| Author | Message | ||
     Townie |
I posted this article in the reval thread, but thought those who frequent this board also might want to read it. You need to register with The Times to access it, but registration is free. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/27/nyregion/27SUBU.html The article is about West Windsor, NJ, where seniors are facing the same property tax dilemmas of those in Maplewood. They discuss their attitudes about paying for today's schools, and how they feel about the new type of young dual-career families moving into their town (just outside of Princeton). I feel like two things that often get overlooked in the discussion of relentlessly rising school budgets is that teachers get paid more today than the almost all-female teaching staff of our childhoods (who didn't have as many career options) and that many women no longer have time (or the inclination) to do volunteer work, and some of that had to be hired out. I'm sure Maplewood residents do lots of volunteering, but it may be that certain widespread cultural changes that are here to stay have created new financial realities for budgeting. I don't know if anyone has studied the issue. | ||
| Jem |
I haven't studied that issue, but here's a related issue that periodically puzzles me. I've always looked at retirement communities, you know, the kind that exist mostly in warm climates, where there are only retirees, no children, and I've always thought to myself "This is a bad idea." It's as if a whole generation of people got to a certain age and said "OK, I'm done working, I'm tired of dealing with the cold. Now I'm pulling up stakes and I'm not going to be involved in the day-to-day life of anyone younger than, say 55, not even if they're related to me. You want to see me? You'll have to make reservations." And now it's fairly unusual to see retirees living in the community in which they raised their families. Sometimes, it's the children who've pulled up stakes and moved far away, and there's less to keep retirees in their community. The issue of the impact of high taxes on a fixed income is a serious one, and one that needs to be addressed, (and I'm ready to do that, as I've said before!) but I've noticed several related issues that should give us pause. Here's the deal: We often talk about entitlements, and there's usually a negative connotation to the word - you know, welfare, food stamps, medicaid, people getting more than someone thinks they deserve. Yet the current generation of retirees is the single most entitled generation that we're likely ever to see. My parents benefited hugely from that wonderful govermnent entitlement, V.A. benefits. My dad was the only member of his family to be able to attend college as a result, and then he got a great, low-cost mortgage. My parents saved for retirement, but they also receive Social Security benefits and are entitled to Medicare benefits. My dad owned his own business, but he was also able to provide terrific health benefits and a pension fund to his employees. My parents, who are both in their 70's, still live in the house I grew up in, and they remain firmly involved in their community, voluteering in many organizations and still a vital part of life in the town they've lived in for 50+ years. They're a treasure, and, you know what? They live modestly, but they always vote in favor of their local school budget, and I never hear them moaning about the taxes, although they live in a high tax community. I've lived in communities in which, when it came time to vote on the school budget, large groups of senior citizens came in on buses to vote the school budget down, and they often succeeded, or came close, and they feel perfectly justified in doing so, because they "can't afford it." Most current retirees are able to count on pensions, social security, medicare, senior citizens' price breaks and a political system that is delicately attuned to their every need and desire. Has anyone else noticed that the world is suddenly organized as if this is the only group that truly matters? Yes, indeed, we want and need people of all ages to remain in our communities. It's healthier that way. But I want to know where the entitlement of the retired ends and the equally deserved real entitlement of the rest of us begins: we who pay a fortune for mediocre health insurance, if we can get it at all, we who will have no company-funded pensions to look forward to, we who may or may not have social security or medicare in our future, and our children! Before anyone hurls an accusation, I'm not hostile to retired people. I simply don't believe that they are the only people entitled to real, meaningful, financial support funded by taxpayers. Perhaps if we can enlist the people in our community who are on fixed incomes to work towards a change from our dependence on property tax towards something else, we might not have to be talking about giving property tax breaks on the basis of age. | ||
| Townie |
Jem, I think all your points are well taken and worth meditating upon. I've no fast response except to add two thoughts to the mix (which I've made elsewhere on these boards): Social Security enables a huge number of seniors -- maybe the vast majority -- to live without being a financial burden to their children or relatives, and to avoid true poverty in their old age. Yes, some money goes to those who don't need it, but a lot of that is recaptured in taxes. The reason I am so strongly in favor of the program is because I worry that the burden of caring for the elderly on an individual family basis would fall so unfairly on some people (i.e., a family with a retarded child who also has to support a parent financially?) were there not Social Security, whereby we all pick up a part of the tab --especially people like me who can well afford to chip in. Likewise, I believe Medicare helps equalize the availability of health care at a time in life when people are most likely to need it, and is a great, humane benefit. It prevents people who've worked and saved all their lives from suddenly becoming impoverished should they be unlucky and need expensive care. One of the reasons both these programs are "universal entitlements" is because they are actually cheaper to administer that way, especially Social Security. It's also true that it creates political support for these programs, which many believe will help ensure that they are there for you and your children. In my view, American society could well afford more entitlements of the kind your parents enjoyed: federally supported mortgage programs, education funds, and we could add universal health care. As you know, there is extremely strong political opposition to this, and the claim is made that the post-War American-dominated world economy is very different from the new, more competitive global economy, and therefore all these things must go. It may be the great global debate of our time and, quite frankly, I'm having a hard time getting up to speed on it, or trusting what I hear. | ||
| Mtierney |
Who are these older citizens cluttering up those grand houses? Many are members of Brokaw's "greatest generation" the like of which we'll never see again. The VA benefits? These men and women served their country, took out years of their youth and spent them fighting for the freedom we all now enjoy. Yes, the government allowed them funds to get a college degree. Many spent the money going to night school for many years since many again had married very young (war does that) and had families to support. These were the men and women to whom "depression" was more than a state of mind. They had been raised in an economic time which scarred people for the rest of their lives. Many of these frugal, cost-conscious people are broke because they have paid for the college education of their own kids. Now, as parents of high living baby boomers, they fear they may wind up paying for the college educations of their grandchildren too! They clip coupons. They drive the same care for 10 or more years. Most wives stayed home to raise the kids and did give back to their communities in many many ways as volunteers. As the NY Times reported on Sunday, lots of those older folks you see working at the Home Depot are not there just to kill time, they need the income. Do you think the drop in the stock market only hurts the young? They have seen their net worth plummet too. They love their homes. They love Maplewood. | ||
| Jem |
MTierney, Who said anything about people cluttering up houses? You didn't read my post very carefully. I don't begrudge what my parents and their generation have been given. I simply question the fact that no such generosity appears to be forthcoming for the next generations, and that the benefiaries of these programs often don't look beyond their own needs. I believe that Social Security and Medicare are good things, and that they should exist beyond the current generation of beneficiaries. | ||
| Nakaille |
Mtierney: your post reminds me how glad I am that I cannot afford to play the stock market game. I do not think that Jem or Townie is arguing against these benefits or entitlements, MT. Just pointing out that they exist and that they have helped folks get to be upstanding, homeowning citizens like yourself. I expect to work well into my seventies at least. I hope that I will be healthy and have work that is of interest to me. I have serious doubts that those in control of government care about whether I have Social Security or Medicare benefits of any kind. And if I had lots of inheritance money coming my way I probably wouldn't care either. I am not stock-savvy and do not wish to gamble with my retirement funds on the open market, so the notion of private, individual investment accounts for Social Security literally frightens me. As you point out, drops in the market, which are truly unpredictable, hurt everyone. I am a baby boomer, but certainly not "high living." My parents did not pay for my college tuition or loan me money toward my house downpayment or buy me a car or any of those other perks you seem to think baby boomers feel entitled to. Nor will they be paying for my child's education. I do the things you describe that generation doing. I also shop second-hand for clothes and books and household items, buy food through a co-op to save money, and drive an older car (as do you.) So what? Does that make me better than people who can afford to do otherwise? No. I hope to be the kind of senior citizen Jem describes her parents as being. Vibrant, involved in the community and understanding that a life blessed by relative good fortune is something to treasure. And that it is well worth giving something back to the community, whether in the form of becoming a literacy volunteer or supporting the local schools or whatever. I think the point is that we can rise together as a community or we can fall back on our ego-centric paths and "everyone else be damned." It's our choice to make and to live with. Bacata | ||
| Melidere |
I think the most enlightening part of that article was this: ""You talk to the people who move in and it's always the same" said Oliver Hilpot, who has lived here with his wife, Bette, for 45 years. "They move in for the schools, and as soon as their kids are out of high school, they're gone, because they don't want to pay the taxes. Well, if they don't like the taxes, why should we?" There's some serious truth to that paragraph. | ||
| Townie |
Mtierney, I very much support all programs that help seniors stay in their homes and have as few money worries as possible -- and I would add to your list of the accomplishments of your generation the fact that they invested so much in public goods: schools, colleges, hospitals, you name it, we got it, and it is hard to imagine people finding the will and the generosity to do it again. My own view is that a state income tax to support schools is much fairer to you than a property tax, and I am seriously hoping that within two or three years, people in New Jersey will vote to do that. | ||
| Sparrow |
The present generation is spoiled. They need some real problems. The older generation suffered through world war II, the Korean war and the great depression. There are no problems today that even approach these. | ||
| Ffof |
Townie- If the state takes our money, how would we control getting back what we contributed? We have enough of a problem now just getting a minimum from the state to fill in our budget as it is. I fear a loss of control if the state becomes our sole provider. They'll siphon our money to the neediest districts and we'll find that we have to supplement with property taxes anyway. I guess the state has yet to gain my confidence in apportioning school budget money. I'm not sure what it would take to convince a voter to let the state collect and redistribute the school taxes "fairly". | ||
| Townie |
Ffof, I think you've hit on the crux of the argument in New Jersey. I imagine that people west of us, as much or even more than you, look at the prospect of shifting school funding to a state income tax and they think: Why should I pay for kids in Newark and Maplewood to go to school? And this must be especially true for the wealthiest people, who send their kids to private schools and who would pay the most in a progressive state income tax. I was thinking this morning that even in New York City, which has a city income tax, schools have been starved for money and left to rot. So it may be the first order of business is explaining to adults that, in modern America, every child, rich or poor, is entitled to get an education -- a real education -- for free. People have just turned their backs on that commitment. They no longer even see it as good social policy. When I read the views of the seniors in that Times article, and listen to people in Maplewood who send their kids to private schools, I often wonder what was missing from their own education that they don't know this. Like you, I'm not sure what it would take to convince a voter to let the state collect and redistribute tax money, and there may be better tax answers, but I'm also wondering how to public education is going to survive at all. I'm not a student of this, but I think there was a time in the history of American education where the powerful viewed mandatory public schooling as a way of "Americanizing" Catholics and Jewish immigrant kids and keeping them from competing for low-wage jobs, so the powers that be got together with reformers to provide a free alternative to religious education, which was the only kind available. After that, public schools continued to get help because the powers that be thought we needed to fight Communism and beat the Soviets into space with educated kids. Now the powers that be are talking very differently. It may be that the political commitment to free (non-religious) education in America has never been lower. k. | ||
| Mtierney |
The underlying fear in these posts is total lack of trust in our political leaders. How sad! The money from Atlantic City was intended to help education - has there ever been an accounting of this income? Yes, the people in Cape May do not want to pay for educating kids in Newark. Maybe one solution is for a percentage of income earned via big business, vacation resorts, shopping malls, could be diverted to help communities struggling without a commercial base. We shop at the Short Hills and Livingston Malls and vacation in Long Beach Island. Might do more spending within New Jersey if we could see some sort of kickback for education. Just a crazy thought. | ||
| Townie |
I gave it some further thought and in response to Mtierney, does any of the sales tax I pay at the malls and the "bed" tax I pay at the resorts go to the state, or does it all go straight to the local coffers? Also, I don't know the answer to this question: At any given moment, are their more voters who DON'T have kids in public schools than those who do? |
