It hardly seems
fair:
“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year.
“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”
It's not that I don't like paying taxes, or that I don't want all the stuff that taxes pay for, it's just that I don't want to pay the taxes that pay for all the stuff I want. You know, the big picture.
6 comments:
*Sigh*.
Obviously, there need to be tax breaks for especially desirable citizens like local artists. You wouldn't want the city to lose its character!
This is exactly why we're in trouble: The lights are on but no one's home.
Or, it's an argument for a 4th R in our education: budgeting in grade school, finance in junior high, and economics in high school. An excellent device, also, for teaching that third R....
Fat chance, though.
On the other hand, I really have a hard time believing a grown adult human being can be so knuckle-walking, beetle-browed, slack-jawed, droolingly imbecilic. Dishonest, if only to herself. Or, where's her nurse, that she got out without supervision?
Eric Hines
Well, maybe corruption is to blame. One side says there's too many kickbacks for construction. Other side says there's not enough.
Just that many people say "I want X to be so" without bothering to consider the consequences of X. They want X to occur, so it must be an unmitigated good. Since it is an unmitigated good, there can be no undesirable consequences - such as paying higher property taxes. Weren't the Koch brothers supposed to pay for it?
But yes, many progs do tend to leave the heavy thinking to others. "I feel" - that's all that counts.
"Someone needs to step in and address the big picture."
A democracy is merely 1% controlling what the 99% thinks, and everyone agrees to call it "majority rule".
As for why that is... the masses are always looking for a person to tell them what to think and what to do. Reference the quote.
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