I lived in a NJ city for eighteen years (Elizabeth), and from my experience, all that those high taxes go towards paying is the bloated salaries of the municipal politicians who vote themselves pay raises sometimes on an annual basis. And oh yeah, that ridiculous welfare system that turned formerly beautiful cities into hellhole slums, something that tearing down projects and replacing them with townhouses was not able to reverse. Never mind a transit operator whose reach is state-wide, and who went on a ridiculous spending spree under former governor Corzine, buying buses and trains (especially the latter) to replace vehicles that had only reached the halfway point of their service life (while reneging on service expansions at the same time).
It was the unconscionably-high property tax that was a primary impetus for people and businesses to move out of that state. Don’t buy the garbage out of the liberal politicians there. The People’s Republic of New Jersey is teetering on the edge.
I agree; see # 91. NJ is in terrible shape; that is why Christie was elected (we’ve shed a lot of cops, teachers, and firemen since that glorious day).
The property taxes are horrible, but you have more control over them than sending THE SAME MONEY TO TRENTON. North Dakota isn’t voting to stop paying their cops and teachers; they are simply looking at paying them in a different manner (in which a lot of people can see their taxes go to other parts of the state as “pork”).
I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand. If NJ had a system like North Dakota is looking at, then Newark, Camden, and Paterson wouldn’t have been laying off cops (because they have more voters - not the same as taxpayers); the suburbs and rural areas would have lost those jobs instead (and still been paying for them).