Don Surber
Charleston Daily Mail
12/24/2011
I do not usually post much about Charleston Daily Mail editorials because our philosophy is to offer readers mainly local editorials which they cannot find elsewhere. But this one editorial pointed out something that is happening in Maine, and as we all know from grade-school history, so goes Maine, so goes the country.
The number of people who pay state income taxes in Maine now outnumbers the number of people who receive means-tested benefits from the state. Either we are overdoing entitlements, or else we are in Charles Dickens England…
..Paul LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, mentioned an uncomfortable truth in a radio address this month: Maine has more welfare recipients than income tax payers.
Democrats challenged the accuracy of this assertion.
The Bangor Daily News fact-checked LePage and discovered that 445,074 Mainers paid state income tax, while 453,194 received some sort of state aid…
…8,120 more people on state assistance than there are state income taxpayers in Maine…
…Nationally, only 53 percent of the nation lives in a household that pays federal income tax…
Read the rest at the Charleston Daily Mail.
H/T Maggie’s Farm
Some readers felt that my last post about Maine was Maine-bashing. Not at all. I am simply curious about their politics.
This scenic and rugged rural (woodsy and rocky, post-glacial or should I say “pre-glacial”) state, often proudly referred to as “The West Virginia of the Northeast,” has more welfare recipients than taxpayers.
That is a problem, isn’t it? I wondered whether it was an official policy. A legal vote-buying policy. It sounds like it is.
