STARKVILLE – Among the many lessons I learned from my all-too-brief time with the late broadcaster Jack Cristil was his pointed, rather surprising take on paying his taxes.
For the fame and recognition he attained, Jack was a frugal man who lived simply. How simply? Jack never owned a clothes dryer. Until the April 2014 tornado slammed his home on Marquette Street in Tupelo and brought down several old growth pine trees that demolished his clothes line, Jack’s wash dried the old fashioned way – hung on the line to await the sun and the breeze.
Sid Salter
Save the pity. Jack could afford a dryer. He simply chose not to need one. That was simply the value system of a Depression survivor with an ailing absentee father who grew up in “The Pinch” in Memphis in a family with six children supported by their seamstress mother.
Like many of his generation, Jack was a “fiscal conservative” long before that phrase came into political vogue. He was also in most cases a Republican voters from the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration forward, although Jack said he voted for some “conservative-minded Democrats” along the way.
But on the topic of paying his federal taxes, Jack Cristil – the son of first generation Russian and Lithuanian immigrants – had a resolute position: “Taxes? No matter how much it is, it’s cheap rent to live in a free country. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
That “cheap rent to live in a free country” declaration makes a bit more sense in context. Jack’s maternal grandfather, Yehoshua Zalman “Zelik” Kabakoff – who spirited Jack’s mom from Belarus across Russia, Poland and into the port of Hamburg, Germany for her journey to America – was killed by Russian authorities who nailed him to a tree.
In Mississippi, Republicans dominate both houses of the Mississippi Legislature and hold the Governor’s Mansion. That status isn’t expected to change significantly in the 2015 election cycle, but GOP candidates in Mississippi face the same primary challenges as have been observed nationally.
In GOP primaries, the shorthand has been that the contests take place between so-called “establishment” Republicans and primarily Tea Party-backed or at least affiliated challengers who claim to be more conservative.
The hard-to-the-right narrative remains that the federal government is too big, too oppressive, and too present in the daily lives of taxpayers.
Yet on April 15, Mississippi taxpayers join the rest of the nation in paying our federal income taxes. The reality is that those same Mississippi taxpayers receive about $2.02 back into the state in federal spending or 42.9 percent of state revenues. That’s the highest percentage of federal spending as a percentage of state revenues in the nation.
The paradox is that despite the political narrative in the state, federal revenue is a bedrock portion of overall government finance in the state. Without that federal revenue, Mississippi state government faces two broad choices – replace that federal revenue with state tax revenue or dramatically reduce government services or at the very least the level and depth of state services.
Mississippi’s situation isn’t unique in that a number of state’s that are politically “red” states also receive substantial federal revenues. The tax argument is clouded even more by the fact that during the most recent recession, close to 50 percent of the nation’s households paid no federal income taxes.
As the economy has improved, that number has dropped to around 42 percent. So as Mississippi voters prepare to choose a new congressman in the state’s 1st District and statehouse to courthouse officials in statewide elections, it’s important to focus on the fact the one-size-fits-all battle cries against federal spending have caveats and consequences.
There are, as my friend Jack believed, some taxes that are “cheap rent to live in a free country.” There are others that many perceive as government overreach in any number of directions.
The task for voters is to sort through the rhetoric and partisan finger-pointing to judge for themselves what those numbers really are.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com.