As someone who lives in a city where we have much lower property taxes and much more services than surrounding towns, let me say- fuck yeah. We also have a large minority population and spend the second most in the state per student. You don't like it, stop zoning your towns for enormous lots with mandated parking.
In fact, as a person gets older and finds himself living on a fixed income, loses his job or finds new employment at a lower wage, property tax bills remain the same or continue to increase, often forcing people to sell their homes.
This is why I oppose personal property taxes altogether. Taxes on commercial property are another matter, but nobody should be forced out of their home just because they can't pay property taxes. The government should not be in the business of rendering people homeless. That's the rentier's job.
1: also, try to be a town that has more high-tech enterprises than anywhere in the country outside of silicon valley that you can tax to pay for schools ahem.
2: Come on. Wealth is something we can and should tax, and property tax is the main way we do that at the moment. We can design a property tax that does not force people out of their homes, without simultaneously giving huge sops to the wealthy.
(Interesting historical factoid I read recently - pre-American Revolution, the British colonies raised money mostly by head taxes, so it was an innovation in the progressive direction when the states switched to flat-rate assessments on property.)
... speaking as a resident of a neighboring town that is (as you know) quite a bit denser than your town but which does not have Go/ogle and Nov/artis to (appropriately!) soak for school budgets.
You're doing ok, I'm thinking towns to the west that have higher taxes but have been cutting school activities and make people pay for full day kindergarten.
Yeah, and god knows those towns and their long-running backwardness about alternative transportation deserve mockery, but you really can't talk about the (again genuinely) bang-up job your city is doing at funding services with something other than property taxes without talking about how it probably has one of the highest per-capita commercial tax bases in the country. Now, partly that itself is an effect of smart growth policies going back a few decades but it's also partly luck.
Yes, ok, and also the fact that the nonprofits that own 20% of the land are also willing to make payments they're not legally required to make. But you're on the low end of rates as well, let us gather to mock those fools who move to the suburbs "for the schools."
I wonder what it would be like to where only 20% of the land was owned by nonprofits.
Luckily there's an even more regressive state tax system for companies like Googamazoface to flee too.
2: They often have rate reductions for Seniors on reduced incomes. Not ideal, of course.
If you depend too much on income tax, you're going to be in trouble during recessions. My town doesn't have much commercial stuff in it, so our property taxes are kind of high compared to Cambridge and Somerville. If you only taxed commercial stuff, we'd have no tax base, and our small businesses would all flee.
You'd be left taxing Trader Joe's, Stop and Shop, Whole Foods, and CVS.
I know they're higher than Cambridge's which borders us, probably lower than Lexington's.
My town intentionally doesn't have much commercial stuff in it
I'm sure we've previously thoroughly covered the point that funding school districts with local property taxes is insane, but it seems like it needs to be stated again here for the record.
15: I think that's how it was--just like people didn't want the T to come out here--but the newer residents would love to have both the T and probably mixed-use development.
Town Meeting would like to have some more commercial stuff.
There are always questions on our town survey about expanding commercial use.
16: Aren't there several states (NJ is one of them, I believe) where the state supreme court has ruled the funding of school districts by local property taxes to be unconstitutional, but with "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it"-type results?
I believe that the good people of Illinois were told, when they first got the lottery, that all the proceeds would be used to fund schools.
I think that's how it was--just like people didn't want the T to come out here
"Doesn't want public transit to go there" seems like a pretty good proxy for "is inhabited mostly be shitheels".
I know they're higher than Cambridge's which borders us, probably lower than Lexington's.
Other than a few places on the Cape and in the far west, every town has higher taxes than Cambridge. It's 320th of 336 for property tax rates.
17.1: oh yeah, i think that's right. The decisions were made thirty years ago. But same deal with Cambridge in the other direction.
It was also a dry town until not that long ago.
20: Right, but note the tense shift. Shitheels who long ago made a decision that can't (easily) be unmade by the current inhabitants.
The contrast of ours and my parents' property in a high tax part of NY state, for propeties no more than 50% different in value (which is itself insane as we own half a house and they have a house on 6.75 acres) is shocking, I think it's about 10x difference.
18: That happened in Ohio, but the governor and legislature waited them out, and eventually the Supreme Court changed its mind.
There was quite a bit of resistance in BG's town until very recently to the idea of bike lanes. The opponents are generally quite old, but they aren't dead yet.
I think they all spend their days commenting on news website stories about biking.
There is apparently one specific elderly dude who has been the implacable, tireless avatar of opposition to widely supported, basically anodyne bicycle infrastructure projects.
18: Yes for New Jersey. Schools are mostly funded by real estate taxes, but the state equalizes to some extent by providing state aid to towns with lower tax bases. You can guess which direction the "some extent" has been going during the current governor's reign of error. Interestingly, the most impoverished cities (Newark and Camden) have decent real estate tax bases from commercial and industrial property. The smaller post-industrial apocalypse cities receive more in transfer payments, as do those suburban towns, like mine, that have no malls, no industry, and no million dollar homes.
Boston just proposed a protected bike lane on a terrible stretch near BU that accounts for about 40 bike accidents a year. To maintain a turning lane for cars at intersections while also adding the cycle track they have to eliminate about 100 parking meters. A city councillor noted that each meter brings in "up to" $4k per year for $400k in lost revenue and he is furious about this. My reaction was holy shit you can prevent 40 accidents including about 3-5 fatal ones per year for less than $10k each? That's the best ROI you're going to find on an infrastructure project anywhere. Or, you know, forget the turning lane and limit it to (gasp) 2 car lanes each way.
18: Yes, quite a few states (including NJ) have held funding and/or resource disparities unconstitutional* and required the legislatures to beef up underfunded districts. Then of course you get decades of litigation over whether the beefing up is good enough.
*Under their respective state constitutions. The U.S. Constitution doesn't give a rat's ass, or so says a 40-year-old Supreme Court decision.
18: As I've mentioned here before, Vermont has such a Constitutional ruling, but the legislature actually did something about it. Still mostly funded at the local level, but there's a floor and a ceiling, and if towns spend over the ceiling then they get taxed at a higher rate and the extra goes into a pool for the towns at the floor. I never was all that well-informed about how well it worked and by now I'm years out of date (although I learned just yesterday that a high school classmate of mine got arrested after a "rampage," so that was interesting), but the basic idea sounded good.
Agreed that the op-ed is well written overall, but it left me curious why Illinois sucks so much. The op-ed discusses a report that says they are, and discusses stuff the state does that's bad, but I don't see anything there that other states don't do, nor anything about Illinois' circumstances that make the usual practice uniquely horrible.
Washington is in a similar situation, with the Supreme Court ruling that the legislature is failing its constitutionally mandated commitment to education, and the legislature basically ignoring them.
Next step, the court will try to hold the leg in contempt.
Illinois tax is second most regressive because it has high sales tax, high property tax, and a low flat income tax.
it left me curious why Illinois sucks so much
I thought he explained that. The Illinois constitution requires the state to pay a large portion of education costs from property taxes. Cook County used its clout to keep residential property taxes low because it had a huge commercial/industrial base. Now the commercial base has mostly gone away and the state doesn't have enough money to buoy poorer districts.
Favoring a flat tax is good litmus test for being an asshole. Sure, poor people pay a proportion of their income that has an enormous impact on their well being while the rich get off cheap, but I can fill out my tax form on the back of a postcard!
The difficulty of completing tax forms under a regime of progressive taxation actually affects poor people disproportionately, because they're stupid.
If they were smart, they'd already be rich.
AISIHMHB, California is another place that's not only broken away from the local-wealth-based-funding model (started in the 70's) but is actually now dedicating more funds to the needier, not just per-student: all districts are paid on a per-student basis, with extra for each low-income, English-learning, or foster youth student, and still extra for schools where those students are 55%+ of the total.
I mentioned a while ago the school issue that roiling Msla: the lege is in the process of passing a bill that will allow a smallish school district on the outskirts of town to build it's own high school. (Also 2 similar districts, on the outskirts of Helena and Billings respectively). The existing high schools here are looking at the revenue hit from losing 15% of their students.
There's nothing actually wrong with the status quo. Maybe the new school would be a bit less diverse class wise (also racially, although there's not much of that anyway.)
In the circumstances, I don't think you'd find 3 people who would agree that the $30 million or whatever to build a new high school ought not to be collected directly from the people who live in the outskirts district.
37
The Illinois constitution requires the state to pay a large portion of education costs from property taxes. Cook County used its clout to keep residential property taxes low because it had a huge commercial/industrial base. Now the commercial base has mostly gone away and the state doesn't have enough money to buoy poorer districts.
Well, yeah, sure, I got that from the editorial, but there's nothing unusual about that, is there? Most states pay for a large portion of education through property taxes and now have less of an industrial base than they did 30-50 years ago, so what's so bad about Illinois? 36 is more the kind of thing I was thinking of - high sales tax plus high property tax plus low and flat income tax. Makes sense.
its -- Maybe a new school isn't such a bad idea.
I guess taking the service industry is tougher than taxing the industrial base. Was it Massachusetts where everyone flipped out that IT services would be subject to tax?
39 - You can now (more or less)! It's called the 1040EZ!
Of course, instituting an actual flat tax would change the little chart in the back of the booklet that you use to find the number you write in one part of whichever form you use, and literally nothing else. But it's simpler in an abstract, libertarian 'look how much smarter I am than other people because I understand issues in a very simple way that obviously to everyone but me involves massively helping the rich at the expense of everyone else!" way.
The most annoying thing about a flat tax is the extent to which its popularity is based on the ignorant delusion that if you get bumped up to a higher tax bracket, the higher rate applies to all your income, not just the amount in the higher bracket.
I rather think submitting your taxes on a post card is somewhat problematic from a financial privacy perspective. Hey Mr. Postman, I made over $300K last year!
I suspect that goes inside an envelope for a reason.
39: I'm flat tax curious. I'd like to see how the numbers work out for (e.g.) a flat tax on all income above $45k, meaning all income, so no bullshit about taxing capital gains at a different rate. It would make special interest tax breaks stick out like a sore thumb, which ought to help keep them under control. My hypothetical tax would apply to corporations as well as well as natural persons.
I believe complexity in the law is a tool of oppression, as it favors those who can afford lawyers and fancy accountants. You shouldn't have to pay for justice.
You shouldn't have to pay for justice.
You also shouldn't have to pay the same rate as Mitt Romney. Or rather, the same rate as Mitt Romney should be paying.
52: Romney pays what he does because of all those nasty loopholes (and the stupidity with capital gains). I'm not aiming for something ideal here, just something less bad that is robust against attempts to create loopholes for the very rich. I'm not even particularly committed to it. The appeal is that it creates something fairer without requiring mass changes in human nature, which tends to be the downfall of a lot of schemes.
53: Sounds like the Alternative Minimum Tax. Which people hate because it clamps down on their deductions instead of the other guy's loopholes.
According to this CBO report, we already have an effective individual income tax rate of 0% or less for people who make $50k or less.
Even so, a revenue neutral individual income tax would still be a massive tax break for the top 1%.
s/b a revenue neutral flat individual income tax
"Effective" must be a very powerful word given what it's doing in 55.1.
One thing a (reasonably close to) flat tax does is make tax planning easier for do-it-yourself UMC types. You don't have to guess as much what tax rate to use when putting together an Excel model, without having to model your whole fricking tax situation. Post 1986, that mostly came down to "assume ordinary income is taxed at 28% and LTCGs at 20%." Not as big a deal for people like the Romneys, who can afford to pay other people to model stuff with fancy software, but a big deal for those of us who are trying to not pay most of the gains from better tax planning to the person doing the planning.
58.last describes my situation. If I do my taxes myself I miss things my CPA catches. He saves me enough to cover his fee with a few dollars left over. I could waste a bunch of time on figuring things out, but it's a huge pain in the ass. I'd rather that money go to social security or medicaid than my cpa, but when I factor in the PITA it makes a lot of sense to give it to my CPA.
57
Yeah, I was confused too, and it's complicated. One, income includes transfer payments. Two, it is adjusted for household size. Three, there is large variation within each quintile.
CharleyCarp, 43: how about building the new school but keeping the schools the same size? If the perimeter insists on a school, don't let it be exclusive?
I read a while ago that smaller high schools are more expensive per student but cheaper per graduate.
60. Also you have to ignore all the other charts which say different things when interpreting the one that kind of looks like it says that, which is not usually considered best practices from what I know.
Your point? I'm not trying to claim we have a great system. It's not, and a flat tax with a large deduction would be demonstrably worse.
I just found some interesting (not wrong, unless you don't trust the CBO) data and got curious about what it was really telling us.
I'm a guaranteed basic/minimum income proponent myself.
63.last: I like the idea of a basic income/negative income tax, but I don't see that it's incompatible with a simple tax structure.
Also I just discovered that this stuff exists, which makes me proud to be an american.
Also, simplification of regulations like taxes is an El Dorado. The law of unintended consequences will always get you. Doesn't mean it's not a worthy goal, but you practically guaranteed to fail.
The most important and easiest simplifying income tax reform would be for the government to calculate how much people owe based on information reported to the government (woth a right to review, add in deductions, and contest, of course, but the government would just send you a tax bill). For something like 98% of personal filers this would be easy to do and it would also obviously deter fraud and evasion.
65: Oh good, it's homeopathic. Must work for sure. I do not want to know what search led you to that. Surely nipple piercings don't need special cleansers.
Every argument for a flat tax, including 50 and 58, rest on conflating tax code complexity with the number of tax brackets.
robust against attempts to create loopholes for the very rich
There's no magic about having only one tax bracket that will accomplish this.
I'm suspicious of the basic income because the libertarians seem to like it, which makes me think there is a catch.
Libertarians also like drugs and those are great.
||I recently "liked" a whole bunch of classical music stuff on Facebook, and now in its most predictable move ever the Internet thinks I'm an elderly gay man. Not that there's anything wrong with that (passim) but apparently the gay male denizens of "OurTime.com" the dating site for over-50s REALLY want to meet me. And I click on random ads with boobs!|>
61 -- I'm not sure I understand. New high school gets 15% of the kids. Other three high schools (in the existing single district) have to share the shortfall.
re-||I mean if it was like "you look like a Tom of Finland model so join the site for guys who look like that" I would have been like "right on I am so doing this right now," just for the ego boost but the internet thinks I'm old, so fuck you internet|>
I guess the real Rob Halford is an elderly gay man so there's that. But he doesn't SEEM elderly and probably can go on the cool Tom of Finland dating site and not on the lame men of OurTime.com dating site.
Why don't they just let the lion eat a few dogs? The lion is endangered and dogs are abundant.
the internet thinks I'm old
I have bad news for you.
If I try to find a bunch of younger/more muscular gay images and click on those, will the internet think that I'm younger, or just an older man looking at porn?? One of you works on algorithms or something and knows the answer. What if I combine younger/more muscular porn with searches for university and student loan applications?
The internet already knows you are a dog.
Click on a bunch of sob stories about the miracles of parenting and it will think you're a late 30s woman. Either that or a pedophile.
Autocorrect tried to make that miracles of patenting so maybe the Internet does know you.
Hmmm better half is all over the classical music on the internet and still inundated with the usual eastern European bride etc spam, so there must be some other factor TRO. ?
85: ...
Uh, maybe there's some bad news coming.
I think I somehow managed to find the Facebook "do not track" button, so this doesn't happen to me anymore. Actually, I think its not so much a "do not track" button as it is a "do not advertise to me based on what you track" button, which isn't the same thing.
This is about schools rather than taxes, but our school district announced today that it was in the top 10% in the state for showing progress, which in some respects is not as hard when you're starting from the bottom 10% overall, but in this case has been the result of hard work and should directly contribute to better outcomes for students. Plus this means the haters in my neighborhood may have to STFU for a few moments at least.
88 yay particularly wrt the haters! Once you are the "winning team" everyone wants to be with you (it's the American Way), and while absurd in this instance welcome them with open arms.
86: maybe!
But suspect may have more to do with perhaps particulars of music TRO has been on about? Have never been on FB so don't really understand how it works. Lots of Callas?
85, 90: I have the same tastes and get the same ads. If there's bad news I'll be the last to know. It puzzles me too.
I used to get the Russian bride ads but now I mostly get ones for expensive backpacks.
||
I did it Heebie! I paid an absurdly cute woman to shove a big metal spike through my tit. All thanks to your encouragement. It hurt like a motherfucker. Who'da thunkit? Last time I did this (1992) I don't recall anything like this pain. It's starting to fade fortunately. I really hope it fades fast enough that I can get to sleep tonight.
|>
Who could have ever guessed that getting 20 years older means that the same stuff hurts much worse than it did back in the day?
Now you get to carry around a cup of salt water on your nipple for days!
94: I'm currently anesthetizing myself with beer. It seems to help. I believe I did something similar last time. This may be connected to the issue with remembering much about the event.
95: New treatment protocol is to leave it alone except for twice daily showers. Last time I did this the protocol involved bactine and a bunch of other stuff. Apparently all that crap delays healing unless there's an infection, so the new advice is to simply keep the area clean and otherwise just let the body do its thing.
I guess the real Rob Halford is an elderly gay man …
Posted by: Tim "Ripper" Owens
The personalities are bleeding through again!
Like the blood of a nipple through a shirt, so are the days of our lives.
I paid an absurdly cute woman to shove a big metal spike through my tit.
AAAAGH JESUS FUCK, whatever on Earth possessed you to do that?
Last time I did this the protocol involved bactine and a bunch of other stuff. Apparently all that crap delays healing unless there's an infection, so the new advice is to simply keep the area clean and otherwise just let the body do its thing.
When I got my navel pierced (shutup: it was the 90s, okay?) they told me to put antibiotic ointment on the piercing every day for a week or something like that. My skin had a way worse reaction to that stuff than to the piercing itself.
That's probably less enervated skin.
Absurdly cute woman, JeeMac.
I like to think only an absurdly sexy woman could make me drive metal spikes through my man boobs.
93: hooray!!! You crazy fuck. Now post a photo to the flickr page.
93 makes the process sound way more appealing than it should, though that may be the bottle of wine I have to finish since I can't drive it home tomorrow talking. I don't think I'd want a road trip piercing parlor anyway, though I'm sure it would be very educational.
Seriously, though, I have questions about nipple piercings, I suddenly realize. But I probably shouldn't ask them in polite company. (w/r/t other comment on the other thread, I have half a glass of wine still before bedtime. I think I'll make it.)
I don't think Unfogged really counts as "polite company" in any sense.
And now that I think about it, I suppose I too have questions about nipple piercing, but they're mostly of the "Why on earth would you ever do that?" variety.
I guess I've assumed that, like clitoral piercings, they're an amplifier of sorts, but I don't think I've talked to anyone past the healing period about the implications on either front, though not because I'm feminist.
Well, now you have togolosh to ask if you so desire. I mean, not quite now, but after a little while.
Feminists are only interested in pain.
At the risk of making the joke explicit, that's not funny, Mobes.
108, 111: I have no objection to impolite questions, so ask away. It is an amplifier of sorts. The original one (that I took out in 1998) has left highly sensitive scar tissue to the point where playing with the previously pierced one is so much more fun than the un-pierced one it's not even worth touching un-pierced one. I'm hoping to even things up. It really cranks the sensitivity up to 11. Also having the jewelry there gives more to play with. Unfortunately healing time is 6-8 weeks for oral contact, so I won't have confirmation that it's working for a while.
106: Not entirely work safe. I'll remove it if there are any objections.
Will this be what finally makes me send a flickr pool join request? Probably!
115: I really don't expect to ever get more piercings (nose, one per ear, although I had a cartilage ear piercing that closed ages ago) but I really think I couldn't talk myself into something more sensitive because I'd be afraid it would backfire somehow, which presumably says more about me than about piercings.
I presume your being in Cleveland when the Kentucky b-ball team was serendipitous? ( I think you mentioned in some other thread)
Total coincidence, Stormcrow, though the girls thought it was hilarious to see people in Kentucky gear everywhere. If Lee had realized in time she might have tried to come along and wrangle a ticket, but I was already there with the girls when she found out.
I put a fire-eating video clip in the Flickr pool.
I'm tempted to get an upper ear cartilage piercing, but not sure about the pain. I had all these plans to get a tattoo after my dissertation defense, but that process was so horrible that I didn't feel any pride or joy at the prospect. I want another tat of some sort, but u have to make sure it somehow complements my "Celtic" tramp stamp.
You could upgrade to a Celtic belt.
For tattoos, either you have the full lyrics to "Eye of the Tiger" on your back or you have nothing.
