Yes, but why would a 7% tax on groceries be less thread weight than a 1% increase on all goods? If you don't think people are responsive to grocery prices and adjust how they buy in response, I just don't know what to say. There's a ton of ways to spend more or less on groceries, chief.
No, the cities collect 20% of the 7% sales tax collected. Eliminating the grocery tax would take that portion of sales tax collections away from the cities, which statewide is several millions of dollars. Many small towns cannot afford to lose that income. That's what makes eliminating the grocery tax hard, its not just the state absorbing the cut (like income).
Holy ****, please read the posts you respond to. I explicitly referenced people changing their spending in response to taxes. But the reason there would be less deadweight loss is that the demand for groceries is going to be less elastic than the demand for most other goods and services. They aren't going to just stop buying groceries.
It's SPS.How does trying to make a humorous, yet somewhat serious, comment about getting too much political junk mail turn into this?
Memo for erryone, you're not going to change the other guy's mind, so keep it light and fun!
Pretty much nothing at the size of our federal government is always the case, but SNAP is a means tested program.
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www.census.gov
That is unfortunate but I don't know that you can make policy on a federal or state level intended to account for the fact that people don't take advantage of all the programs available to them and intended for them. I appreciate people not taking welfare benefits they don't feel like they need, but in my view the time for that attitude passed long ago. They are getting screwed by government, they might as well take the benefits also. Plus most people are going to take social security, so there's not much reason for drawing the line at SNAP.
I used to be the same way. I got really annoyed with the constant mailers from candidates, including the ones I planned to vote for. Then, a friend of mine ran for state rep. He started getting flyers to vote for himself that he didn't send. The county, state, and private republican groups were sending stuff out to support him that he didn't design or approve. I still gave him crap about all the political junk mail from "him" because that's what friends do. Maybe it's different in other places but I wouldn't assume that just because it has a candidates name on it that it came from the candidate.
I don't think in general, and I personally definitely don't, that "progressive" means helps minorities rather than helps the poor, at least in economic contexts.The TLDR for johnson86-1 is that SNAP recipients don't pay taxes on groceries anyway.
Edit to note: And that means that Non-Hispanic Whites are much more affected by grocery taxes than any other ethnic group (If 53.1% of non-Hispanic Black alone Mississippians and 19.5% of the state’s non-Hispanic White alone populations were eligible for SNAP benefits, then that means that over 80 percent of non-Hispanic Whites pay grocery taxes compared to less than 47 percent of non-Hispanic Blacks-- meaning that it would be more progressive to allow all people to have a level field).
New Data Visualization Shows Access and Eligibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program County by County in 23 States
An updated visualization shows characteristics of those who receive or are eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in counties in several states.
I agree with you.
Sure we can craft policy that way! It's just a matter of wisdom and desire.
Oh, it's the progressive democrats that got MS in the spot it's in. Yeah, that's it.***
A traditional grocery tax is regressive. That's just reality.
Yep.
Just keep what we've been doing for the past 150 years, that will fix things!***
If you have a policy/program to address a concern and people aren't signing up for it, I would say the reasonable options are to accept that some eligible people don't want/need it, (2) try to increase awareness of/enrollment in the program, or (3) redesign or scrap it and come up with something new that people will take advantage of. It doesn't seem reasonable to add redundant programs or to avoid other policy decisions because of a lack of enrollment.
Correct. That was one of my points. The ones who are the worst off don't have to pay much of the tax (only on their non-snap spending).
I would say probably not. People aren't generally making tradeoffs between price and healthiness. They are making tradeoffs between price and convenience and taste. Some of the changes people make in response to price will push them to less healthy alternatives, some will push them to healthier alternatives. I don't know of anything that would indicate which direction that would go on net. People like to pretend that eating healthy is a cost issue, because then there is an easy solution, but that's just not the case. If you go to the grocery store in a poor area, you mostly don't see people loading up on food that is cheaper than dried beans, in season fruits and vegetables, brown rice, etc. In fact, it's not doable politically because of the strength of certain food and beverage companies, but I think you actually could get people to eat healthier if you made soda and high carb, low fiber/protein (e.g., chips, cookies, etc) ineligible for SNAP and relaxed the ban on hot food for beans and vegetables and rotisserie chicken.
That is not a dead weight loss. Arguably it's an externality if you make certain assumptions.
Uhhh, focused on race, but kinda in a very important different way, right?
You think MS was a tax and spend state until the GOP took over?
I don't think we're talking about the same thing here. Maybe I'll parse it out later.
You seem to think "have to buy groceries" equals no dead weight loss. I think the fact that people will adjust their spending patterns means there IS dead weight loss (however much weight you ascribe to that theory).
You think cheaper food, in America, is not less healthy?
Depends on your definition. Some define it as a difference in production and consumption. Some define it as a cost to society.
If I remember correctly, he has claimed the bold text above never happened. Either it is a common misunderstanding or its a false narrative, or something like that.
That was mostly tongue in cheek, although I do think a lot of democrat's have immoral views on race, even if their resulting policies now are not nearly are abhorrent as their resulting policies then.
For the times? Yes. There wasn't the scale of government spending in general then, but they certainly weren't small government. And you can't do things like have a government enforced segregation without big(ger) government.
Of course their policies are not now as abhorrent, all the racists ran to the GOP! Tongue in cheek.....but also fact.
Interesting theory. Does not appear to fit the facts, but interesting. By this link, MS was 48th in state taxation in 1977. (But somehow 35th in overall taxation? I guess more progressive federal taxation pulled them up in the rankings?)
taxfoundation.org
I have pointed out how stupid the claim is that racist democrats just decamped to the republican party. Racist democrats mostly just got old and died off. Certainly some politicians switched with the political winds, and a lot of younger democratic voters probably (hopefully?) decided that voting based on racial animus didn't make a lot of sense (or at least decided that other factors were more important), but it's not like it took a couple of decades for people in Mississippi to hear about the Civil Rights Act(s). Mississippi didn't have two republican senators until almost 1990. We didn't have a majority of our house representatives be republican until 1997. It's first republican governor since reconstruction was 1991. Republicans didn't have the state senate and house until 2012. Their first control of the house was a very temporary majority in 2007.
Maybe I'll try to look up stats later, but my impression from the peeps I knew that were of voting age at that time, most stayed Democrats either for a while or until they died (especially in state elections, where the Dems on offer closely matched their views unlike national/Presidential Dems), while the younger ones with the same views became Republicans.
