Today I am officially a taxpayer. People would always tell me, “Man, what do you have to complain about, you don’t even pay taxes, you’re a student!” Today I have earned the right to complain, and complain I shall.
Property taxes on my Dakota pickup came to a modest $240…modest for anyone but a perpetually broke college student. And Og bless those guys at the assessor’s office, they even itemized it to tell me how much of that money was being taken from me for each particular entity. And the grand prize goes to…
PUBLIC SCHOOLS!! No surpirse there. $200 of the total goes there.
I have performed my duty at each election, voting consistently against any and all school bond issues and related property tax increases. And my efforts have, of course, failed. Why? Because we live in a democracy. Democracy, for those unfamiliar with it, is the system in which the majority gets to gang up and steal money from the minority at their whim. Since the voter base consists largely of family-type people, they get to band together and take money from us single, childless sorts.
So what am I getting from my $200? Nothing. I do not presently have, nor will I ever have children (if I can help it, and may Og bless me with a long childless life.) The education these children get will only help them: A) displace me from my job someday, probably right before I’d be eligible for a nice retirement package, B) manipulate the system to take yet more of my money, and C) contribute to the overeducation of America which has ruined the value of an education on the marketplace. It’s not like this is balancing out the public education I received. My father was a homeowner, and probably paid in taxes more than enough to have bought me a nice private education.
What is the community getting from my $200? Well, when somebody steals your money, do you really care how he spends it? But pretending I did…my schoolteacher friend Helen teaches her class from a trailer. What the hell? The property tax rate here is 4.75, plenty high already. Are they just squandering my money on dozens of worthless administrators who make tens of thousands a year to sit in an office and design zero-tolerance policies?
So I say, with a hearty grin, fuck family values. Fuck family interests. Fuck families. Long live the single and childless!