Here in NJ they’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to compromise with property tax freezes for retirees; the main problem is that even frozen, the taxes are very high. Our schools are not nice (physically/structurally) or very good (in terms of results); the funds go directly to teachers paid ridiculously high salaries for what is really a part-time job (they don’t work 8 hour days, they get lunch breaks like anyone else, and they literally work less than half the days in any given year). A friend described the way to look at property taxes here: View it as tuition, and when the kids are out of the system you sell your home and move. Good advice, but it ends up as a pyramid scheme that always needs new homebuyers coming in at the bottom - and now we’ve reached the point where there are not enough (since most Americans in NJ don’t breed, or move to other states to do so). I’ve posted on other threads about the rise of communism in this country that we have basically pitted taxpaying Americans (who increasingly have no genetic future) against breeding people with no economic (and therefore taxable) future.
To prevent the flight of older Americans, some places have “adult communities” (must be 55 or older, for example, and no kids); this is to spare the residents the school costs. Illegal apartments have become an epidemic, as homeowners with empty nests divide houses built decades ago for large single families into 2- or 3- family homes (often to deal with their staggering property tax bills). Many of the jobs that would allow average people to buy the homes (and pay those taxes) have left the NYC metro area forever, the low-wage jobs that remain would force you into a small apartment with several roommates - having a family isn’t even an option at those income levels.
I understand your complaint about robbing older folks of their future and security, but younger people begrudge older folks the taxes from their checks to provide SS income for older folks that they themselves are being warned will not be available for them.
As far as “use the service, pay for the service”, that went out the window when the floodgates were opened at the border for masses of people who have no means of paying for anything on their own; in fact, it went out the window when services were provided in welfarian urban areas that weren’t taxed at all - for anything.
In NJ and across the country, the borders are open because the government has decided that we need someone to buy (or at least live in) these homes - the Section 8 rent payments to a property owner will at least keep the property tax funding in place (and it can be subsidized by all 50 states at that point). The teachers want it because they need “customers” (or they’d be working as Wal-Mart greeters, with little skills to do anything else); those Section 8 payments end up in their pockets (especially in NJ, where our school infrastructure is crumbling).
You have so well described NJ and the property tax situation there.
I saw this coming ten years ago, sold my house in NJ at the height of the market, and moved to southern DE.
Low property taxes, no sales tax, and close to the beach and the rural countryside.
NJ is a beautiful state—it is far more than what is seen along the NJ Turnpike—but it is becoming unliveable and unsustainable.
Whether it is run by the Dems or the GOP, it just gets worse.
Demographically, the folks with means are leaving in droves, only to be backfilled by those who live off of government assistance. That is a sure fire recipe for disaster.