This past week a local school system, in an attempt to pass a school levy to fund new construction, told teachers that roughly half of the new construction costs would come from what they termed "free money." One teacher asked "where does the free money come from?" The school administrator explained that it came from the tobacco companies in the Master Settlement Agreement, set aside for school building construction.
This begs the question: Where does "free money" come from? In the case of the MSA, it comes from the tobacco companies. Where did they get it? They got it from selling cigarettes to smokers. Therefore, somebody parted with it after they got their paycheck and it ultimately wasn't free. But when you take money from smokers (predominantly low-moderate income folks who can least afford it) it seems to be, well, politically safe and the right thing to do. After all, tobacco companies are sort of evil and using their money seems perfectly justified, even though they get it from smokers. I didn't hear any wails from anybody when Ohio accepted their billions in the first place. And smokers aren't getting much sympathy these days either, so that seems to be OK, too.
That leads me inevitably to the Ohio Tobacco Foundation's money that was recently expropriated by the gov and the legislature. The legislature declared it was "their" money and so they took it. Nothing wrong with that, they declared.
Since taking money from tobacco companies feels good to most people, why didn't the legislature solve this problem by just taking more of it from the smokers? A nickel per pack would generate about $35 million/year. Problem solved with free money!!!
Recent Comments