Texas Red: maybe more correctly Taxes Red

                   Elected representatives of the State of Texas make a handsome living in positions that include all manner of perks. These folk include, the governor, Rick Perry, federal senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson and all of our members of congress.

                   Most, if not all, are independently wealthy. That shouldn’t be too surprising.  Despite the fact that millionaires make up only one percent (1%) of the general U.S. population almost half of the members of congress are millionaires.  That is a recipe for oligarchic domination of the working class.

                  A news item released late last week stands in stark juxtaposition to all that wealth. Unfortunately, it is a news item few will read. Results of a national study released last week reflect that “Texas taxes on the bottom 20 percent of income earners are the fifth highest in the nation…low- and middle-income Texans pay a far higher share of their income in state and local taxes than do the richest families in Texas, making it the fifth most regressive state tax system.”
 

                   "Texas' bottom 20 percent of income earners pay 12.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes. That's a higher percentage of income than similar households pay in all but four other states in the nation. We need to start seriously considering a tax system that requires people at all income levels pay their fair share, rather than letting the state's tax burden fall disproportionately on the families who can least afford it," CPPP Senior Fiscal Analyst Dick Lavine said.
 

                  The poor pay 12.2 percent of their income in state and local taxes? That’s four times higher than the taxes paid by the rich in the Lone Star state. Let me repeat that, the poor pay four times more in taxes than the rich according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Now that’s rich. Oh and by the way those are taxes everyone pays regardless of status. Yes that includes “illegal aliens.” (How can anyone be illegal?)

               “Texas families earning less than $18,000—the poorest fifth of Texas non-elderly taxpayers—pay 12.2 percent of their income in Texas state and local taxes.
 

Middle-income Texas taxpayers—those earning between $31,000 and $51,000—pay 8.5 percent of their income in Texas state and local taxes.

              But the richest Texas taxpayers—with incomes exceeding $463,000 per year— pay only 3.3 percent of their income in Texas state and local taxes.” 

             The gap between those who have and those who don’t widens ever more. The middle class is disappearing. The gap between the tiny upper class, less than 2% and the large lower class is at the widest it has been since before the Great Depression. The top 1% of Americans are worth more than the bottom 95% combined.

             States with regressive tax systems get more than half of their state tax income from sales tax. “(A regressive system requires low- and moderate-income families to pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than do higher-income families.)”

            Texas residents with low to mid level incomes spend all of their annual income supporting their families. There is little left to save. It is the nature of regressive tax systems that those who make the least disproportionately pay more of their income in taxes. The result is that higher income families are able to save some of their annual income or spend that disposable income on non-sales tax subject services and meanwhile the poor just get poorer.

             Many people I’ve known with good paying jobs who receive numerous subsidies and tax breaks don’t like living in states that have a state income tax system in place.  It seems these folk just like their elected officials prefer to tax the poor.  States with income tax systems are less onerous for the poor. There are only nine states that don’t have a state income tax system. Texas is, of course, one of those. The lack of tax revenues that state income tax would have put into state coffers is made up by egregiously regressive sales, excise and property taxes.

            “Taxes ought to be based on people's ability to pay them, which means that the share of income paid in tax should rise as income grows, not fall sharply as is the case in Texas,” according to ITEP (Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy) Executive Director Matthew Gardner said.
 

               Instead our elected representatives,  vote themselves a handsome wage, generous periodic pay raises, perks and retirements. Our elected representatives of both “majority” parties go out of their way to maintain a system that benefits them and their wealthy benefactors while at the same time putting a heavy boot at the back of the neck of the poorest of the poor.  During the ten year period between raises in the minimum wage our congress voted to give members of congress $30,000.00 in pay raises.
 

            Hardly sounds fair. It is the majority sentiment. What is surprising, but shouldn’t be is that these are the folk who believe they are and who self-identify as compassionate conservative religiosities.

           Adding insult to injury the Lone Star state also has one of the poorest healthcare systems in the nation. Texas ranks second worst in health care coverage behind the very worst record, number one New Mexico. Additionally six of the 10 counties providing the lowest health coverage for “all age groups” in the entire nation are also located in Texas. 

           As if that wasn’t bad enough, the state’s prison-industrial complex has the highest prison population in the entire nation. On his watch our present governor just executed his 202nd inmate last week. (Robert Lee Thompson). The governor needs an electronic tote board similar to the one in New York City that tracks the interest on the national debt so he can keep track of executions.

          Can there really be any doubt that it really is Texas Red: a cratered landscape of prisons, deplorable public education, lack of healthcare and politicians and majority population intent on keeping it that way?
 

For more information:  Death and Texas

Texas Board recommends clemency for man set to die

Texas taxes on bottom 20 percent of income earners fifth higest in the nation