I found this post interesting in light of a NYT editorial I read literally just before I hopped over to yr site:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?ref=opinion

I run the farmers market locally. It steams me that these terrific vendors, many of whom would LOVE to get into grocery stores or expand to meet increasing wholesaler demand, can’t do it, and thus “real food” is less available.

(though I don’t get how a condo fee is a tax)

Thank you for the post, Sharon. I do think in the long run higher food prices are good for farmers, once they are stabilized – if you take away the anti-small-farmer political situation, both in the developed world and in most of Africa and South America. But I don’t know how we fix our political situation, much less fix it permanently and have supportive programs for the transition.

yes- property taxes are a major issue here-and yes- it forces people into the ecconomic system as they have to earn dollars to pay property taxes- even if they own their place outright.

In my state, we have so-called “income sensitivity” for property taxes- but that is based only on the house and 2 acres- and if you live in a rural area-most people would have more land than that- you can’t even build on a piece that small anymore due to zoning. So no matter how low my income- the land is taxed at the full rate…… Thus this year I paid over ten percent of my pre-tax income as my share of property taxes- the state kicked in some more-but this is pretty crazy. All we have in town are dirt roads, a tiny school and a one-room library…… and as fuel costs climb, so will our taxes, to pay for the road crew, school heating, etc……

Now I’m not going to launch an anti-tax, anti-govt speech here (I’m fairly lefty-liberal and like to think that some govt. is actually good), but there’s no denying that the govt. takes my hard-earned cash and spends it on things frankly I could do without, like lots of roads, Stealth bombers, armies of people doing all kinds of things. Even at the local level, lots of tax revenue is spent on worker’s comp, other insurance, fancy, paved roads, and so on.

Years ago, a person could often “work off” taxes by supplying a few weeks worth of stove wood for the local school or helping the road agent drag some of the local dirt roads to shape them up after mud season, but just try paying local taxes in anything other than $$ now! Maybe, in some tiny locale it still happens, but not around the suburbs of Boston anymore, that’s for sure.

Taxes are a huge part of why food has to be kept “cheap” for if we spent half of our income on food, how could we pay taxes, (part of which, in turn, are spent on agricultural subsidies to make food “cheap” to begin with?)

This is one major reason why I try to earn as much of my living as possible *OFF* and *OUT* of the cash economy. The govt. cannot tax me as much when I don’t earn $$ and then they cannot siphon off my productivity to spend on fancy roads, bombers, ethanol kickbacks, etc.

Property taxes, however, are the one major way even people who otherwise would not heavily participate in the govt.-created cash economy are nevertheless dragged into it.

‘Love the new site too!

Stephen B.
suburban MA