Now this won’t mean jack to you if you’re making over $50,000 a year
… but if you are like the rest of us who struggle to make ends meet and
can barely afford to keep a roof over our heads you’ll be shaking your
head and saying “man that’s so wrong”
My first topics is cigarettes. Yeah I know its sounds boring , but
this story has everything … greed, politics, social targeting, taxes. You see Maryland raised their tax on cigarettes to $2 a pack. They passed that bill quicker than a probation hearing for a child molester. It was easy … smoking is very unpopular.
Lets look at this for a minute. Who are the “smokers”? I’ll tell you
… they are mostly lower income workers. The average smoker smokes a
pack and a half a day , which is about a carton a week. So this tax costs lower income workers $1040 a year. It costs non smokers nothing … uh … that’s fair? A carton of cigarettes in Maryland now cost over $50. Next state over (Virginia) you can buy them for $27 a carton. Hmmmmm? Sounds like the difference in gas prices between Califronia and Mexico doesn't it.
Now the law says you can only carry 2 cartons across the state line ( and they expect you to mail them the taxes on those 2 …. yeah … they actually expect you to pay it). So this law is also making criminals out of a bunch of people.
You see depending on where you live it could be an hour or more drive
to go get cigarettes in Virginia and while you will still save loads of
money it is just not as economically feasible to drive that far at $4 a
gallon for just 2 cartons … so folks are buying 5-10 cartons to save
the gas money.
You wealthy people don’t realize that lots of people take home less
than $300 a week. Out of that they have to pay rent, utilities, gas,
food, (god help them if they have children). I did not mention health
insurance because they can’t even afford food so insurance is not an
option. You take away $75 of $280 take home pay and try living on that.
They called it the $1 a pack cigarette tax cause it was easier to push through that way. I call it the $1000 cigarette tax.
BOO Maryland, BOO discriminatory taxes, All you smokers keep driving to Virginia.