“Taxation is Slavery”. It’s the old Big-L Libertarian saw.
And, as Tracy at Anti-Strib notes, it’s also on the brink of being a literal thing:
Audrey Davison lives alone, gets a $620 Social Security check each month and worries about the sharply rising taxes on her four-bedroom house. Davison, 76, raised her family there and after 43 years, she really doesn’t want to leave Greenburgh.
Greenburgh doesn’t want her to leave, either.
The town is pushing a program that would let seniors work part-time, for $7 an hour, to help pay off some of their property taxes.
Davison, who suffers from arthritis and sciatica and needs a walker to get around on her bad days, said she pays about $12,000 a year in property taxes – perhaps $2,000 to the town – and has already taken out a reverse mortgage to pay her bills.
And if years of working at $7 an hour doesn’t work, the city can still auction off the property! Everyone wins!
Except the taxpaying senior, but hey, why start caring about taxpayers now?
Eberly:
This is liberal “thinking” at it’s finest. There is no mention anywhere of lowering taxes or even freezing them for retirees. No, liberals want to keep raising taxes and then expect you to work longer to pay for their government programs.
The modern day slave is subservient to the liberal welfare state run amok.
Freedom is “happiness to pay for a better Minnesota Greenburgh, Winston”.
Westchester real estate taxes do seem high (3rd highest in the nation, in fact). It’s a suburb of NYC.
What kind of house do you have to own in Westchester to pay $12,000/yr in property taxes? The asking house for this modest home is $569k: http://www.miriambernstein.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?lstPages=1&HomeId=641298
According to the realtor’s blog, taxes are $11,700 http://www.westchesterrealestateblog.com/2007/12/4-capt-honeyw-1.html
Cripes, that’s roughly the same size and layout as our house, but nearly 3X the cost.
And people want to live out there…..why? Do they have some strange allergy that compels them to throw away money? gah.
I shouldn’t have to mention Ms. Davison is 76, so she may have lived there for 50 plus years. Are we going to tell old people to leave the good parts of town because their 50 years of hard work made the place too desirable thus driving up prices?
If Ms. Davison had just sold some crack, her house would be worth a lot less. Great way to punish the good people and reward the criminals.