Do You Think Arizona will ever Get Rid of State Income Tax? (Phoenix: how much, house prices)

[Clips222]

Originally Posted by jamies

Alright! Let's hear it for crazy right wing "policies" like evicting illegal aliens and protecting our borders from drug smuggling. And for "constitutional carry" of firearms. Oh and that crazy policy of sticking criminals in tent jail.

Maybe they could repeal the income tax and replace it with a levy on affluent people moving from Commiefornia. There's a good leftist policy, redistribution of wealth!

Or better yet, maybe we could just SELL Tucson and the Phoenix valley to CA, since they are really just suburbs of LA now anyway. We'll throw John McCain, Gabby Gifford and her husband Mark the liar in for free!

Sounds like a winner to me...

(although-Tucson=little Mexico)

[Clips222]

Originally Posted by Prickly Pear

We need to stop letting snowbirds vote and then see what happens. Let's enforce more strict voting laws regarding in-state residence. Make us submit some form of proof that we live here April through September like Alaska does. Let's start taxing snowbirds and then we can talk about getting rid of income tax. I'd rather see a much more stable population here anyway. I'm sick of being talked over politically by people who don't even have ties here. Let's tax tourism and semi-permanent populations. We have a wonder of the world so it shouldn't be that difficult.

I don't agree with getting rid of state income tax. You want our weather but no income tax move to Nevada. If no income tax was so great Nevada would have been booming by now wouldn't it? But I do think our taxes would become more favorable if we started taxing the people who are exploiting us but not helping our city grow. These are snowbirds who swell our population for a quarter or third of the year but don't approve public transit, improving our infrastructure, all under the guise everything needs to be cheap until they die while us full-time residents who deal with the ever increasing traffic and infrastructure burden can't ever see an improving Phoenix due to old farts who don't commute in this city anymore and only vote in their interests until death and not have any interest in seeing a better Arizona. Just cheap sun that's all they care about.

We need taxes to improve some things so we can attract the populations people are talking about but the snowbirds want entirely something else. So we are going to deal with more snowbirds until people wake up.

Illogical. Start taxing 'snowbirds' and your jobs go away, because so does the INDUSTRY who serves them. Typical liberal logic though, so not surprised by it.

Curious if you were born in AZ, or if you're a part of the 'liberal colonization' of a historical red state?

[man4857]

Originally Posted by Clips222

Can you name me ONE 'left wing' run city/state that IS prospering, where *MIDDLE CLASS* isn't paying through the nose?

I'll await your reply...

Do you know how the free market works? Make something desirable and demand will drive up prices. I can easily tell you that reality does not work the way you want where a city is prospering with low COL. Prosperous city + low COL are mutually exclusive sorry to say. Thank the free market for that.

You wonder why all large expensive cities/states are liberal? Simple answer: government intervention in the free market. You also wonder why all large expensive cities/states contain plenty of high paying jobs?

Why do you want to be "just mediocre" is the question? Isn't the whole point of a capitalistic society is to support and encourage innovation? Don't be complaining about so many service sector low paying "flipping burger" jobs then if that's what you want.

[Clips222]

Right. You made my point. Not sure you intended to. Because CA is so desireable....not.

[orca17]

Originally Posted by cjseliga

There was an article in The Daily Star yesterday, that talked about the Arizona State Senate reviewing all of the sales-tax exemptions in the state:

Bill to review Arizona sales-tax exemptions advances to Senate

State lawmakers took the first steps Wednesday to potentially eliminating exemptions from sales taxes that cost the state more than $12 billion a year. The exemptions include such things as the sale of food for home consumption, hospital services, auto repair, legal and doctors’ services, the sale of lottery tickets and prescription drugs. SB 1144 does not cut any of the hundreds of tax breaks that have been shepherded through the Legislature, many decades ago, often at the behest of special interest lobbyists. Instead it requires each of these exemptions be regularly reviewed to see which still make sense.

Looks like there might be new sales-taxes that could happen in the future.

I don't understand taxing the sale of lottery tickets, which are supposed to be direct sources of revenue. It could also get touchy taxing things that are life necessities, like food, medical care and prescription drugs. That could put an undue burden on those on fixed incomes.

[cjseliga]

Originally Posted by orca17

I don't understand taxing the sale of lottery tickets, which are supposed to be direct sources of revenue. It could also get touchy taxing things that are life necessities, like food, medical care and prescription drugs. That could put an undue burden on those on fixed incomes.

Definitely don't move to North Carolina, they have a 2% tax on most groceries!

[man4857]

Originally Posted by Clips222

Right. You made my point. Not sure you intended to. Because CA is so desireable....not.

Somehow because it's not desirable that gives you expensive CA real estate?

You make no sense. Prices only go up if a lot of people want something. And people want something that is desirable.

[Clips222]

Originally Posted by man4857

Somehow because it's not desirable that gives you expensive CA real estate?

You make no sense. Prices only go up if a lot of people want something. And people want something that is desirable.

And prices go up because of ignorant state policies too. Trust me, for millions of people, CA is NOT desireable, neither economically, socially, or politically. The ONLY reason people stay there is because of a job, or they have some delusion that eventually it will get better. People who believe CA is better that any other state are the ones who make no sense.

[JGMotorsport64]

Originally Posted by Clips222

And prices go up because of ignorant state policies too. Trust me, for millions of people, CA is NOT desireable, neither economically, socially, or politically. The ONLY reason people stay there is because of a job, or they have some delusion that eventually it will get better. People who believe CA is better that any other state are the ones who make no sense.

But CA is expensive because of the demand. It can do what it wants because people will always want to live there.

[Prickly Pear]

Originally Posted by Clips222

Illogical. Start taxing 'snowbirds' and your jobs go away, because so does the INDUSTRY who serves them. Typical liberal logic though, so not surprised by it.

Curious if you were born in AZ, or if you're a part of the 'liberal colonization' of a historical red state?

My family has been in Arizona since before the World Wars. I am a born and raised Arizonan, one of the few Arizonans with actual roots in the area, and even one of the many fewer with long-term roots. So long-term that I don't have family back East like most other people do. All of my family lives in the Phoenix metro, no where else, not even other parts of the state.

And I'm sick of people who have no investments in Arizona other than drying up our resources having more power than me and other full-time residents. Arizonans' real interests are being diluted by people who want to keep things cheap and continue to regress our state to massive, unsustainable sprawl and no ways to keep anything sustainable. Snowbirds do NOT bring jobs other than CHEAP AND USELESS MINIMUM WAGE JOBS that do not provide ANYTHING for our economy. You think they are paying for business analysts and tech companies?

Snowbirds share and create a massive burden with our already existing healthcare, they do not create any more healthcare jobs since we have been in a doctor shortage for so long now. Arizona, and every other state for that matter, has stretched healthcare resources that should be increased drastically to fit needs. Do you think collecting seniors, who need the most healthcare out of any demographic in this country, in certain areas does anything to reduce that burden? Or do you think collecting high-risk people who need the most insurance that cause insurance companies to lose money (which is why insurance companies can't turn down pre-existing conditions) do not in anyway impact our costs of healthcare to accommodate their extra few years of life? And increase wait times since they are more likely to go to the hospital, etc.? Significant amounts of unhealthy people will raise state-wide premiums. Our healthcare is further burdened by them, one of the reasons why Arizona saw the BIGGEST PERCENTAGE INCREASE of healthcare premium costs in 2016. So I don't want to hear the nonsense that they provide healthcare jobs when they raise our premiums.

They raise housing costs while doing nothing to make sure that housing cost is sustainably grown in accordance to local wages. These homes are artificially being raised by people who leave it vacant for half the year or more even and are bought with out-of-state wages which are almost always higher than our own wages. The same nonsense happens in California and New York too, people who don't care about the area but pocket their money in real estate and leave it empty. Do I need to explain why the housing bubble was EXTRA bad in Phoenix compared to elsewhere?

Again, you want no State Income Tax? Move to Nevada. There you go. Las Vegas is almost IDENTICAL to Phoenix, its easily the closest city to Phoenix albeit smaller. Reno is similar to parts in upstate Arizona too. In fact Vegas gets even less rain, so it has even more sunshine that old people love so much.

Stop bringing this nonsense here. Plenty of other more "I want to use state services like roads and prisons but not pay for it" states to move to if that's your thing. Like Wyoming.

By the way I wouldn't care about any of this if full-time Arizonans actually had a bit more voting power than transient populations. I also wouldn't care about any of that if we had socialized healthcare, and laws to restrict housing to foreigners and investors. We see more than half a million snowbirds every year, and they come during voting season, do you really think that they don't influence our politics?

But why am I wasting my breath explaining this to someone who doesn't even live in Arizona and doesn't understand our own specific and unique problems. Florida, even though it also shares a large snowbird population, is not like Arizona, period. We have different laws, industries, and even culture and we should be treating them as different.