I am often surprised at the way Mississippi’s progressive media loves talking down our state.
Take the recent example of the Jackson water crisis. That was a straight-forward story of incompetent city officials failing to provide the city with clean water. What the left-wing media preferred to do instead was turn it into a narrative about inequality and racism.
National and international media outlets were quick to misrepresent what was really happening in our state, and ignore the actual causes of Jackson’s water crisis. Rather than try to set the record straight armed with their local knowledge, it was disappointing to see many local media outlets rush to join in – with a few notable exceptions.
Much of Mississippi’s progressive media seems to delight in portraying our state in a negative light. Perhaps those that fund Mississippi’s anti-Mississippi media don’t understand the damage this does to our state? Perhaps they don’t care, provided they are able to bolster their progressive credentials?
A recent arrival from England, I love Mississippi. I take every opportunity to explain to outsiders why Mississippi is such a wonderful place.
The other day, for example, I was asked to write the lead comment article for the Sunday Telegraph, one of Britain’s largest circulation newspapers. Here are some of the positive things I had to say about Mississippi:
Leaders in our state have “responded to the downturn by implementing the largest tax cut in the state’s history. The state income tax was cut from an average of 7 percent to a flat 4 percent.” This is helping grow the state. Mississippi’s population, which had been falling for as long as anyone can remember, is now starting to rise.
Our state leaders have also responded “with a far-reaching red tape reduction strategy, giving people with professional qualifications issued in other US states a near automatic right to practice in Mississippi.” This, too, helps explain why our state is on the up.
As for the idea that Mississippi is poor and backward, I told my British audience that “in the next 12 months, the per capita income of Mississippi ($45,881 in 2021) is expected to overtake that of the United Kingdom ($47,202 in 2021). A generation ago, Britain was roughly twice as wealthy per person as Mississippi.”
If Mississippi keeps going with tax cuts and red tape reduction, we will not remain the poorest state in America for long, either.
Mississippi is emulating the successful approach taken by other “southern states, such as Tennessee, Texas and Florida”.
Thanks to the reforms that leaders are implementing at the state level, the American south has become the fastest-growing part of the US. Indeed, it is well on its way to becoming the demographic, economic and, one day soon, perhaps the political center of gravity in America.
Here at the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we are upbeat about our state. We know that the tax cutting and deregulation reforms that we helped instigate are producing improvements.
I cannot imagine why left-wing media outlets stay silent about how free market solutions are improving our state.
