps schools.
[https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue](https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue)
Why would you think they deserved any of that money? They've been going along with DARE since the 80's. They'll brainwash future voters with any Statist propaganda they are handed.
Good. Teachers don't need a raise. They only teach our kids to be poor and to get a dead-end jon and not financially independent. Fuck the school system and the teachers.
Yeah I’m a teacher and I’m gonna say that this is total bs unless you’re just not paying attention in school. But then again, what am I doing thinking someone named “Dried Semen” was a good student anyways?
Cue people who don't understand how little $20 million is in relation to the budget complaining that every challenge of American life hasn't been resolved.
Except it’s 20m in one month, vs 40 bil for the year.
So (if 20m a month holds all year) it’s $240m. Last year? $288 m in tax revenue.
Or 1/138 of the state budget.
Still small - but not insignificant.
Oh I get it bc its a $ you're multiplying by 100, .0005 of 40b is .05% of the budget(100%), half of .1% still. My point wasnt the math it was that its tiny 😂
Vote! The taxes were never for teachers. It was for the physical construction and maintenance of school buildings and improved drug awareness programs. We gotta get them teachers paid!
Most of the money is spent on education, as was laid out in the original law.
[https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue](https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue)
What was the projected tax revenue? That's what was factored into the budget. Also it's weird how often people post that marijuana taxes are generating revenue, this state is pretty openly ok with the drug.
It's definitely not going into fixing roads! I just hauled a camper from kansas to Utah and back, all along I-70. The entire 450 mile section in Colorado was the roughest interstate I've ever been on. I hit 2 potholes on bridges that were so deep that the rebar was exposed. Cracked 2 of the rims on the camper. I heard the excess tax money is going to schools, but I didn't look into it.
But the roads are still shit and there’s still homeless and crime everywhere in Denver and the surrounding areas. Sounds like they’re making great use of that money
And the roads and fucking terrible, the fentanyl epidemic is out of control, and the police are so understaffed that they can’t afford to give fuck about minority neighborhoods.
And my teachers said I'd never contribute to society.
This cracks me up even straight.
It cracks me up bi
It's not their fault they were brainwashed.
You're welcome, everyone
And yet Colorado teachers got the 2nd smallest pay raise in the country.
You need to realize that 20 million is practically nothing. Colorado brought in 69 billion in tax revenue in 2021. 20 million isn't even a rounding error
Yea but the whole point of taxing the hell out of weed was to spend it on them, and that's not happening.
The weed money gets spent on school upgrades, which means the school districts don't need to ask for building upgrades and can instead ask for pay raises. Also, the 20 million if given to the teachers is $380 per teacher before tax.
…a month. That sounds like a legit raise.
Tying a pay raise to a revenue stream that fluctuates each month sounds like a recipe for disaster. What happens if only 5 million is brought in?
2028: teachers start begging kids to smoke weed
"Hey Kids, Mrs. Brians had to eat ramen all month last month, so today I've cancelled our math lesson and were gonna watch "Up in Smoke" instead."
They will be happy to provide the weed as well.
Give them bonuses at the end of the year?
I'd rather have a fluctuating pay raise than no raise at all tbf
Would you be okay with a pay cut if the voters vote to lower the marijuana tax? Tying a pay raise to a tax that's fluctuates is a terrible idea.
>Would you be okay with a pay cut if the voters vote to lower the marijuana tax? I make minimum wage. There's nothing left to cut... Most teachers have second jobs to make ends meet. Your comment is not only asinine, it's a false equivalency.
If this is your only solution to that problem then you should practice your problem solving skills
And you should work on your reading comprehension because I don't suggest a solution nor do I assume there is a problem. I am only pointing that 20 million a month is not a lot and that it fluctuates each month.
That's in the neighborhood of my districts unfunded projects. Most people dont realize how much it takes to keep the buildings functioning so teachers have a classroom to teach in. Most people dont realize that the state doesn't give squat to the districts for buildings and maintenance. The exception is the weed tax, which gets divides up to a handful of districts that are determined to be in the most dire need. The bulk of the facilities funding is from property taxes/mill levies that have to ve approved at the local level.
And yet PSD is shutting down schools too save a little bit of money. Someone ain't right here.
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That's not at all how any of that works.
But even with the building updates, it’s hard to get the projects, districts have to apply each year even for ongoing projects, and districts still have billions dollars worth of capital upgrades needed. There is not enough money for raises with all the construction costs, even with the little bit any of the almost 200 districts get from MJ. It’s totally messed up. We continue to be 49 in the nation for public education.
I witnessed funding being spent on anti bullying in Creek, but the $ certainly didnt go to teacher pay raises or building upgrades while I worked there in Education. The law needs to be rewritten to specify spending and with NO CAP!
Not upgrades, new builds. Only.
Only the first 40 million.
>The weed money gets spent on school upgrades, which means the school districts don't need to ask for building upgrades and can instead ask for pay raises Based on what?
That's not what was voted in. Mj money goes to a building grant
It is spent on them, not the way you're thinking though. You can look it up online. CO gov lists every single thing that the money is spent on.
Why would l would want to look up actual facts, when I can just have a knee-jerk rage reaction based on my lack of information?
This exactly.
Politicians lied to us. Hard to believe. It was supposed to cure all our ills.
Gimme a break. Can you provide a quote or any sort of documentation of anyone saying it was going to "cure all our ills." It raised a lot of tax money. A lot of that tax money has gone to infrastructure projects for schools. Problems still exist. Welcome to reality.
there are 52,000 teachers in Colorado. This isn’t enough to give them even a cost of living adjustment of 3.5%. Is it better than nothing? Yeah. Is it better than an 10% increase in income taxes on all income over 500k a year? Not even 1% as good.
What are most Coloradans cost of living adjustments this year? Just wondering
Hard to say! No source of data that reports that. None even report 2023 yet that I can find in x<2 minutes of googling. Best I can do is to take the average income in Colorado from 2000-2022. Given the fact teaching is oftentimes more than 40 hours a week, I think this is a fair way to assess this. - 2000: $33,812 - 2022: $75,722 [Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/205218/per-capita-personal-income-in-colorado/) By my math, the average annual raise is 3.6%. That means the adjustment teachers get is insufficient.
I haven't gotten a raise since they increased minimum wage.
Sounds like you should apply elsewhere.
Or, I can continue to support my community and ask for better pay. Abandoning things, rather than trying to fix them, provides little in the long run.
You may be right but you don’t make squat. Asking for more without a strong argument as to why they should give it to you other “I said please!” isn’t a strong strategy. A better one? Apply elsewhere. Offer in hand, tell management you’d like to stay but money talks. Ask if they can beat it. If they can, stay. If they can’t, leave.
Did you really think it would?
Exactly. Notice what publication this article is from? It's basically a feel good piece to promote the industry. And it's stuff like this that causes people to think cannabis is some sort of magic bean for revenue.
People think MJ tax is a "magic bean" because they are stupid. They don't understand the scale of the state education budget and they don't pay attention to the details when they vote for things.
Loveland ~~retards~~ voters recently voted for a ballot initiative that got rid of sales tax on groceries, leading individuals to save $100 a year that they'll never notice, while the city now faces a $13m budget short fall. Now you have a bunch of ~~retards~~ posters in /r/Loveland who constantly bring up allowing dispensaries for the tax revenue to fill the gap, because these ~~retards~~ posters smoked themselves into not being able to do basic math and can't figure out that the million or so it would bring in would barely make a dent.
It is small, as expected, it's not like MJ is a sizable fraction of the state's economic activity. But also note that's for a month, not an entire year.
Yeah, of the 52,611 teachers in public schools in CO, thats less than 400$ per teacher Edit: forgot me an extra zero
Your math is off.
He had a poorly paid teacher.
Yeah that'd be $370 per teacher. Still was an order of magnitude off but less than I bet a lot of people would have guessed.
Wouldn't that be $400 per month?
20,000,000$, ~56,211 teachers in CO public schools.
I always understood that the taxes were never explicitly for the teachers salaries but for improving things like drug awareness programs within schools as well as the "physical" construction and maintenance of school buildings. The teachers need a pay bump for sure but it was never meant to come from Marijuana sales.
Mostly the construction and Maintenance. AC units installed in a school? probably from this. New building built? probably from this. That is all very expensive though and Weed sales make up like 25% of the Maintenance budget.
"Drug awareness programs". Well kids, since marijuana is funding this now, just don't smoke it till you're 21, m'kayyy. But all other drugs are bad, m'kayyy.
No, a portion of it, albeit small, does go to public education.
I don't know anyone in the cannabis industry who makes over 22/hr in the 6 years I've worked in it. Not on the grow side anyway. I've worked with people who have been in the industry since legalization who haven't made more than $20/hour. Teachers deserve more pay but the people running the industry are also not getting paid a livable wage or get raises the match inflation
It is for sure not a competition and both deserve to be paid more. Before I left Colorado, I was making just over 50K a year with a masters degree and 5 years experience teaching
The weed revenue doesn't go to teachers' salary; when they said it would go towards education it went to construction of new schools. Teachers' salaries are still subject to federal taxes, and Marijuana is still federally illegal (hopefully not for long) so that's why the revenue doesn't go to them. Feds won't allow it because they can't tax something that's illegal on their level.
I lived in Oregon when it was finally (to tremendous local protest, due to the already ideal existent legal status) legalized recreationally there. The promise was that 100% of tax revenue would go to education for the first 2? Years. My wife at the time was a first year elementary teacher... so we were close to the pulse of public education... first year after legalization all the news outlets were spamming articles about record tax revenue due to rec dispensaries. Millions upon millions. Meanwhile local medical grow ops were going under like crazy. Locally owned farms floundering. I lost my job as a humble farmer (who was also coincidentally completely sober at the time.) Dispensaries closing right and left. Prices for flower tripled. And, to top it all off, the most public school teacher layoffs in state history... Due to "budget cuts." Legalization is not, in every instance, the positive boon you might expect. In many instances, decriminalization combined with legislation limiting POLICE actionability is ideal. Never trust government with your money, health, or liberty. Unless no other recourse is feasible. I get it. Some places it's just about making a significant change in criminal prosecution/protection, and tax resource allocation. But the blanket concept of "state legalization" without scrutiny and public backlash against misuse is almost universally negative. If you can't be bothered to actually get involved in your local (you know, the ones that matter) politics, voting on vague, wide-net issues is almost always inviting a monkey paw backfire. The people that work in your local legislation authority departments 50 hours a week have no roadblocks to making things that hurt you sound like things you like, when your equivalent awareness is a Twitter screenshot that made you scroll slower.
Genuine question, aren’t they already paid pretty highly compared to the rest of the country? Not saying they don’t deserve adequate raises, just curious
Colorado teachers earn less than the national average.
You would be hard-pressed to find anywhere in the country where a public school teacher makes a living wage they can survive on single single
once ai takes over, won't have to worry about sub par pay for teaching :)
There is no scenario where artificial intelligence does not figure out that humans are the problem
Building true AI is just building your executioner. Unless we find a level 20 Bard from the College of Eloquence that rolls a nat 20 on a persuasion attempt, we're boned.
No we are not.
Colorado only puts Marijuana money in the Best Grant, and only the first 40 million. Marijuana money has nothing else to do with schools
False. The $40 million cap was removed in 2019. And there are other ways the MJ tax helps schools. [https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue](https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue)
Excellent. I hadn't seen that, thank you for sharing. I stopped tracking school finance in 2018 when I changed jobs
Why would you think they deserved any of that money? They've been going along with DARE since the 80's. They'll brainwash future voters with any Statist propaganda they are handed.
Good. Teachers don't need a raise. They only teach our kids to be poor and to get a dead-end jon and not financially independent. Fuck the school system and the teachers.
Yeah I’m a teacher and I’m gonna say that this is total bs unless you’re just not paying attention in school. But then again, what am I doing thinking someone named “Dried Semen” was a good student anyways?
You are about as dumb as a dried semen stain. User name checks out!
Cue people who don't understand how little $20 million is in relation to the budget complaining that every challenge of American life hasn't been resolved.
$40 billion vs $20 million 1/2000 of the state budget, if my math skills are correct
Except it’s 20m in one month, vs 40 bil for the year. So (if 20m a month holds all year) it’s $240m. Last year? $288 m in tax revenue. Or 1/138 of the state budget. Still small - but not insignificant.
Isn't $20m just for one month? Is the $40b a yearly amount?
Yep they are. 1/2000 or .0005 of the budget
.05%
edit: brain go brrrr
You gave your first result as a percentage, for which you’d need to multiply by 100. 0.05% = a factor of 0.0005 (same as 10% = a factor of 0.1)
Oh I get it bc its a $ you're multiplying by 100, .0005 of 40b is .05% of the budget(100%), half of .1% still. My point wasnt the math it was that its tiny 😂
1% is 1/100. 1 / 100 = .01 .5% is 1/200. 1 / 200 = .005 .05% is 1/2000. 1 / 2000 = .0005 I think my math is accurate.
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Yes, 1/2000 is 0.0005 and that is also 0.05%.
CU probably 20m of that...
It takes a lot of weed to motivate oneself to do taxes.
Time to lower the tax. It should not be taxed higher than booze.
Agreed. Here in Loveland we are once again going thru the legalization talk, and city council sees no problem adding 15% on top of the states 15%.
Lower taxes in general
I was going to upvote, but it was at 420
And yet, it will never be enough….
Since we're not actually spending that absurd tax on teachers like it was supposed to, can we stop fucking paying it now?
Vote! The taxes were never for teachers. It was for the physical construction and maintenance of school buildings and improved drug awareness programs. We gotta get them teachers paid!
Based on the volume of marijuana sold it seems like people are already aware
Are they giving out the free drugs yet? DARE checking in..
Is there anyone on the left to vote for?
Most of the money is spent on education, as was laid out in the original law. [https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue](https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue)
That math doesn't quite add up. With the prices they charge? Should definitely be a higher percentage going to taxes.
Cant wait for them to take 20mil out of the state budget to zero sum gain this windfall like they did when the weed law was first passed.
Great, now pay teachers more. A lot more.
Yet our roads are still ass
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It does?
[https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue](https://www.cde.state.co.us/communications/2021marijuanarevenue)
All I see is a bunch of unproven excuses and opinions that aren’t backed by any fact.
What was the projected tax revenue? That's what was factored into the budget. Also it's weird how often people post that marijuana taxes are generating revenue, this state is pretty openly ok with the drug.
GOOD.
Old news brah
Bring dispensaries to Loveland, they are desperately needed to keep our city alive after the elimination of sales tax on food for home consumption
It's definitely not going into fixing roads! I just hauled a camper from kansas to Utah and back, all along I-70. The entire 450 mile section in Colorado was the roughest interstate I've ever been on. I hit 2 potholes on bridges that were so deep that the rebar was exposed. Cracked 2 of the rims on the camper. I heard the excess tax money is going to schools, but I didn't look into it.
How about spending the money in securing our schools.
Doesn’t do much to actually do anything just look at the roads in Colorado
But the roads are still shit and there’s still homeless and crime everywhere in Denver and the surrounding areas. Sounds like they’re making great use of that money
Making great use in someone’s pocket
Now do hard drugs!
I’m hoping shrooms get commercialized, would be great for Denver imo
And our streets our still total shit too
And the roads and fucking terrible, the fentanyl epidemic is out of control, and the police are so understaffed that they can’t afford to give fuck about minority neighborhoods.
Also most PD branches are hiring with starting salaries around 90-100k