> In our highly governed society, > wealth often equates to political power, so narrowing the gap makes us more > democratic. So I think there should be more emphasis on linking taxes to > wealth instead of just income. I suspect that property taxes are much > closer to being proportional to wealth than they are to income.
There is a fundamental problem in considering a person's housing "wealth" which should be taxed (for equality, of course). Do you not see it? If no, your income is probably much higher than mine. Let's see if my story will help shed any light on this... Since I was a kid, I'd dreamed of one day owning my own house in the neighborhood I grew up in, right here in Longfellow. Three years and two months ago, after scraping, and saving, living in a tiny, crappy effeciency apartment for 8 years, and scraping some more, my dream became reality. A house I could afford, in roughly the neighborhood I wanted. My wife and I were so happy and so proud. We finally did it. We sunk every penny we had into buying our house. We continue to work hard at jobs we hate just for the privilege of continuing to put every dime into our house. Outside of our house, we have no "wealth." We are entirely, 100% invested in our housing. Our income is already taxed. What's left after that goes into the house, and is taxed again, and will continue to be taxed, forever. Once the house is paid off, and we are (hopefully, someday) retired, we'll still be paying for our "wealth" even to a point where we will theoretically have to pay more for our "wealth" than we ever earned. Taxing our "wealth" will ultimately result in losing our "wealth," our home. When we bought our house, we could barely afford the payments, taxes and insurance. In three years, our property tax burden has doubled. Our income hasn't. Not even close. We refinanced to lower our interest rate, and stretched the payments out to a fresh 30 year mortgage, thinking that this would put a few extra bucks in the monthly budget. Well, it didn't. Outrageous tax increases have eaten up our modest gain in monthly cash-flow. As it turns out, if we hadn't refinanced when we did, we probably could no longer afford to live here (well, not that AND eat). We are a property tax increase or two away from being forced out of our home. My house isn't the nicest looking home on the block. I'm an experienced house painter, and remodeler. I'd love to put some work into making my house look nicer, but I'm afraid to. I can't afford to live in a nicer looking house! Many people are in our shoes. My Grandmother bought a house in Longfellow with her late husband back in the 50's. She's retired now, on a fixed income which increases less than 2% annually. Her property taxes are increasing at 5-8 times the rate her income is. I'm sure she's paid more in property tax than she did to pay off the mortgage in the first place. She'll eventually be taxed out of her house. My parents got a good deal on a fixer-upper in Longfellow, and bought their first home after I was grown up and moved out. They've since divorced. My Mom got the house (and the mortgage). She could barely make ends meet 10 years ago (but she could do it). She makes about $10.00 an hour. Rising property taxes are close to forcing her out of her house. It's becoming a choice between property tax or food and medicine. The word "sustainable" gets tossed around a lot on this list. It's used in reference to fuel sources, farming practices, environmental issues, et-c. Let me tell you about "sustainable urban environments." In order to sustain ANY kind of urban environment, taxes have to be at a level which the residents can afford to pay. The government can't continue to grow and grow and grow, and take and take and take from the people it's supposed to serve. It just isn't SUSTAINABLE. At the rate things are going, in a few years, there will be only two classes of people living in Minneapolis. An entirely dependent class of poor unemployed people, and the very rich (who probably aren't working either). That would seem to be the opposite of the much lauded, utopian "sustainable urban environment." Dan McGrath Longfellow http://www.smokeoutgary.org http://www.subversivepictures.com REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@mnforum.org Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
