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Pretty political rant for a mod, wouldn’t you say?
In keeping with the tradition that anything TABOR is bad- all we need is just a "wee bit more" taxation and all will be fine.
Unfortunately all of those "little tax increases" start to add up to a big chuck of change. And people on fixed incomes (or lower incomes) have the hardest time paying for them.
In keeping with the tradition that anything TABOR is bad- all we need is just a "wee bit more" taxation and all will be fine.
Unfortunately all of those "little tax increases" start to add up to a big chuck of change. And people on fixed incomes (or lower incomes) have the hardest time paying for them.
We are supposed to be a democracy, one for all, all for one. We're all in this together and we all need to grow up as citizens and live our private and public lives within the 'one for all' envelope. We may not like some of our fellow Americans but we must not let outside or unhealthy forces influence us to burn it all down which is exactly what TABOR is about, destroying government.
Beware those voices that "all taxes are a waste" as that's just another aspect of divide and conquer politics where someone with an agenda wants to drive a wedge between us and our governments. Our enemies can't destroy us from outside so they seek to destroy us on the inside by having us weaken our own government and having us at each other's throats.
Government in Colorado has to play numerous games to fund what the state needs, it's insanity. We elect people to make tough decisions and then we take away the means ($$$) to carry out the decisions on roads, schools, public health, etc. It's NUTS. Everyone whines about taxes, it's a national pastime of sorts -- and it's pointless -- it costs a lot of money to be a world power. All we can do is suck it up, judge elected leaders on results of how they spend our money, boot out the ones who let us down and re-elect those who succeed on our behalf. We can't take a meat axe to taxes, beforehand, and expect acceptable outcomes from any elected leader.
Infrastructure is destiny. Let that sink in. Why is China building infrastructure via its Belt and Road Initiative across and within 152 nations -- it's to assure China's economic mastery of Asia and the world -- all roads will lead to China. That's why China paid to widen the Panama Canal, so THEIR massive ships could reach OUR east coast ports at lowest possible cost to land their cargo containers on OUR shores. Military power is only possible for nations with economic power and China intends to be the world's premier economic power; the military power will follow accordingly.
Placing national infrastructure in the hands of foreigners is blasphemy. OUR highways are OUR infrastructure and we have to build it OURselves and manage OUR assets OURselves. There is no free lunch -- we have to pay OUR bills accordingly. Current gimmicks with toll roads to be built by others is just another end run around TABOR. If you think E-470 is expensive now just go ahead with this silly scheme and watch your future travel expenses mushroom, with little or no accountability. But the real cost is hard to understand, it's the loss of our autonomy and our ability to run our own nation. We have to be the masters of our own destiny.
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Pretty political rant for a mod, wouldn’t you say?
Who cares. He's right, and we need to stop pussyfooting around these topics because at the end of the day, my generation and the generations after us are going to pay for this long after most of these people are dead.
We are supposed to be a democracy, one for all, all for one. We're all in this together and we all need to grow up as citizens and live our private and public lives within the 'one for all' envelope. We may not like some of our fellow Americans but we must not let outside or unhealthy forces influence us to burn it all down which is exactly what TABOR is about, destroying government.
Beware those voices that "all taxes are a waste" as that's just another aspect of divide and conquer politics where someone with an agenda wants to drive a wedge between us and our governments. Our enemies can't destroy us from outside so they seek to destroy us on the inside by having us weaken our own government and having us at each other's throats.
Government in Colorado has to play numerous games to fund what the state needs, it's insanity. We elect people to make tough decisions and then we take away the means ($$$) to carry out the decisions on roads, schools, public health, etc. It's NUTS. Everyone whines about taxes, it's a national pastime of sorts -- and it's pointless -- it costs a lot of money to be a world power. All we can do is suck it up, judge elected leaders on results of how they spend our money, boot out the ones who let us down and re-elect those who succeed on our behalf. We can't take a meat axe to taxes, beforehand, and expect acceptable outcomes from any elected leader.
Infrastructure is destiny. Let that sink in. Why is China building infrastructure via its Belt and Road Initiative across and within 152 nations -- it's to assure China's economic mastery of Asia and the world -- all roads will lead to China. That's why China paid to widen the Panama Canal, so THEIR massive ships could reach OUR east coast ports at lowest possible cost to land their cargo containers on OUR shores. Military power is only possible for nations with economic power and China intends to be the world's premier economic power; the military power will follow accordingly.
Placing national infrastructure in the hands of foreigners is blasphemy. OUR highways are OUR infrastructure and we have to build it OURselves and manage OUR assets OURselves. There is no free lunch -- we have to pay OUR bills accordingly. Current gimmicks with toll roads to be built by others is just another end run around TABOR. If you think E-470 is expensive now just go ahead with this silly scheme and watch your future travel expenses mushroom, with little or no accountability. But the real cost is hard to understand, it's the loss of our autonomy and our ability to run our own nation. We have to be the masters of our own destiny.
Not a good deal for the users? The financing - bonds - got it built. Likely without that, there is no road. I see thousands of users every day on that road. If they didn’t want to use it, there are alternatives.
As for your argument of CDOT bonds being below inflation, I suggest you brush up on muni bonds, their advantages and the open markets in which they are sold. Price, thus yield, are market determined.
Those thousands of users are way below the projections that underpinned the original financing. I believe that E470 was projected to have about 100K vehicles a day accessing the tollway by the present and it's at barely half that. The low interest rate environment of the past decade has been a godsend in allowing E470 to refinance so much of it debt load and it appears that E470 will be generating excess cash flow to the tune of at least $5B through 2040.
But how much of that flows back to the surrounding communities versus being locked up the by the E470 Authority?
In keeping with the tradition that anything TABOR is bad- all we need is just a "wee bit more" taxation and all will be fine.
Unfortunately all of those "little tax increases" start to add up to a big chuck of change. And people on fixed incomes (or lower incomes) have the hardest time paying for them.
Depends on if the tax is regressive (consumption based, like sales taxes), flat (constant rate for all taxpayers), or progressive (tax brackets or a sliding rate scale dependent on income).
The gas tax that pays for Colorado highways has been at a constant $0.22/gallon since 1991. Inflation means that $0.22 in 1991 had the buying power of $0.41 in today's dollars. The number of gallons taxed in Colorado in 1991 was 1.67 billion gallons, now it's 3 billion. Colorado's population was 3.56 million in 1993, 5.70 million now. That means that, on a per capita basis, road funding from gas taxes decreased 42.7%. It's why you see all the nickel and diming at car registration, which makes up a fraction of the gap.
TABOR and the Gallagher Amendment have kept the property taxes that fund schools and local roads constant for parts of the state that are seeing high appreciation in property value (i.e. the Front Range and ski towns), but it's actually ratcheting down the tax rate in parts of the state that aren't appreciating as fast, making them more dependent on state funding.
In 1991, Colorado's income tax was 5% after federal taxes (which have decreased across all brackets since 1991). It's 4.63% now.
So we have decreasing transportation taxes, decreasing or constant property taxes, decreasing income taxes, foreign buyouts of prohibitively expensive infrastructure, crumbling infrastructure, the highest wealth disparity in American history, yet upper middle class Boomers who can't do basic math are whining about literal nickels and dimes.
The Reaganomics experiment is failing miserably.
Last edited by Westerner92; 11-06-2019 at 10:18 AM..
In keeping with the tradition that anything TABOR is bad- all we need is just a "wee bit more" taxation and all will be fine.
Unfortunately all of those "little tax increases" start to add up to a big chuck of change. And people on fixed incomes (or lower incomes) have the hardest time paying for them.
Well, since CC went down in flames, selling to a foreign company is now the clear best option.
We are supposed to be a democracy, one for all, all for one. We're all in this together and we all need to grow up as citizens and live our private and public lives within the 'one for all' envelope. We may not like some of our fellow Americans but we must not let outside or unhealthy forces influence us to burn it all down which is exactly what TABOR is about, destroying government.
Beware those voices that "all taxes are a waste" as that's just another aspect of divide and conquer politics where someone with an agenda wants to drive a wedge between us and our governments. Our enemies can't destroy us from outside so they seek to destroy us on the inside by having us weaken our own government and having us at each other's throats.
Government in Colorado has to play numerous games to fund what the state needs, it's insanity. We elect people to make tough decisions and then we take away the means ($$$) to carry out the decisions on roads, schools, public health, etc. It's NUTS. Everyone whines about taxes, it's a national pastime of sorts -- and it's pointless -- it costs a lot of money to be a world power. All we can do is suck it up, judge elected leaders on results of how they spend our money, boot out the ones who let us down and re-elect those who succeed on our behalf. We can't take a meat axe to taxes, beforehand, and expect acceptable outcomes from any elected leader.
Infrastructure is destiny. Let that sink in. Why is China building infrastructure via its Belt and Road Initiative across and within 152 nations -- it's to assure China's economic mastery of Asia and the world -- all roads will lead to China. That's why China paid to widen the Panama Canal, so THEIR massive ships could reach OUR east coast ports at lowest possible cost to land their cargo containers on OUR shores. Military power is only possible for nations with economic power and China intends to be the world's premier economic power; the military power will follow accordingly.
Placing national infrastructure in the hands of foreigners is blasphemy. OUR highways are OUR infrastructure and we have to build it OURselves and manage OUR assets OURselves. There is no free lunch -- we have to pay OUR bills accordingly. Current gimmicks with toll roads to be built by others is just another end run around TABOR. If you think E-470 is expensive now just go ahead with this silly scheme and watch your future travel expenses mushroom, with little or no accountability. But the real cost is hard to understand, it's the loss of our autonomy and our ability to run our own nation. We have to be the masters of our own destiny.
Nice speech, but doesn't really mesh with reality. Foreigners can try to take up these cash streams all they want, that's what they really are. If bonds on a road foreclose, what are they going to do? Rip up the road and ship it back to their home countries? I think there is a lot of pride for sure in saying these things are ours, but the reality is like our currency those overseas investors and their backers are basically voting for us and our economy when they do something like this. Same when the dollar gets strong, its overseas interests making a bold statement with real assets saying I'm a believer in the US economy and its future.
I agree TABOR is a massive hassle and should be reformed. If you really want to allow "the people" to opine on taxes and all this other stuff, why have a legislature? What are they representing when all the hard decisions have to go up for a vote? There's no political capital to reverse it, but surely there can be adjustments. When the question of should people in Colorado be able to have sports betting becomes yes or no on some long winded statement about raising taxes and funding water projects you know there are big issues to deal with in this TABOR world we live in. That was so far from a request to raise general taxes it was ridiculous, but the thing almost failed even though if you asked people hey should it be legal to bet on the Broncos it would have passed 70/30.
Not just “foreigners”, but dirty, poutine-eating Canucks.
Next, they will be stealing jobs from ‘Muricans.
Think about it; their head of government has French surname.
Time to stand up to the maple syrup cartel.
And, the head of state is a queen.
Even worse; they bake their bagels.
Last edited by davebarnes; 11-06-2019 at 09:57 PM..
In keeping with the tradition that anything TABOR is bad- all we need is just a "wee bit more" taxation and all will be fine.
Unfortunately all of those "little tax increases" start to add up to a big chuck of change. And people on fixed incomes (or lower incomes) have the hardest time paying for them.
Progressive Marginal Tax Rates.
Solved.
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