What Alabama Values?

by Kwamena Blankson, ACPP Policy Analyst

A friend recently lamented to me that she seems to be lacking “Alabama values.” She is finally coming to terms with the fact that, unlike the candidates in local television ads, she is not quite sure what “Alabama values” are.

I don’t know how to make her and other Alabamians feel better about their own apparent moral failings. My friend votes, calls her legislators, and even writes letters to elected leaders. But it seems that, for all their patriotic involvement in the democratic process, she and other like-minded Alabamians lack the one thing that has made this state what it is today: Alabama values.

Alabama values are hard to pin down, but if the current political and economic landscape is any indication, such values consist of certain basic principles supported by the majority of the public and their elected representatives. The following are just three of the most obvious Alabama values:

First, low- and middle-income folks must fend for themselves, because upper-income Alabamians deserve to hold on to their hard-earned dollars. After all, since the federal government doesn’t believe in taxing low-income Americans deeper into poverty, what’s wrong with Alabama making low-wage workers pay up? That’s why they now pay 11.5% of their income in state and local taxes while the wealthiest Alabamians pay only 3.6%.

For a state that fights over whether evolution should be taught in schools, it seems ironic that Alabama holds so tightly to Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest.” But I digress.

Second, the state has enough money to provide everything Alabamians need. Our schools are doing just fine. Our judicial system was never really in danger of shutting down. And the prisons are simply swell (no pun intended). The rationale is simple: As long as the “haves” can pay to get their own needs met, it doesn’t really matter that the “have-nots” can’t get decent health insurance, affordable housing, quality childcare, competent legal defense, or an adequate public school education. And as long as the “haves” fund the campaigns of like-minded “haves”, the “have-nots” and their advocates will be ignored in the halls of power.

Now that’s what “one nation under God” should look like, right? We obviously have done our part to love our neighbors… well, at least the ones in our subdivision. But again, I digress.

Third, there is no need to raise taxes further when we are already being “taxed to death.” Never mind the fact that Alabama ranks “dead” last in taxes per capita, compared to all other states. Moreover, among just the twelve states of the Southeast, Alabama has the eighth highest tax capacity, yet ranks last in actual tax effort. Clearly, we are the nation’s shining example of exactly what low taxes can buy.

Maybe instead of posting the Ten Commandments in schools, we should display the words of the apostle Paul from his second letter to the Corinthians: “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly; and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.” Even the agriculturalists in ALFA can attest to the truth of that scripture. Sorry. I really must stop digressing.

You might think that the list of Alabama values would go on and on, in order to explain why Alabama has no laws to protect tenants from irresponsible landlords, and why Alabamians invest so little in their public schools, and why the state has inadequate public transportation, and why the state’s hundred-year-old constitution is designed to protect the powerful. But in fact, the list boils down to one simple fact: the “haves” can afford to be content with “the state we’re in.”

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any good reason to maintain the status quo. But I have figured out why Alabama values have been nurtured for over a century: to protect the “haves.” But I’m not interested in joining their class war; I’m simply trying to value all human lives equally. So I guess that means I’m in the same camp as my frustrated friend. It seems that I, too, lack “Alabama values.”