On the Public Sector and Taxes

I live in the State of New Jersey. It's well known by the people of this State, and outside of it as well, that we pay the highest property taxes as a percentage of income. And the #2 state is not even remotely close. Before I bother to give out my own anecdotal information, you can look at this map showing the figures from the year 2008 and compare for yourself. And that was 2008 before salaries stopped going up, house values went down, and taxes by golly kept going up. And oddly enough, those assessed property values that they use to determine your tax bill just never comes close to matching up with what you would actually get for your house if you sold it.

The annual cost to keep me from being thrown out on the street and the government taking ownership of the house that I live in is over $4,000. That was well over 10% of my income. (And that was before I lost my full-time job. Now it's even worse). Tack that on to my federal and state income taxes and well, I was working close to 40% of the time for the government just in the form of income and property taxes. That's not counting sales taxes, excise taxes, and other taxes. It's really no wonder I struggle from week to week to make sure all the bills are paid on time. Yet if I were to listen to the Left, all my woes are to be blamed on Big Oil, Big Pharma, or Big This, That or the Other. No, my eyes are quite open, I live in reality, not Propagandaville, and the problem is Big Government. Government grows in good times and bad. And even when you say NO to more property taxes as you struggle through losing your job and working three part time jobs, elected officials over turn your vote and raise taxes anyway in deferment to the public sector unions. In good times we're told it's our patriotic duty to pay our taxes. In bad times it's "Oh you're going to lose your house? Suck it up. The government employees are still underpaid." If I only sleep five hours a night instead of six, maybe I can cram another seven hours of work in...

I'm sick of it, and so are many other people. Not just in this state, but other places where hard working, tax paying citizens are being abused as well. People voting with their feet and moving to more tax payer friendly States is resulting in places like NJ and California having a shrinking tax payer base which further results in more people sucking money out of the system than paying in. It's a death spiral all the way down, and now the Leftists want to impose it upon us at a national level as well. Checkmate. No escape.

Now be a good little boy/girl and go work very hard so you can pay your taxes to fund government excess and waste.