Melissa Harper is a senior majoring in biological sciences. She can be contacted at [email protected].I have heard many negative things regarding Mississippi’s place in the nation. We are not exactly winning in most categories.
So what if we don’t place first in healthcare, per capita income and education? We should still hold our heads high. We have held the blue ribbon for the teen pregnancy rate and currently have the first place trophy for fattest state in the nation. Victory is ours!
So the next time you are out at – oh, let’s say – Wal-Mart, and you notice the influx of morbidly obese ladies buying smokes, think about this: Mississippi has the highest grocery tax in the country and the third lowest cigarette tax. It is a tad perplexing that we pay the most money to be the fattest in the nation, and yet have some of the cheapest Camels around.
We have a 7 percent food tax, which surpasses all other states. However, we have a whopping 18 cents-per-pack cigarette tax. So it only makes sense that we should be in the lead or at least tied with other fat states for heart disease as well, but I’ll have to get back to you on that one.
Why the disproportionate taxes? Why is the poorest state in the country subject to the highest grocery taxes in the country? Shouldn’t the grocery tax be lower and the cigarette tax higher? Wouldn’t it make sense for them to be swapped so that these “evildoers” and terrorists of our fresh air pay the higher price?
I’m not so sure. The lawmakers of Mississippi are trying to pressure Gov. Barbour into signing a bill so that the grocery tax is cut in half and the cigarette tax is raised. Sounds appetizing enough, but it is yet another scam to fool us into thinking we are being done a favor by the big wigs. Numbers can get confusing, so pay close attention, as I am sure you already are.
You go to Piggly Wiggly. You buy $100 worth of Hot Pockets and organic dairy products. You would be paying about $7 in grocery taxes. If that were cut in half, we would only be saving about $3 and some change. If the same person went to Coconuts and bought a pack of Menthols everyday, he would only be spending about $3.55 daily and approximately $24.85 weekly.
Guess what. Only $1.26 of that will go to the state cigarette tax. If the cig tax were raised to a dollar per pack, that amount would jump up to $7 a week. Sounds like a good exchange right? Not so much.
The grocery tax is a necessity tax. Everybody buys food, so the government knows it can make a buck on it. Not everyone smokes, so even with raising the 18 cents-per-pack tax fivefold to $1 per pack, the amount of money generated would not equal the amount of money lost from the grocery tax being cut.
Everyone wants to save money, but it would not be dispersed evenly throughout the state. In the bigger cities, the taxes lost and gained might be more in equilibrium, but in smaller towns it would not.
Attorney general candidate Al Hopkins said 100 percent of us eat, there’s not but about 20 percent of us that smoke.
He is absolutely right. How are we going to replace a tax that 100 percent of people pay with a tax that only about 20 percent of people pay? Why should we care about where these tax cuts come from?
That’s exactly what they want us to think. They want us to hear the words “tax cut” together in a sentence and automatically cheer. But not all tax cuts are for the better. These taxes go toward the respective municipalities across the state. They pay for law enforcement, streets and schools. The taxes we pay are directly – let me rephrase that – should be proportional to the results that we see.
Often there is so much pressure to pass new legislation that legislators do not completely think things through. It’s as if they need to prove they are doing something behind those big wooden doors other than harassing young pages. If the legislators keep pushing for this bill and do not amend it so that the taxes are in equilibrium, the cotton state’s economy could be in jeopardy.
Lawmakers only want the general population to think about how much money they will save on Cheerios on a weekly basis. But what they are really doing is throwing the economy into a possible tailspin and doing it all in the name of helping the good ol’ working class people. Give me a break. Some of us might not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but we are all capable of knowing when we are getting shafted.
How about increasing the cigarette tax only and seeing how that affects the state income? Lawmakers could then be more aware of how much the smokers’ taxes affect our state’s income. Maybe after doing this, we can reduce the grocery tax because then we will know for sure how the state will prosper or suffer.
I am no Alan Greenspan, but I do know it makes no sense to make huge economic decisions without absolute data making or breaking them.