By John Brummett

That was the quintessential Arkansas news story last week when Gov. Mike Beebe happily trumpeted that our state’s per capita income is now the 46th worst in the United States.

We don’t thank God only for Mississippi anymore. Now we thank Him for West Virginia, Utah and Kentucky, too.

Never have we had four whole states behind us, Beebe declared. We’re headed in the right direction, he said.

This is a party I simply must poop. This is our inferiority complex rearing its meek and insecure head again.

The difference between 46th and 49th is $756 a year. If a couple of people in Utah, West Virginia and Kentucky get Christmas bonuses, we’re apt to be right back in 49th.

On the other hand, we are $20,000 or so — that’s in income per person statewide, mind you — behind first-place Connecticut. We are merely 80 percent of the national average.

Of the states that abut us, which is perhaps the most meaningful perspective since it assesses our economy and quality of life in the immediate region, we remain lower in our per capita income than any state except, of course, Mississippi.

Apparently we are celebrating that the Lord blesses a few people even less bountifully than he blesses us. We’re high-fiving over the misfortune of others. Is that any way to be?

We didn’t gain appreciable income in this latest compilation by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, which was for 2008. It’s just that Mississippi, Utah, Kentucky and West Virginia were stagnant.

In fact, as we know all too well, the whole darned country turned stagnant in late 2008 — bankrupt, really, except for a few hundred billions of dollars that the federal government borrowed and printed.

Surely we don’t mean to celebrate that.

Arkansas did a little better mainly because farm income was good. Agriculture is a bigger component of our economy than any of those other states behind us, except maybe Mississippi, which started behind us and stayed behind.

Arkansas also got a little kick from oil and gas royalties, a sector in which we’ve had a boomlet lately.

What the working man got in the Arkansas work-a-day world — that didn’t much improve. For the moment, it appears to be in actual decline.

So there’s less to this No. 46 than meets the eye.

The most curious analysis of Arkansas’ higher ranking came from Greg Kaza, the usually sensible head of a conservative think tank calling itself the Arkansas Policy Foundation.

Ever advancing anti-tax notions, he asserted some kind of connection between our rocketing to 46th and the fact the we have recently experienced the biggest volume tax cut in the state’s history.

He was referring to the four-cent drawdown in the sales tax on grocery food.

I readily understand that cutting taxes on a retail purchase of a life necessity gives people more disposable income. I cannot see how it would give people bigger paychecks.

I know of no employer who called in any employee last year and said, “Hey, since the state is lowering the state tax on groceries, I’d like to give you a bigger raise than I would have otherwise.”

We’ve let this 46th go to our heads, I’m afraid.

Economic health is a human issue, about opportunity and life quality, and shouldn’t be treated like conference football standings.

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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.