Tennessee WordSmith: A Liberal Dose, May 2, 2024 "Notice Who the Money Keeps Trickling to"

May 2, 2024

Troy D. Smith

“Notice Who the Money Keeps Trickling to”

First, the situation with Israel and Palestine continues to spiral further and further out of hand and is starting to do so in this country as well. I have been putting off discussing it on here until the semester was over, because doing the subject justice will take deep thought, time, and will require more than one 700-ish word column. I hope to get started on it with next week’s piece, because it can’t be put off any longer. I will say, for now, how ridiculous it was last week to read Marsha Blackburn’s column about how disruptive and wrong protests are and how they (and pretty much anything Republicans don’t like nowadays) should be felonies. Coming from people who continue to excuse, justify, deny, and/or support the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, this -much like cries of outrage over the border when they dropped their own bill on it -is rankest hypocrisy. Protesting in a peaceful yet “disruptive” way (which is the whole point of protest) should apparently be a felony when it is on a topic they don’t support- but wreaking havoc on the Capitol, assaulting policemen with dangerous weapons, and smearing feces on the walls of Congress are all just fine when it’s YOUR side that does it.

For this week, I’ll spend the rest of my time discussing rank hypocrisy on a state level.

Did you know that Tennessee is one of only 13 states in the country that imposes sales tax on food? Did you further know that, food tax aside, Tennessee has the highest sales tax in the nation? Relying on sales tax instead of state income tax is generally known as a “regressive” tax system… because it places a higher burden on the poorest people (including working people) than on the richest people. Taxing food is just adding insult to injury (while also compounding the injury). Democrats in the General Assembly tried to end the tax on food this year… but Republicans blocked those efforts. However, Republicans have ONCE AGAIN lowered the business tax, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year and billions over the next few years, including over 1.5 billion dollars in refunds to big businesses this year alone. And they are doing their level best to do it in such a way none of us will know just which businesses are getting these breaks, and how much… but it is estimated more than half of that money is going to be going to businesses outside Tennessee. A lot of it will be staying in the state, though, including those tax savings going to Governor Lee’s multi-million-dollar company.

So… we can’t afford to give working people a break on basic necessities like food -even when so many are suffering -but we can give up billions of dollars in tax revenue for big business. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned several bills that Republicans shot down -higher minimum wage, free breakfast and lunch for school kids, paid time off for new foster parents -in most cases, without even listening to the arguments in favor of them. One particular legislator, though, argued with us (my union) that the state government can’t afford to do things like that. Yet we have a surplus. And yet we keep handing tax breaks out to the large companies and the wealthiest individuals. Clearly, we CAN afford it, they just don’t want to do it… not because it would take money away from taxpayers, but because it would give them less money to hand out to their cronies.

I have a friend who loves to say “Has a poor person ever given you a job?” as a way to defend trickle-down economics. I always reply, yes, all the time. Because when a working person has more money on hand to spend, THEY SPEND IT -because they have to, to get what they need (or maybe just things they want but usually go without). And the more they do that, the more goods are sold in this country, the more goods need to be made, the more money flows through the hands of the most people. Heck, the more money people at the top make in the long run (as Will Rogers pointed out, money trickles UP). But they’d much rather have it NOW. And their Republican friends keep making sure they get it, don’t they… by taking it away from YOU. All this other stuff is just smoke and mirrors to keep you from noticing.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE