Imagine you own a great big cruise ship. People love to sail about the Caribbean eating too much, drinking too much and roasting in the tropical sun.
Alas, a newer, even bigger cruise ships crosses your bow. Some of your fun loving customers flock to the new boat.
So, you make your boat more attractive. You add a big water slide. You extend a glass-floor dance floor over the side. You add a level to the on-board casino.
Unfortunately, the total size of your cruise ship remains the same, smaller than the new ship. To find the space for the new goodies you cast off and sink a few lifeboats. Probably never need them anyway, and, that opens up a lot of space.
Cruisers love the water slide, the dance floor and the increased gaming space.
Then, well, hurricane season arrives and one bad day it turns out those “extra” lifeboats really, really are missed.
His Accidency, Mike Parson, just announced plans for an extraordinary (“special”) session of the Missouri Legislature to cut $700 million in state income taxes.
Of course, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pointed out today, those cuts reduce the tax load of the richest Missourians by 11%. Struggling families clinging to the bottom of the ladder get no direct benefit but sleep better knowing their boss will now pay less.
Governor Parson justifies lowering taxes by looking at the state’s bottom line. For example, from July 1st to August 22nd state General Revenue jumped 24.14% — almost $340 million in just over seven weeks! [DOR General Revenue Report for August 22, 2022] Plus, the treasury holds oodles of money from Washington, and, revenue collected earlier from Missourians. Yes, the state has way more than $700 million sitting around. The tax cuts, as well as the dubious Missouri Way, will (he thinks) make the state more attractive to businesses and their employees.
Too bad reality still exists…
- Missouri’s top two sources of General Revenue are the Individual Income Tax and the state Sales Taxes. Yes, they’re great now but – as happened during the pandemic – they can fall like a brick from a skyscraper on short notice.
- State workers remain at the bottom of the list for public employees. That’s resulted in a lot of people not getting an honest wage for their labor, and, creates a shortage of people to do necessary jobs.
- Missouri has chronically underfunded education for better than a generation. Note that an effort to raise starting pay for teachers to $38,000 (just under thew average national starting pay of $38,600 [https://www.niche.com/blog/teacher-salaries-in-america/] ) was killed by Parson’s fellow Republicans.
- Pending court and federal bureaucratic action could force Missouri to spend a hundred million a year in state funds. The state seems destined to lose a federal court case on how it runs SNAP [food stamps] and faces probable sanctions for failing to enroll eligible people into Medicaid. Solving those issues will take a great number of new state employees and a better pay rate to attract and keep them.
- Prepared or not, Missouri will get hit by a new crisis. Who saw COVID-19 coming? Remember the flood of 1993? Feel any shaking on the New Madrid fault? Predicting what will happen and when may be impossible but knowing that something bad is coming is a sure bet.
Missouri’s future holds a lot of clouds. Right wing politics, underfunded services and an ocean-less location make this state less attractive to businesses and young people. We are the older cruise ship.
Perhaps instead of calling for tax cuts, the governor ought to work at building a modern boat.
Glenn Koenen
Photo by Alexander Zvir on Pexels.com