After fifteen years in the Keystone State, my wife and I retired back to our home in Kentucky. Pennsylvania has an individual income tax rate of 3.07%, which is a fairly low rate among those states which have income taxes. Kentucky had an individual income tax rate of 5.0%, but this has been lowered to 4.5% for tax year 2023, and again to 4.0% for 2024.

But, unlike Pennsylvania, the Bluegrass State doesn’t try to nickel-and-dime people to death for every little thing. And thus we come to this, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A paper bag fee, new protections for building workers, and a send-off for Council President Darrell L. Clarke | Council roundup

The final meeting of Council’s four-year term included a flurry of legislation and speeches praising outgoing Council President Darrell L. Clarke.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Thursday, December 14, 2023 | 3:42 PM EST

Philadelphia City Council on Thursday approved a new 15-cent fee for consumers who need paper bags at retail stores.

What? That’s just plain stupid! Just get the disposable plastic bags instead!

Oops!

Council previously approved a ban on plastic bags, which took effect in 2022. Councilmember Mark Squilla, who authored that legislation, initially included a fee for paper bags in that proposal, but removed that provision during negotiations.

So, you get taxed on the paper grocery bags you use, and but you can’t get the plastic bags?

Squilla said Thursday that data show paper bag usage in the city has increased as a result of the plastic bag ban. The goal, he said, is to reduce the consumption of single-use bags overall and encourage shoppers to bring reusable bags.

Paper bags are, of course, easily recyclable, but to busybody Councilcritter Mark Squilla, who’s a Democrat, naturally, that’s not good enough, and he wants to just plain run your life. He thinks you should have a reusable bag, and if you won’t, you’ll damned well pay for the privilege.

Now, who’s going to pay for the privilege? Why everybody, of course, but it’s never quite that simple, is it? Poorer Philadelphians, the ones in the so-called ‘food deserts,’ the ones who wind up buying more expensive junk from corner bodegas, because there isn’t a real supermarket around, will wind up paying more, just due to the logistics.

But, but, but, it’s just 15¢, right? By the time you figure out the costs, it could wind up being a gallon of milk a month.

For Mr Squilla, that’s pretty much irrelevant. He not only gets his City Council salary of $142,751 per year, but he receives a pension from the Commonwealth, for having worked in that Office of the Auditor General for 25 years. His wife, Brigid, is a nurse anesthetist, and that’s a well-paying position.

The left all tell us how much the support the poor, but they have no f(ornicating) concept about what being poor is like. Sure, 15¢ isn’t much, but just four bags of groceries is now an additional 60¢. Nickel-and-diming people to death, that’s what Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia, do.