Butts for Books: Philly's $2 tax hike to save 1,000 teaching jobs

Pennsy guv on board for $2 cigarette tax that will raise $49 million for Philly schools, thus avoiding 1,000 layoffs.

http://crossroads.newsworks.org/index.php/keystone-crossroads/item/73126-in-a-huge-victory-for-philly-schools-lawmakers-reach-consensus-on-cigarette-tax

Up next: pot! (well, if they were smart)

 

I thought this was going to be a tax on titty bars.

 

Cigarette taxes are among the most regressive taxes.

The Philadelphia school district has 395 employees on the district payrolls make more than $100,000, although not a single one is a teacher or a staff member who spends the majority of his or her time in the classroom.

http://watchdog.org/132881/philly-district-pay/

Teachers' benefits packages are out of control, and will continue to bankrupt the school system:

But, instead of instituting some reforms, or laying off some administrators, they decided to tax the poor to pay for civil servants who earn far more than the public they serve.

 

I'm saying. Talk about your deceptive thread titles.

 

Not only the poor smoke cigarettes.

 

Click-bait. DFM would be so proud of such futuristic journalisming.

 

The poor smoke at a much greater rate than the middle class and higher.

And, the taxes suck up a much greater portion of their income.

The lottery and cigarette taxes are pure poverty taxes, and every law maker knows it.

 

So, you outlaw smoking in basically the entire city, then add an additional $2-per-pack tax, and people still think it's actually going to raise tens of millions of dollars? With Delaware a 15-minute drive away?

 

No sympathy. If you're too stupid to realize that smoking will kill you, and if you're too stupid to realize that the lottery — especially scratch-off tickets — is a rigged game, then you get what's coming to you.

 

Smoking kills people, but don't worry, your elected officials will make sure to harvest their corpses of any loose change.

 

In that regard we've been staying stupid for 300 years.

A Lottery is a Taxation,
Upon all the Fools in Creation;
And Heav’n be prais’d,
It is easily rais’d,
Credulity’s always in Fashion;
For, Folly’s a Fund,
Will never lose Ground;
While Fools are so rife in the Nation.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/state-run-lotteries-form-taxation

Although Rhode Island's lottery boss said: “There is always the misnomer that lower-income neighbors are predominantly playing. That is not the case,” Aubin said. “We have strong sales in middle-class and upper-class neighborhoods.”

http://wrnipoliticsblog.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/are-lotteries-a-tax-on-the-poor-tax-foundation-says-yes/

 

Ding... Ding ... Ding