Property Bucket

In my area of the country, there is a new political debate raging about property taxes. There is a new petition to put an amendment to the state constitution to abolish property taxes. If enough signatures are collected, this becomes a ballot issue for the state population to vote on.

On the surface, the arguments for and against are simple. To the abolitionists (not a word I thought I would be typing in this day and age), the owners, many senior citizens are being taxed out of their homes and are, or will be in the future, struggling to stay in the home they bought or built and raised families in because the tax rates keep going up.

To the pro-tax folks, property taxes are a significant source of income to the state that funds schools and city services such as police and fire. If those taxes are no longer collected, services will suffer and the money must then come from other sources which would require raising sales taxes or other income taxes. That would make the state harder to promote to bring in other businesses to the state.

Here is my take on this.

As a property owner, I know taxes on my home and land can be a burden. I have worked all my life to have a safe and stable place to live and protect my family. I am not fundamentally against some property taxes to fund services, however there needs to be a cap on how much homeowners should be forced to pay out. Property taxes continue to rise with nearly every election cycle; someone wants more from the property owners to fund services or another school levy. Politicians should not be able to use property owners as a piggy bank for every idea that comes down the pipe.

Here's an idea. How about politicians and school boards and everyone else who uses property tax money become efficient in the use of those dollars. Communities are continually threatened with "we'll have to make cuts" if the new levies aren't passed. "This will go away, or that will go away". It's always the same excuse. But you know what I have found? Every time some entity has to make cuts, cuts get made and there is generally little overall effect to the whole of the service or business. They adapt. And they adapt because most of these entities are bloated because we are weak as a voting populace. Not every new idea needs to be funded with new dollars. Use the dollars you already collect for this new position or idea. Not every new school building needs to be a massive, sprawling campus with every new technological gadget that even NASA would be envious of having.

It's time to cap property taxes; not eliminate them completely, and make those asking for money from the voters to DOGE themselves and their services for the good of the tax payers.

Over the Tip

Back in the day, okay, I'm old, tipping for service was a convention limited to certain areas of work and tasks. If you provided good or excellent service, the larger the tip given by the customer you served. Note, the word 'served'.

So, what has changed? Almost everything. The era of tip me for nothing has erupted in this country. In the before times, a server or waiter/waitress gave great service, they received a bigger tip. Poor service, little to no tip. Service provided was effort and a great attitude at the job. Service was something the customer couldn't do for themselves at the business. I can't go back and put the food on my plate and walk it back to the table. I couldn't drive your taxi to the airport to drop myself off at the gate.

In the past, with other rare exceptions, these were the primary jobs people were tipped for. Now, everyone wants a tip just for doing their job. If I order a sandwich standing at a counter and you do nothing but the bare minimum of your job to get it to me, you don't deserve a tip. The other day, I went through a drive-through to pick up a drink and the screen to tap wanted me to give a tip. At a drive-through? Really?

Now, I understand the outcry, "pay your people more", but as someone who worked a life in service, most of these outcries are ridiculous. Many of these jobs aren't mean't to be 'buy a house and raise a family' jobs. Some are entry-level learn how to show up on time jobs, or, I'm retired and need something to do jobs. Standing at a drive-through speaking into microphone asking if you want fries with that is not a $15 per hour job. If your life goal is to be a barista, you have set the bar for you life truly low. These folks strike for more money while you job entails holding a paper cup while a machine squirts fluid into that cup that you wrote someone's name on with a marker. They you move that cup to another machine to squirt another liquid in that same cup, put on a lid and hand it to the customer. Wow, that really labor intensive. I'll bet you go home and fall into your bed from sheer exhaustion.

If you want to make more money, improve yourself, get some marketable skills and go do it. Don't gripe and moan that your customer didn't give you a tip as you handed them their sub over the counter.

I tip well because I can, but you better earn it. I don't tip for nothing.

Village Fail?

"It takes a village to raise a child".

This quote has always bothered me. I believe it is an African proverb that has made its way into the American psyche. One-time presidential candidate and former Secretary of State (who shall remain nameless here) touted this phrase at one time. Perhaps it was her way of working to bring people together, at least as much as it would benefit her.

At its root, I understand the philosophy behind it. Raising a child or children is a complicated and expensive task. A child is involved with friends, family, teachers and educators of all types and persuasions, coaches, and, in this day and age, constantly bombarded with images and influences from on-line sources. In my mind, this is what has become the issue. There are too many influences that are simply not controllable from a broad range of a 'committee', and today's society, much of it coming from the left-thinkers of the world, is working to lessen the influences of the parent. That's not to say there isn't success in today's society, but that success seems to be slipping away incrementally.

It occurs to me that this mode of thinking has negatively influenced family and children. When has a committee ever truly been successful at anything when a focused idea generally succeeds? Across the board, educational standards are slipping away, the juvenile crime rates are going up (if you believe the standard media reports) and parents have little to say about how their children are educated. What this shows is the globalization of America is well underway. Have you ever looked at where all these ideas of child rearing originate? Mostly from parts of the world where populations are unable to feed or fend for themselves. Countries racked in generational poverty and continually relying on handouts from the industrialized nations, primarily the United States. And when these ideas have completely infiltrated this country, where will they turn when the money runs out, because it will.

Much like those nations whom the left touts, the village of raising a child has failed. Parents need to become the guardian and angel of death to those who interfere with their parenting. That's not to say that all parents are good parents, no more than all politicians are good politicians, or teachers, or engineers, et al. It's obvious when parenting becomes a village requirement and the lazy parents who rely on others to do the work for them. These in general become the problem children...because they relied on the village and the village has failed.