Editorials

Once again, Alabama has landed at the bottom of one of the many lists that are compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau. It seems to be an all-too usual occurrence.

Our state and local taxes per person are lower than any state in the union. Lower than Florida's. Lower than Georgia's. Lower than Tennessee's. And, yes, even lower than Mississippi's.

The 50-state median for these taxes was $3,700. Alabama collected $2,782.

A lot of people will look at this and smile with satisfaction. They will consider it an accomplishment to keep taxes low. And it would be, except for two things.

First, not every Alabamian's taxes are low.

The main beneficiaries of our tax system are the well-to-do, the propertied, the people at the top. Time and again, studies have shown that our income tax and sales-tax systems benefit the better off.

So when someone says "Alabama is a low-tax state," they need to add, "except for the poor and middle class."

Second, because Alabama is a so-called low-tax state, state government does not have the resources to do the things for our residents that other states can do.

If Alabama had collected the same amount per person that Florida collected, the state would have had an extra $4.2 billion to spend. If we had only collected what Mississippi collects per person, the state would have had $184 million more.

Ponder those numbers.

Because Alabama is a low-tax state on upper-income residents and a high-tax state on those at the bottom, the state cannot afford to do something so simple as lifting the state sales tax from groceries — which the Legislature callously and cynically refused to do last session.

Because Alabama is a low-tax state, it can't buy computers for schools, can't repair highways, can't hire more state troopers, can't provide law enforcement the tools it needs, can't build more prisons, can't ... the list goes on and on.

Even though residents want and need and (in some cases, demand) the "bundle of services" other states provide, normally rational residents believe those services can be provided with only 70 percent of the money per person that other states have.

Someone has sold the residents of this state a bill of goods. It's a delusion. And if you want to know who, just start at the top — politically and economically — and work your way down. You won't have to go far to find an answer.