Why Does NJ have the highest Taxes in the Nation? (time, about)
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There are too many towns and each town has there own fire , police , and school system. If we merged the towns back to the original setup Property taxes would fall by 3-4k in some areas...
I know the school districts in TExas are regional districts in order to combine costs. Every town in NJ has a superintendent making over 150k, whether they are managing 30 schools in a big city like Jersey City or only 4 in a smaller town.
But it's not like they start out at that rate. That's after they've been working 20 plus years or so. So, basically, it's on par with someone who works for a big corporation, if not LESS than a corporate employee.
It does take many years to reach that level.Pick a town and go on their Board of Education website. You will see what a starting teacher makes. I hate it when people blame the teachers because I'm a teacher and if I was making so much, then why am I having a difficult time making ends meet in NJ?
I've been teaching 9 years and have a master's degree. I want to tell you that after all my deductions, I make a whopping $1400 every two weeks. Hold on to your hats because I know it's a fortune isn't it? You tell me how difficult it is to live on $2800 a month in NJ. You can forget about me every buying a house. I'm hanging on by a thread.
It's no wonder I'm planning to move out here as soon as I can.
There's negative effect if NJ lowers their taxes by say 10% All of a sudden, NYers in droves will be moving across the river as we saw in the late 90s when NY taxes were much higher than NJ taxes.
Real estate value and rent will skyrocket. Those who couldn't afford to live in NJ and are holed up in PA and Delaware suddenly would move back.
Crime will go up in the short term. And later go down after soaring real estate values block poor people away.
The end result maybe similar to what we have today. A declining middle class and businesses leaving the state as a result of higher cost of living and doing business.
Legal corruption, corruption, inefficiency, incompetence and a satisfied electorate are the reasons for high taxes in Nj and elsewhere. Democratic political quid pro quo with teachers and other unions sure help to make taxpayer cash disappear.
Dedicated taxes are a fantasy, a lie if you wish, as it ends up gone, gone, gone theoretically in the general fund.
You'd think with such a dense population there would be money overflowing the coffers add to that a corridor state and cash collected by the toll roads.
Imagine Zuckerberg gives 100 mill$$$ to Newark school system. Where did that money go?
The public spending of txpayer money should be posted line by line live on-line with higher level summarized data for quick review.
The 'red state vs blue state' paradigm is a lazy one, formulated only on the basis of PRESIDENTIAL elections, without consideration for any other elected office. For instance, what many New Jerseyans consider to be 'deep red' Mississippi's state senate is 28-24 Republican, hardly a deep red bastion. New Mexico votes heavily Democratic in almost every state level election, etc. In contrast, presidentially, I would suppose those 'deep red' counties, Morris, Somerset and Hunterdon, are a bunch of slackers, where the quality of life is lacking, because, after all, in presidential elections, these counties all tilt heavy 'red'.
That's where this argument is essentially broken. Maryland is annually a great benefactor in this dollars received vs given argument. As Soug argues, rightly: To be fair, many of the "red states" have a lot more military bases, Indian reservations, national parks, and other federal holdings than the "blue states."
This is the correct answer, and it's a rather uncomplicated one. Maryland has a ton of federal holdings, and federal employees working in places such as the USGS, the Census, Andrews AFB, etc, and the salaries these employees draw are considered to be part of those 'subsidies.'
New Jersey has the highest % of privately owned land in the country, with Connecticut. The federal presence in both states is relatively low, save for the 'mega-base' of Fort Dix/McGuire/Lakehurst NAES.
Nexis is also right. He argues for consolidation and regionalization. New Jersey, more specifically Northern New Jersey, is the only environment I have ever seen where every town has a library. They don't come free. I am not arguing against their presence, however, one must consider that these services do not come for free.
so....NJ has a lot of privately owned land, and i'm guessing not a lot of federal employees compared to those other states, and we're supposed to just brush this aside and not give credit to NJ for not having the military welfare state presence here? i don't think it makes the argument broken, you just choose to exempt one type of federal spending from criticism. the fact of the matter is, we send our tax dollars to the Fed Gov, and we're not "rewarded" with massive military complexes and local jobs like those other states are.
so, as originally stated....we don't see as much benefit from the tax dollars we pay federally, so therefore, we must use local tax dollars whereas others may not have to. we want to spur construction, we might have to kick out an incentive to a company to come develop a property. we don't have a congressman in D.C. arguing for a nice upgrade to a military base in our state to create construction jobs....
Legal corruption, corruption, inefficiency, incompetence and a satisfied electorate are the reasons for high taxes in Nj and elsewhere. Democratic political quid pro quo with teachers and other unions sure help to make taxpayer cash disappear.
Dedicated taxes are a fantasy, a lie if you wish, as it ends up gone, gone, gone theoretically in the general fund.
You'd think with such a dense population there would be money overflowing the coffers add to that a corridor state and cash collected by the toll roads.
Imagine Zuckerberg gives 100 mill$$$ to Newark school system. Where did that money go?
The public spending of txpayer money should be posted line by line live on-line with higher level summarized data for quick review.
i'd love for more transparancy and access to the spending online. but i don't think people will find it to be as negative a picture as you paint. sure, those things exist, but seriously, what do people expect a teacher to make? my sister just started a new job in southern DE as a high school teacher and the salary is $44,000/yr for a low-experienced teacher. so....what should a teacher in NJ be paid for that same exact position?
i'd love for more transparancy and access to the spending online. but i don't think people will find it to be as negative a picture as you paint. sure, those things exist, but seriously, what do people expect a teacher to make? my sister just started a new job in southern DE as a high school teacher and the salary is $44,000/yr for a low-experienced teacher. so....what should a teacher in NJ be paid for that same exact position?
44K in South Delaware? She probably owns her own house on the beach by now!
"i'd love for more transparancy and access to the spending online. but i don't think people will find it to be as negative a picture as you paint. sure, those things exist, but seriously, what do people expect a teacher to make? my sister just started a new job in southern DE as a high school teacher and the salary is $44,000/yr for a low-experienced teacher. so....what should a teacher in NJ be paid for that same exact position?"
Apparently NJ's rep is indeed as bad or worse than I portrayed. It is constantly a topic of discussion and just listen to the news. They needed a bus to transport all the thieves in one sting. Corruption both leagalized and illegal are the basis for NJ's rep and tax rate. You had the Passaic water authority guy retiring with millions in pension...probably legal but would not pass the red face test. These are not isolated or tolerable situations.
To gloss over the problems NJ faces does nothing to help and enables the status quo of historic and legendary political shenanigans. Newark is a perfect examp[le with generations of pols pretending to help the city and shame the taxpayer for not wanting to waste more money. nothing has changed. nothing has changed except the monthly murder rate has been unbroken for 40 years and it is increasing in length and incidents.
The unions treat teachers as if they were automatons in that the only value placed on teacher, the only differentiation of value is time spent on the job. Tenure cannot co-exist with merit performance, that is why tenure is supported by the unions. Teachers are abused by their union, they deserve better, however, it is beyond logic to pay a poor performing teacher the same as a better performer. There in lies the rub, the bastion of edu is telling us they are unable to some up with a system to evaluate teacher performance. CA teacher of the year let go because she was not on the job longer than a poor performing teacher. The teachers need to revolt and dump the pay for work uions. they deserve better but only if they perform. Forgotten in all this are the children, otherwise known as our future and the states future. You feel comfortable with the way institutional edu is run in NJ.
On top of that the teachers have to pay tribute in order to keep their jobs and watch 7 million dollars of their dues go to unsuccessfully fight CC. Millions$ that would otherwise be in teachers' pockets.
Delaware and Nj have differnt economic systems and 44k in DE cannot be compared to 44k in NJ. Again, it is the teachers union that fails to distinguish good teachers from bad and thus insults the good teachers financially.
Unions love to creativley present low salaries for dramatic affect. Depends on what grades and teaching specialties you include. This is from Teachers salary info.com
"Average Teacher Salary in New Jersey
New Jersey teacher salaries have remained significantly higher than the national average of $49,720 in 2009 and $48,353 in 2008. The average teacher salary in New Jersey was $61,830 in 2009 and $61,185 in 2008. In 2007, New Jersey teachers were paid an average of $58,823 annually. Teaching salaries in New Jersey consistently rank high against other state salaries. Compared to the other 49 states, the average teacher salary in New Jersey ranked fourth in the nation in 2007 and 2008, before falling to fifth in 2009. Consistent but steady growth in teaching salaries in New Jersey may explain the decline in national rank, but promise continued growth. The percent change in teacher salaries New Jersey grew 1.05% from 2007-2008 and 4.01% from 2008-2009, resulting in a 5.11% growth over two years. The past growth in the typical teacher salary in New Jersey can be seen in the following New Jersey teacher salary schedule: Average SalaryPercent ChangeRank2009Rank2008Rank20072008 to 20092007 to 20082007 to 2009New Jersey5$61,830.004$61,185.004$58,823.331.05%4.01%5.11%Read our article on becoming a teacher in New Jersey if you are interested in teaching in New Jersey."
Read the turnover rate for teachers the 1st year was around 61%. Could that be frustration with the edu heirarchy, social justice rules and rules that defy logic.
NJ colleges are in the business of marketing teaching degrees and the union and Dem shills ensure there are enough school districts and positions to keep the scam alive. Why worry about how to pay for edu when the focus should be why edu is eating up so much taxpayer cash and college tuituion is in orbit.
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