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Letter: Tax still rises when values keep falling

The Columbian
Published: September 17, 2011, 5:00pm

The recent delivery of U.S. mail to my address along with the headline at the top of page A1 of the Sept. 13 Columbian … combined in a tasty juxtaposition indeed. In the mail comes my property tax bill, which shows the value of the home has gone down by over $19,000 while the tax has gone up by more than $350. The Columbian headline reads “Obama: Fund jobs bill with tax hikes.” The view reflected in the headline is outrageously confused and wrong.

Raising taxes does not fund or “pay for” anything. “Paying for” something means you withdraw money from a real amount contained in your wallet to pay for it, leaving less in the wallet to be extracted to “pay for” other things.

I implore my fellow voters to vote out of office any and all public servants (ha) who harbor the above-demonstrated lunatic view of the meaning of “paying for” something — the prevalent view which bulldozes us (individuals as well as our county, state and our country) towards impoverishment. Vote against any and all ballot measures that require money (i.e. all of them) except those that are “paid for” with a simultaneously imposed elimination of an equally sized other expenditure.

Jonathan Young

Vancouver

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