Explosive Spending Growth by the State of Arkansas

Posted on August 27th, 2009

Arkansans have one of the lowest per capita incomes in the nation and as previously demonstrated also has one of the largest tax burdens as a percentage of their income in the nation. How could it be clearer that we need to put the brakes on our state spending and have a real debate about how we need increase the prosperity of the people rather than the government?

The state government has been prosperous indeed if you consider how much the state has to spend as the measure of a state’s prosperity. [See graph below] However, if you measure prosperity as I do, by how much the citizens of a the state have to spend – then Arkansas is hurting, and the people of Arkansas are hurting. Why haven’t our leaders noticed? Could it be that they measure success by the 18 to 19 BILLION dollars the state has in its pockets to spend rather than how much YOU have in your pockets to spend?

[Source: U.S. Census Bureau - Federal, State, & Local Governments Data The value for 2008 is estimated based upon the past average ratio of federal contributions compared to the total state tax revenues and is not taken directly from U.S. Census Bureau records since that value is not currently available. This method provides a slower growth value than the most likely to be correct linear extrapolation of the last five years.]

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One Response to “Explosive Spending Growth by the State of Arkansas”

1. Linda Says:
   November 11th, 2009 at 4:23 am

   I know through this recession I have never seen as many folks out of work. Even back in the 70′s I did not see this as much in NW Ark. I think all the democrats in the state legislature better get prepared for a house cleaning come 2010 2012. We are tired of this administrations free handedness with our money. They say unemployment is 10.2 but they discount folks that have given up looking for a job of which I know several. When tax season comes around again we will see bumps in our taxes because of this at a time when we cannot pay. Something has to be done and those in power now are not doing it. We are hurting aand they celebrate with all the stimulous money they get or even the cigarette tax money they get. Which has gone down. How long befroe they raise the cig tax again? Yes alcohol sales are up. It numbs us to what is going on. Soon they will be so broke they cannot afford the alcohol and see what a mess we will have. More and more people may wake up and have a lot of questions and demand answers that they are not getting now. Just my opinion. So let us all let them pass some more bad bills on us and hurt us even more.