Voter’s Rights, by Khalil Bendib
Voter’s Rights, by Khalil Bendib
by Moe White

For decades North Carolina has been a nationally recognized leader in education, environmental protection, Southern race relations, broadening the voting franchise, and other progressive initiatives.

The Hacks

But in 2013, the Republican legislature and new Governor Pat McCrory—call them the Hacks—have hacked unemployment benefits, teacher jobs, teacher pay, environmental protection, Medicaid coverage, voter rights, and of course taxes on millionaires and corporations; the only things they’ve increased are taxes on the working poor and regulations on women’s healthcare. In seven months they’ve set back 50 years of progress in the South’s only (formerly) moderate state.

Sadly, many residents are so focused on a single issue that they ignore the fact that with every vote they cast they act against their own interests.

The H.A.K.s

Recently a Moral Mondays participant described a conversation she’d had with a WNC resident. She hoped to explain that, by supporting the legislature, he was voting for his own taxes to go up, for higher college tuition for his children, for less health care, and many other consequences. Their conversation went something like this:

“I don’t believe in abortion. And they’re doing what I want about abortion.”

“But what about all the other things they’re doing that are hurting you and your family?”

“I don’t pay much attention to what they’re up to down there [in Raleigh]. But I do know they’re doing something about abortions, and that’s what I vote on.”

We might call this gentleman and his friends the Hard-working Anti-abortion Know-nothings—the H.A.K.s.

Hundreds of thousands of these voters in NC, and tens of millions around the country, are the reason this ideology has taken over in the legislative halls of Washington, Raleigh, and elsewhere. They don’t want to know anything that makes them think for themselves or upsets their world view that “libruls” and “unions” and “activists” are bad.

Half a Century of Progress

They don’t know, or care, that those groups are responsible for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, the 40-hour week, the abolition of child labor, OSHA safety laws, the Clean Air and Clean Water acts—all those programs they and their families rely on.

They’re blissfully unaware of NC’s half-century of support for public education that allowed an illiterate coal-miner grandfather to rear a literate factory-worker son, who has a high-school-teacher daughter and college-graduate grandson.

Nor do they grasp that progressive tax rates established the paradigm that those with the most should help those with the least climb the ladder of the American Dream—as they themselves have done. They’re ignorant of regulations that let them buy food that’s safe to eat, and drink unpolluted water, and breathe without inhaling toxic fumes; oblivious to investments made in roads and bridges that let them drive safely in cars that don’t explode into a fireball on impact (remember Ford’s Pinto and Chevrolet’s Corvair?), or drive across a safe bridge.

They don’t get that the more that rich people’s tax rates go down, the more their own taxes go up.

Millions Pay More, Millionaires Pay Less

In their “tax reform,” the legislature has lowered the top tax rate on millionaires from 7.75% to 5.75%—the same rate that low- and middle-income workers pays. That two-percent difference translates into up to a 25.8-percent cut in the taxes wealthy families will owe. Thus, for someone earning a million dollars a year, the savings will be about $10,000 annually, according to Think Progress.org’s research. If you work 53 hours a week at minimum wage, that’s half your earnings for the year.

The Hacks have also eliminated the state’s estate tax, which impacted a few dozen gazillionaire families over the past decade; now multimillionaire Art Pope, McCrory’s deputy Budget Director, has ensured that he will be able to leave his own inherited fortune to his children and grandchildren tax-free.

Corporate tax rates will fall as well, though “the state with the highest tax rate in the South” has never had any difficulty attracting national and global businesses. Charlotte is the nation’s second-ranking banking capital, and global pharmaceutical companies have established themselves around the Research Triangle; apparently the state’s “high-tax” business climate has been superbly successful for the past half-century.

Who Pays, Who Saves

How will the Hacks pay for the immense tax cuts they’ve enacted? First, the state budget has been cut by $500 to $600 million in each of the next two years. For the balance, the H.A.K.s—and the rest of us—will now pay sales tax of 6.75% on numerous services that have not been taxed before. If H.A.K.’s family earns $50,000 a year and spends a fifth of that on services that are now taxable, they’ll face a $675 annual tax increase.

Plus, the 2% sales tax on food will be increased to 6.75% to align with sales tax on everything else, so a family with a typical $200-per-week grocery bill will pay increased taxes of another $494 per year. Assuming that family already pays the lowest income tax rate of 5.75%, they won’t get an offsetting cut in their income taxes—except up to $258 for the increase in the standard deduction for an individual from $3,000 to $7,500.

Many working families will fall into the group whose standard exemption will go up from $1,000 to $1,500, saving them a whopping $30, but that savings is more than offset by the elimination of the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor, and by ending the annual sales tax holiday that has saved families millions during back-to-school shopping each August.

As a result, our Mr. H.A.K. earning $50,000 a year could easily see his total tax liability increase by more than a thousand dollars—two percent more than he’s paying now. And the developer who bought H.A.K.’s neighbor’s farmland and turned it into an upscale gated community—where H.A.K. is not welcome, unless as an appliance repairman or lawnboy—pockets $10,000 or more in tax cuts.

Fortunately, there are far more H.A.K.s in the state than millionaires.   We can only hope, and pray, and work our tails off to educate the H.A.K.s to vote the Hacks out of office next year.