MISSISSIPPI GAS VS. CIGARETTE TAX

My local paper printed a great column today regarding the debate going on over raising cigarette taxes here in Mississippi:

Therefore, the priority of Mississippi government - Gov. Haley Barbour the lead dog and his lapdogs in the state Senate chief among them - is that we keep the 4-out-of-4 Mississippians who must purchase gasoline to get to work, school and church paying within 7 percent of the national average gasoline tax so that we can protect the apparent divine right of the 1-in-4 Mississippians who smoke to pay 72 percent less in tobacco taxes than other Americans.

If Mississippi's gasoline excise tax rate was equalized with the state's cigarette excise tax rate at 72 percent less than the national average, this state's gasoline excise tax rate would drop from the current 18.4 cents a gallon to 3.56 cents per gallon - or a drop of almost 15 cents per gallon at the pumps.

If there is any logic or fiscal responsibility a state artificially keeping cigarette taxes almost 10 times lower than gasoline taxes, it's lost on this writer.

I wrote a post about it on the Hattiesburg American forum, which I reproduce below.

GAYS, TAXES, MINIMUM WAGE, and the "great" LOTT & COCHRAN

Of course Salter's got a great point. The "anti-tax" sentiment of the people that run this state has no rational defense or basis in reality. It's simply a ploy to seem "fiscally conservative" which is supposed to translate in voter's minds to "I hate gays and love Jesus."

Meanwhile, large parts of the public convince themselves that as long as gays can't get married, somehow this country is still great and fair even though there are all types of the kinds of things Salter's talking about going on that are not common knowledge.

Like the fact that recently, our great Senators Lott and Cochran joioned 26 other "pro-family" Republicans and voted in favor of an amendment to the minimum wage bill passed by the House that would have effectively cancelled the minimum wage.


Did the Hattiesburg American write about that? If they did, I didn't read it.
Seems like a pretty big story to me when the state with the LOWEST median household income, LOWEST median family income, and the LARGEST percentage of people below the poverty level has senators who claim to be "pro-family" and yet vote for an amendment to kill the minimum wage despite the fact that they know the amendment has no chance of passing!


Lott and Cochran wanted to put themselves on the record as being in favor of big business, not in favor of the little guy. Just like Barbour. Please, let's not continue to fool ourselves--these guys are no good for this state.

MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE OVERWHELMINGLY FAVORED

I just looked at this link for my Haley Barbour/minimum wage post below. Here's what it says:

Americans Back Minimum Wage Increase
January 8, 2007
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Adults in the United States overwhelmingly support one of the first proposals of their new Congress, according to a poll by Ipsos-Public Affairs released by the Associated Press. 80 per cent of respondents favour an increase in the minimum wage.

The last time the U.S. Congress raised the minimum wage was 1997, when the rate was increased to $5.15 U.S. an hour. There are currently 16 American states that pay minimum wages that are higher than the federal rate.

Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives have suggested gradually increasing the minimum wage to $7.25 U.S. an hour over the course of the next two years. Senate majority leader Harry Reid discussed the situation, saying, "If it takes adding small business tax cuts to have a minimum wage increase, then we’ll do that."

Polling Data

Do you favour or oppose an increase in the minimum wage?

Favour
80%

Oppose
18%

Not sure
2%



Source: Ipsos-Public Affairs / Associated Press
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,004 American adults, conducted from Dec. 19 to Dec. 21, 2006. Margin of error is 3 per cent.

It just makes sense

Those poll numbers are split more or less the way the wealth in the country is distributed--the far larger number of people who make and have less money favor a minimum wage increase while the far smaller number of people who make and have a whole lot of money oppose a minimum wage increase. Which just makes sense.

Could it be that Americans are finally beginning to see through the imperialistic, faux-patriotic, fake religious propaganda and speaking up for their interests as they exist in real time (as opposed to say, how their interests might be if they win the lottery or marry Paris Hilton or whatever)? I sure hope so...

BARBOUR AND MINIMUM WAGE (written Thursday, 1/4)

Haley Barbour opposes raising the minimum wage in Mississippi to $7.25/hour, which would be 40% higher than the current national rate of $5.15. His laughable argument against such an increase is that it would, according to an AP article, “drive jobs out of this state.”

Having not read Barbour’s actual statement on this issue, just a brief AP story, I don’t know this for sure, but I would imagine that the reason he thinks a minimum wage increase would drive jobs from Mississippi is because corporations and other employers are looking for places with cheap labor and would therefore be turned off by higher labor costs.

Why Haley is wrong

It is certainly true that corporations favor the lowest possible labor costs. So why aren’t all major corporations currently clamoring to get down to Mississippi? We not only offer low labor costs but also a “right to work” law. After all, as I pointed out in a post a few days ago, Mississippi ranks 49th in median household income–low wages are the norm in this state and people are mostly used to them, for better or worse.

In other words, it is absurd to argue that improving the wages of Mississippians will discourage corporate interests from setting up shop in the state, because corporations apparently aren’t interested in coming here under the current low-wage, right-to-work conditions. Why should Mississippians be kept in their current low-wage status when maintaining that status obviously isn’t acting as an incentive for corporations to move here? For that matter, why should that status be maintained even if corporations theoretically did want to move here? Mississippians have been poor long enough. Besides, isn’t the right-wing, cheap-labor conservative argument that minimum wage jobs are mostly held by teenage burger flippers anyway? If that’s true, what’s the difference if all the Wendys and McDonalds and Burger Kings close down and leave the state?

The difference, of course, is that a significant number of adults do work for minimum wage, and that many of the jobs that currently exist here and that would theoretically be brought here would be minimum wage positions. Barbour and the right-wingers know this but don’t want to admit it. Barbour wants to pretend that he would be doing Mississippians a favor by bringing in more jobs, but most jobs that would likely be brought in would be for minimum wage with minimal or no benefits. But if more corporations brought in even minimum wage jobs, Barbour could then argue that unemployment went down on his watch, even if the jobs that are created are not so-called “good jobs” that pay a living wage. After all, Barbour’s partner in crime George W. Bush called having three jobs “uniquely American.”

Raising the minimum wage will provide relief to a large number of Mississippians and will not punish corporations, who have no plans to come here anyway. And maybe one of the big reasons they don’t want to come here even with our current status quo of low wages is because of another statistic that I mentioned a few days ago: of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Mississippi has the fewest number of high school graduates who are 25 and older. Knowing that, many corporations likely feel that a lot of Mississippians aren’t even competent enough to make change, much less to make some high-tech product.

On top of all of that, the new Democratic congressional majority that was sworn in today has already said that they’re going to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 over two years, the very policy Barbour despises, in the first 100 hours of their tenure. So Barbour’s objections not only reveal him to be a spiteful political hack who invariably sides with the rich and powerful, they are largely moot to begin with.