I wrote two weeks ago about the small Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights that I live in being faced with either voting for a city income tax increase or losing services. Yesterday the voters in the city easily passed (by a margin of 64% to 36%) the measure to raise the city income tax from 1.75% to 2.25%, an increase of almost 30%.
The residents of the city decided that in order to maintain a high standard of city services and a good quality of life for the community as a whole, you need to be willing to pay for them.
That seems commonsensical but in these crazy days when people have this bizarre notion that taxes can be cut without loss of services, I am glad to live in a community that is still in touch with reality.
Congratulations Crommunist! Always good to hear good news tautologically enough. (Raised beer salute.)
Oops. Sorry, Mano Singham -- congrats to you I meant. My apologies.
Whoozat now? What happened?
Mano, I am flattered to be confused with a man as handsome and dapper as yourself.
My town recently did something similar: voted for higher property tax in order to increase the education budget. I think it helps to tie in taxes with what they are actaully used for. Everybody is in favor of simply having lower taxes, but when you think of what you’re losing, it changes quite a bit.
Of course, Shaker Heights has a reputation for being liberal, well-educated, and upper middle class.
Yes, it does. But it was still nice to see the issue win resoundingly.People by no means thought it was a sure thing.
Thanks for the compliment! At my age, such things are accepted without any critical analysis whatsoever!
The US has been run on the principle that you can continue to decrease taxes without a loss of services for decades -- glad to see sanity wins out somewhere.
“tax” is not a four-letter word!