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Agreed. That Vancouver, WA $250K home with $1,200/year taxes is a thing of the long gone past. Try $750K and $6,000-$9,000+ in property taxes. And it will be far less house as well, maybe recent construction but in the sub 2000sq/ft range on a tiny lot. WA has discovered that by choking development with too much red tape as the people pour in, evaluations and property tax intakes soar, without really doing anything else. Crime and homeless run rampant, roads and healthcare are rated in the bottom 5 of the 50 states, badly needed jobs like doctors, nurses, pharmacists, mechanics, even the cushy gov't jobs go unfilled because there is nowhere affordable for them to live. It's creating one of the worst "empty middle" (no middle class) states in the country.
I know Seattle is a mess. But SW WA roads were incredible. Construction projects got finished in a season and they were working day and night. Here in OH there are literally construction projects still going on that were started when we lived here before >10 years ago and the "construction zones" are usually empty of workers any time you go through them. 75 and 70 are just constant construction. Not to mention all the potholes and such you get because of the freeze cycle here that you don't get in WA where below freezing temps were a rarity.
And yes you can't get new construction for $250k there anymore. But you can't here either. You can get new construction in Vancouver, WA in the low $400s though which is what our current house is also worth...so it would come down to the higher property tax rate and income taxes in OH. Again. The increasing mortgage rates now vs the falling ones when we moved there do present a wrinkle. But we have good equity to address that.
I know Seattle is a mess. But SW WA roads were incredible. Construction projects got finished in a season and they were working day and night. Here in OH there are literally construction projects still going on that were started when we lived here before >10 years ago and the "construction zones" are usually empty of workers any time you go through them. 75 and 70 are just constant construction. Not to mention all the potholes and such you get because of the freeze cycle here that you don't get in WA where below freezing temps were a rarity.
And yes you can't get new construction for $250k there anymore. But you can't here either. You can get new construction in Vancouver, WA in the low $400s though which is what our current house is also worth...so it would come down to the higher property tax rate and income taxes in OH. Again.
I'm past done caring if the entire nation moves here. Just beware it's really gone to ****, from what it was.
It will depend upon who's article you are reading, but a recent article from "Money" (I think it was), had WA in the 40's for roads, healthcare, and cost of living. I'm right in the middle of the healthcare mess, over a year out past my brain bleed and SCLS from the vaccine and still don't see neurology for a first full assessment on the damage until the end of August. I'd say if you've got the $$$ for WA, healthcare availability is the next biggest hurdle.
FWIW some neighbors of mine that I would say were barely clinging to the middle class life moved to OH, bought a small house with cash, got jobs equal/better than they had in WA(which surprised them-they thought they'd be getting $10/hour with the cost of living so much less), both boys now in college, having a much better life. Other than the beauty/fishing in Puget Sound, they don't miss anything else about WA.
States with large tourism industries have a lot more options with collecting revenue. Check out their hotel, restaurant and ticket taxes/fees. Tourists don't have many options with avoiding them so they are just accepted as a cost of vacations.
FWIW some neighbors of mine that I would say were barely clinging to the middle class life moved to OH, bought a small house with cash, got jobs equal/better than they had in WA(which surprised them-they thought they'd be getting $10/hour with the cost of living so much less), both boys now in college, having a much better life. Other than the beauty/fishing in Puget Sound, they don't miss anything else about WA.
There have been examples of this from people online. If your FT job isn't in tech, mgmt, teaching or healthcare, a good part of the Midwest will offer the same pay, if not more than the west coast outside of maybe the Bay Area. Washington state also has a PFML AND a long term care tax on your paycheck so this whole "no income tax" isn't telling the whole story.
The KS example on tax cutting may be illustrative:
Quote:
As an elected Republican and a former House Majority Leader, my message to my counterparts in North Carolina is simple: Do not expect that simply cutting taxes will magically produce economic prosperity. It did not happen in Kansas and it will not happen for you.
Things are never so simple. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” applies to economics just as well as it applies to physics.
I urge you to remember that government, at its core, is a service industry. If desperate budget cuts compromise the core missions of state departments and agencies, then citizens and businesses will feel the effects. There is nothing responsible about creating a structural imbalance between state revenues and budgets. There is nothing truly conservative about tax cuts which cripple state governmental services.
After massive tax cuts and a requirement of a balanced budget, state government became much less effective and almost ground to a halt. Businesses gained from the tax cuts but worried because the workers still had a significant tax burden.
After massive tax cuts and a requirement of a balanced budget, state government became much less effective and almost ground to a halt. Businesses gained from the tax cuts but worried because the workers still had a significant tax burden.
Government is a service "industry" when it wants more money? Pff. Nonsense. Spend less, become more efficient or go bankrupt. Like every other industry on the face of this planet.
Government is a service "industry" when it wants more money? Pff. Nonsense. Spend less, become more efficient or go bankrupt. Like every other industry on the face of this planet.
Did you read the Republican's essay? It makes a lot of sense. This was his empirical evidence:
Quote:
What was the plan to pay for the tax cuts? The pitch was the cuts would pay for themselves, but they failed to account for the negative effect governmental downsizing might produce. Back in 2012, the Kansas state budget was healthy but austere as we emerged from the great recession of 2008. A significant budget surplus was on hand to cushion against declining revenues as we waited for the “shot of adrenaline” to kick in. How did it go? Revenues dropped precipitously, down $700 million in the first year, an amount equal to 10% of the general fund. The budget surplus was soon consumed by the structural imbalance between revenues and expenditures.
We tried to cut expenditures thoughtfully as we rapidly lost revenue. Even though Kansas had a conservative governor, and the appropriations process was controlled by strong fiscal hawks, budget cuts to offset the drop in revenues could not be easily identified.
Eventually the frantic search for solutions led to difficult policy choices. Budget cuts were performed with a meat cleaver instead of a scalpel.
Don't get bogged down on the terminology. You know he meant that the tax cuts had to be dealt with and did not occur in a vacuum.
Spend less. Period. If he can't figure out how to do that, I'll personally go to his office and accept his resignation.
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