Are we really better off??

[GMpartsman]

Tis sad, tis true.

[crashmister]

Well Someone said a long time ago that With the excption of Israel, 50 years ago they were choping each other's heads off in the desert. And when the oil runs out 50 years from now, they will be back doing the same thing. Fact is the entire middle East's relevance can be sumed up in 3 words, Light sweet crude. It's the cheapest oil on the planet to refine. And the sole reason we have about the cheapest gas.
What's wrong with our political system today can also be summed up in 3 words. ignorance, arrogance, money. Amendment 4 is a good example. I got a mailer yesterday about Florida's amendment 4 which will be on the ballot in November. The mailer say's A 4 will create over 20.000new job's, it will grow the states economy by 900 million and would generate over 5.3 pillion in personal income for floridians over 10 years. Here's what The ballot measure — crafted by state Rep. Chris Dorworth, R-Lake Mary, a real-estate consultant and a future House speaker, would really do.
■Raise taxes on many established, year-round residents. Property taxes in Florida are a key source of funding for local services such as fire and police protection, providing 60 percent of counties’ general fund revenues and 42 percent of cities’ revenues. [1] If Amendment 4 is adopted, local governments would have to raise property tax rates in order to preserve funding for these services. This in turn would increase property taxes on those who benefit least from the amendment — established, full-time homeowners not affected by the recapture rule — in order to pay for tax cuts for those who benefit most from the amendment, such as part-time residents, out-of-state corporations and first-time homebuyers.
■Require local governments to make deep cuts in services. To the extent that local governments don’t respond to Amendment 4 by increasing property tax rates, it would take a large and growing bite out of funding for local services like police and fire protection. At current rates the local revenue loss from Amendment 4 would grow to $471 million by 2016[2] — the equivalent of 7,656 police officers at the state’s average annual police salary.[3] And the revenue loss would begin phasing in at a time when local government revenues are already down as a result of the recession.

Local governments would almost certainly respond to Amendment 4 with a combination of tax rate increases and service cuts.
■Harm Florida’s economy. These tax increases and spending cuts mean that Amendment 4 is no free lunch for Florida taxpayers. As noted above, any tax cuts for non-residents and out-of-state corporations that result from the measure would require offsetting tax increases or cuts in local services. Either of these steps would remove demand from the economy, undermining Amendment 4’s potential to spur economic growth.

Supporters of Amendment 4 cite a study by Florida Tax Watch, a Florida research organization, as evidence that Amendment 4 would benefit Florida’s economy. But the study suffers from a crucial methodological flaw. While the study takes into account the economic benefit of the taxpayer savings that would result from the amendment, it ignores the tax increases or cuts to local services that local governments would need to enact to pay for the tax cut. It therefore gives a deeply misleading estimate of Amendment 4’s likely economic impact.
■Send millions of dollars in tax benefits out of state. Much of the tax savings from Amendment 4 would be sent outside the state. This is because out-of-state shareholders in major corporations with Florida landholdings and owners of second homes who may spend much of their time and money in other places would get a large share of the benefit from Amendment 4.

As a result, the net effect would be to cost Florida jobs, not create them.
■Hurt new and expanding businesses — important engines of job growth. Amendment 4 would ultimately place newer businesses at a competitive disadvantage by requiring them to pay more in property taxes than their more established competitors, even if the newer and more established businesses own identical properties. Tilting the playing field against newer businesses makes little economic sense. Important new research suggests that a small number of relatively new businesses create a disproportionate share of new jobs. Making those businesses pay more property taxes than their competitors will further harm the state’s economy.
There's a full report here, http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3839
The realestate lobby, you know, the guy's who brought us the housing bubble, is spending millions on disinformation campagins to get this thing passed.
There's gonna be 12 of these on the November ballot. If you want to vote in under an hour you may want to read them and write down how you want to vote on them before you get into the ballot box.
Mine will look like this
1. NO
2. YES
3. NO
4. NO
5. NO
6. NO
7. Removed
8. NO
9. YES
10. YES
11. YES
12. NO

Here's the main page and full text of all 12. http://election.dos.state.fl.us/initiat ... ecType=GEN
These are important so every voter owes it to themselves to understand what there voting for or against.

[GMpartsman]

I think the Fair tax plan may be the way to go. Everybody pays equally. At least that's the way it is suppose to work. I'm sure some rich lawyer will find a loophole.

Here in Georgia we pay an ad valorem tax with our vehicle tags. I get the privilege or paying to have a nice vehicle, boat and motorcycle every year. This year my property value went down but my real estate tax went up. Sounds like "fuzzy math" to me.