It costs a certain amount to run a town/city/state.
Yes, and that is the stupidity of eliminating the property tax. You will replace a tax that affects mostly property owners, ie the better off half of the population, with a tax that affects everyone, especially lower income people. It will result in a decrease in consumption of all products and services by all groups except the most well off. I know some of the local people pushing this crap. They are extremists to the max.
This is part of the "starve the government" movement. What these lunatics don't understand is that property taxes support local governments and schools, not the federal government.
This is an outgrowth of the home-schooling movement. Many property taxes support public schools. Since home schooling families don't send their kids to public schools, they don't want to pay property taxes.
How that's accomplished greatly depends on where you live. One of the most absurd things about where I live is that we have on average a million visitors per year for the wineries, festivals and just general ambiance yet have INSANE property taxes. A 1% sales tax on "visitor related stuff" wouldn't even be noticed by them and would give relief to people already burdened by high property values...of course, thanks to Robin Hood laws, 82% of our tax revenue goes outside of the district anyway, so I have no idea why they're this high to begin with.
Property is the highest level of oppression and theft. Period.
In Ohio, parents can get vouchers from the state that allow them to take their property tax money to a private school, religious or otherwise. But that is not what the home schoolers want.
Well, let's think about that for a second....would I rather pay $15k annually in property taxes that I or my progeny can lose our home over or hundreds in VOLUNTARY sales tax (because nobody makes you drink alcohol, stay in a hotel, take a wine tour or go out to eat) shared with the million or so tourists? Fredericksburg generates roughly $175M in revenue from tourism alone. A 3% sales tax solely on tourist related activities replaces the entirety of property taxes levied for my entire county.
Sales taxes are terrible because people can and will just stop spending money and that will hurt every business owner and their employees.
I'm not advocating new taxes, I'm talking about exchanging a big one for a small one and let's be honest. ALL taxes are terrible, but if I have to choose between a sales tax nobody would really notice and a tax that causes people to lose homes THEY'VE LONG SINCE PAID FOR, I'm going with the sales tax.
It SHOULD be.
US spending on elementary and secondary educations seems to be in line with the OECD average.
I said average spent per student, not spending relative to GDP...and I'd be GREAT, Hell, I'd be a big advocate for all of that spending if our results weren't so terrible relative to the other countries spending considerably less per student.
