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(1) I'm not sure what 'services' I am getting for my tax dollars, I don't have a car and don't drive and don't use stuff like state and national parks. I do know that by my standards, most government worker are drastically overcompensated. (I once worked as a janitor alongside union government janitors...I was paid slightly above minimum wage with no benefits while the union janitors got 3x my wage plus an equivalent 2x my wage in benefits - plus I was assigned the harder work (floor care, cleaning restrooms) while they did light work (emptying trash cans from offices and napping/reading a lot).)
(2) I continued to flip burgers because it beat the pants off the alternative of NOT flipping burgers and thereby becoming homeless and hungry.
(3) I never suggested otherwise. The lowlifes with whom I worked at my first burger flipping job led me to decide very early that I never ever wanted to manage other burger flippers.
(4) Government certainly does keep people from buying guest houses - check your local zoning code. In my case I calculated what I could afford, but was unable to buy the guest house because government decided that I could not buy the guest house without also buying a larger house and twice as much land - zoning said the lot could not be legally split into two smaller lots with one house on each lot, and I couldn't afford to buy both houses and all the land.
(1) Ever heard of the Police department, Fire Department, City Library, You said you don't drive, Do you ever take the bus, train, or subway? Just because you don't use the roadways does not mean you are not putting money into them. I am thinking you may have attended public school, you pay taxes to allow others to go, and someone paid so you could go. Doesn't matter if you use something or not. You still have the State and National parks at your disposal. You are paying for them. I bet many additional services are available in your area. Ever had to go to the Hospital? If you don't have the insurance for that the Government pays the bill. Just another service that your tax dollars are providing.
(2) Flipping burgers was a choice you made. You could have made a choice to attend school and get a degree or learn a trade. Did you know that your Government will let you go to school and defer the cost untill you are making money? Do you know that grants are available for someone on a burger flippers income and you don't have to pay them back. Do you know that many people find other sources of money to fund their education?
(3) Once again that is a choice to move up or not.
(4) Did you consider finding a way to purchase the entire home, rent out the main house and stay in the guest home? Did you ever consider looking for a partner to do this? Maybe someone else only wanted the main home but could not afford that home. Maybe even the owner would have considered another arangement where you could both be on the mortgage. Sometimes you just have to be creative. If that does not work then you find another place to buy. If you can't afford another place then you realize that a burger flippers income is not the income for you.
I pay dramatic property tax that goes pretty much to the local schools. I attended my own local schools elsewhere many years ago, and assume that this is just paying it onward.
Of course we all pay for services that we don't use (or haven't yet used) or for things that we don't overly support or actually oppose. I am always surprised when someone claims they get nothing for their taxes when it is all around everyone.
(1) Ever heard of the Police department, Fire Department, City Library, You said you don't drive, Do you ever take the bus, train, or subway? Just because you don't use the roadways does not mean you are not putting money into them. I am thinking you may have attended public school, you pay taxes to allow others to go, and someone paid so you could go. Doesn't matter if you use something or not. You still have the State and National parks at your disposal. You are paying for them. I bet many additional services are available in your area. Ever had to go to the Hospital? If you don't have the insurance for that the Government pays the bill. Just another service that your tax dollars are providing.
(2) Flipping burgers was a choice you made. You could have made a choice to attend school and get a degree or learn a trade. Did you know that your Government will let you go to school and defer the cost untill you are making money? Do you know that grants are available for someone on a burger flippers income and you don't have to pay them back. Do you know that many people find other sources of money to fund their education?
(3) Once again that is a choice to move up or not.
(4) Did you consider finding a way to purchase the entire home, rent out the main house and stay in the guest home? Did you ever consider looking for a partner to do this? Maybe someone else only wanted the main home but could not afford that home. Maybe even the owner would have considered another arangement where you could both be on the mortgage. Sometimes you just have to be creative. If that does not work then you find another place to buy. If you can't afford another place then you realize that a burger flippers income is not the income for you.
(1) For police, fire, library I am effectively paying the same rate as everyone else in town as the property tax rate is uniform. You left out education, and I am getting soaked with education taxes. The school tax rate on my home is four times the rate on owner-occupied homes because I live in a rental. And no, I don't have any kids in school. For that matter, I attended Catholic parochial schools (had a 50% merit scholarship to the high school).
(2) I did attend college and got a degree, and graduated at the bottom of the Carter recession in a depressed Rust Belt economy. I got a liberal arts degree (with law school in mind) with a minor in comp sci (thought it just might come in handy for a lawyer, with little competition). By the time I graduated, law school was financially out of reach and the just-emerging PC rendered all my mainframe training obsolete. Two-thirds of new graduates were moving to other states to look for jobs as the local economy was in the tank.
(3) Yes, I did not want to be a burger flipper nor a manager of burger flippers. About 99.9% of burger flippers never advance to manage other burger flippers.
(4) I was unable to find a way to buy the entire property on my burger flipper income. Lenders have formulas and ratios and I had no way to make the ratios work on the entire property. And I was already looking at the low end of the price range (the whole property was $120K at a time when bottom of market was $100K). There wasn't enough downscaling potential to make it work.
I pay dramatic property tax that goes pretty much to the local schools. I attended my own local schools elsewhere many years ago, and assume that this is just paying it onward.
Of course we all pay for services that we don't use (or haven't yet used) or for things that we don't overly support or actually oppose. I am always surprised when someone claims they get nothing for their taxes when it is all around everyone.
Be grateful you don't live in a rental. I do, and there's an extra $1,500 property tax every year because it's a rental.
I pay dramatic property tax that goes pretty much to the local schools. I attended my own local schools elsewhere many years ago, and assume that this is just paying it onward.
Of course we all pay for services that we don't use (or haven't yet used) or for things that we don't overly support or actually oppose. I am always surprised when someone claims they get nothing for their taxes when it is all around everyone.
Yup. We don't have any children either, but I have no qualms about paying taxes that go towards our schools as that is part of the community we live in and it is essential for the future of it.
By the time I graduated, law school was financially out of reach and the just-emerging PC rendered all my mainframe training obsolete. Two-thirds of new graduates were moving to other states to look for jobs as the local economy was in the tank.
This sounds like nothing more than bullocks and excuses. A computer science education is based on fundamentals of software design in addition to machine specific architecture, when I majored in computer science in (starting in 1987) we still learned on mainframes using Pascal. If you graduated during the Carter recession mainframes were still by far the dominant platform that computer programmers were hired to work on, the slow emergence of Commodore 64s and IBM PCs in the early 80s had very little impact on the marketability of recent computer science graduates who learned on mainframes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freemkt
(3) Yes, I did not want to be a burger flipper nor a manager of burger flippers. About 99.9% of burger flippers never advance to manage other burger flippers.
I'd wager a much better percentage of the ones willing to make the sacrifices and effort needed to improve their skills do indeed go on to something better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by freemkt
(4) I was unable to find a way to buy the entire property on my burger flipper income.
Yup, for people with your income they make cheaper rentals and have things like roommates.
(1) For police, fire, library I am effectively paying the same rate as everyone else in town as the property tax rate is uniform. You left out education, and I am getting soaked with education taxes. The school tax rate on my home is four times the rate on owner-occupied homes because I live in a rental. And no, I don't have any kids in school. For that matter, I attended Catholic parochial schools (had a 50% merit scholarship to the high school).
(2) I did attend college and got a degree, and graduated at the bottom of the Carter recession in a depressed Rust Belt economy. I got a liberal arts degree (with law school in mind) with a minor in comp sci (thought it just might come in handy for a lawyer, with little competition). By the time I graduated, law school was financially out of reach and the just-emerging PC rendered all my mainframe training obsolete. Two-thirds of new graduates were moving to other states to look for jobs as the local economy was in the tank.
(3) Yes, I did not want to be a burger flipper nor a manager of burger flippers. About 99.9% of burger flippers never advance to manage other burger flippers.
(4) I was unable to find a way to buy the entire property on my burger flipper income. Lenders have formulas and ratios and I had no way to make the ratios work on the entire property. And I was already looking at the low end of the price range (the whole property was $120K at a time when bottom of market was $100K). There wasn't enough downscaling potential to make it work.
(1) as a renter how are you paying any of the property tax? Not sure about your area but in California the building owner pays the property tax, not the renter. Sure, that cost may be part of the rent, but places still would rent for the market rate of a given geographic area. I would doubt that you would ever see a property tax bill.
(2) I don't know what to tell you about the degree. You did mention that two-thirds of grads moved on to other areas because they could not find work in your area. As a graduate, with a degree, what kept you from moving to a place that you could use your degree in? If the jobs are somewhere else, and all you had was your burger flipping job why not move?
(3) 99.9% of burger flippers never advance to manage other burger flippers because they go on to productive jobs in other industries, go on to get an education, start a business of their own or do something else of value.
(4) You were unable to find a way to buy the entire property on your burger flipper income and failed to realize that a burger flippers income is not the income you need to make your dreams come true. Why is that? Why not take another course of action?
(1) as a renter how are you paying any of the property tax? Not sure about your area but in California the building owner pays the property tax, not the renter. Sure, that cost may be part of the rent, but places still would rent for the market rate of a given geographic area. I would doubt that you would ever see a property tax bill.
(2) I don't know what to tell you about the degree. You did mention that two-thirds of grads moved on to other areas because they could not find work in your area. As a graduate, with a degree, what kept you from moving to a place that you could use your degree in? If the jobs are somewhere else, and all you had was your burger flipping job why not move?
(3) 99.9% of burger flippers never advance to manage other burger flippers because they go on to productive jobs in other industries, go on to get an education, start a business of their own or do something else of value.
(4) You were unable to find a way to buy the entire property on your burger flipper income and failed to realize that a burger flippers income is not the income you need to make your dreams come true. Why is that? Why not take another course of action?
I learned something important from Prop 13 and from a property tax cut in Michigan - when you rent, property tax cuts NEVER trickle down to the renter. (Renters pay a middleman, who pockets the savings. Similarly, all that refinancing in the past five years sure saved landlords billions of dollars, but rents didn't fall.) So I proposed to my landlord that I would pay (prorated monthly) the actual property taxes in exchange for an equivalent reduction in rent. The idea was to ensure that I received the full benefit of any future property tax reductions. He was happy to accept my proposal, because his concern is his bottom line, and thus property tax increases became no longer of concern to him.
My degree is in liberal arts, which was decidedly NOT in high demand at the time, and the supply was much greater than the demand.
I considered grad school and decided that would only be delaying entry into the real world, and didn't have the money to start a business. Law school was even more expensive (and thus out of reach) than a grad program.
But it should not have been necessary to fund 2 houses when I wanted and needed only one. There's something wrong when government prevents the private sector from providing affordable ownership options to burger flippers. Can you imagine the outrage if government prevented the private sector from providing affordable ownership options to the middle class?
I am going to live a Gangnam Style retirement life.
I'm going to scurry over to Google.
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