Our local media like to tell you how much a property tax increase is going to cost you. But your direct increase on you tax bill every year is only part of the story.
Taxes affect the price of everything. If you rent, property taxes are built in your monthly rent check.
Even if you’re homeless (and I know a lot of homeless guys read El Chuqueño), property taxes are built into the price of that forty, or that Happy Meal. And if everyone else is coming up a little short, there’s less money to panhandle.
That incremental tax raise is built into the price of your groceries, and gasoline, and your bar tab. You don’t think those goodhearted businessmen just eat an increase in costs, do you?
And if prices rise in El Paso because property taxes are higher here, then big businesses are going to shop out of town for supplies. So businesses here are going to be worth less, so tax revenues will decline, so our government entities are either going to have raise taxes or reduce services.
It is not unlike the spiral you see when you flush the toilet, with similar results.
Our pols, God bless them, can’t see past their own budgets, both personal and bureaucratic. The only way for the citizens to win is to get on the dole, or otherwise feed at the public trough.
Or vote, and vote those politicians who advocate higher taxes out of office.
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.