Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Caracas on the Willamette
My wife wanted to leave Arizona and move back to Oregon to be closer to our grandchildren I told her we could do that. I added two conditions to the move. I said you can choose a home in Oregon with the exceptions that it cannot be located in Multnomah County or within the City of Portland.
From an Oregon Public Broadcasting article:
Multnomah County has been uniquely impacted by job loss, with data showing it lagging significantly behind neighboring counties. While Multnomah County remains 4.5% below its pre-pandemic job levels, neighboring Clackamas County is 2% behind, while Washington County has seen a 1% increase in jobs over its pre-pandemic totals. Washington’s Clark County, which is home to Vancouver, has seen an 8% increase in jobs over its late 2019 numbers.
Clark County has also become a common landing place for former Portlanders. In 2021, more than 12,000 people moved out of Multnomah County. The report suggests that more and more Portlanders have crossed state lines to become Clark County residents in recent years; in the recent past, Portland saw a steady migration from Clark County.
Wilkerson posited that those fleeing Portland for Clark County might be doing so to avoid the Portland metro region’s growing taxes on property owners and businesses.
Between 2019 and 2021, the city’s annual taxes grew by $149 million to a total just over $1 billion. That increase has mostly been levied on businesses and high-income earners through ballot measures such as Metro’s Supportive Housing Services tax, which funds programs that help move people experiencing homelessness into permanent housing, or Multnomah County’s Preschool for All tax, which makes preschool free for county families.
The report shows that these tax burdens mean Portlanders of all incomes are bringing home less income after taxes than those living in neighboring cities, like Beaverton or Vancouver. At the same time, data also shows that Clark County in particular has seen a dramatic increase in household wealth in the past decade.
Soaring crime rates and high taxes. A tax rate that is the second highest in nation. The City of New York has the highest tax rate in the US.
Every two years, property tax and income tax measures are on the ballot. I have never understood why voters who have the chance to vote on a tax measure will vote to increase their own taxes. As the old saying goes, no one’s life, liberty, or property is safe when the legislature is in session. It appears that saying holds true when voters cast their ballots.
Will the last person to leave Portland please turn off the lights?
Published in Politics
No! Leave the lights on, like a lighthouse, as a warning to others.
It’s Town and school budget election season in NH. This year there is the Warrant for the additional amount “negotiated” between the school boards and the teachers’ union. It’s a 17% increase on comps and benefits over 4 years. The union gave nothing back for the additional cash.
The District’s argument is: teachers will leave for better paying jobs if you don’t approve this. No one has left this town’s school (of 173 k-8 students) in the 12 years we have lived here for any reason other than retirement. 80% of the teachers are at the highest “step.” That’s what is called vesting in place in the dreaded private sector. The school budget is $40k/yr/child, the admin says there is no child identified as “gifted” in the school (but 17% receive “special education service) and they no longer keep track of test scores “with distinction.” NH has only a property tax to fund schools.
But no one ever votes against the school budget. Except me and EODDad, more or less. It seems it’s always easy to vote to spend the other guy’s money. (I think someone wrote a book about that….)
My experience is that many people voting for tax increases assume the increased taxes will be paid by someone else, not them, and do not understand that taxes on businesses are taxes on themselves, as the business taxes will come to affect the individuals (higher prices, reduced availability of business products or services by existing businesses and by fewer new businesses created, reduced employee wages, reduced number of employees, etc.).
The CT town I lived in voted down annual school tax increases a couple of times. They resulted in a slight reduction in the % increase, but never flat or down.
But I lived there for 15 years, and in that span my property taxes doubled. So every year a 1% increase was more valuable than before.
Same blinders afflict renters who vote for property tax increases because they do not pay them directly, so they think that someone else pays them. Never occurs to them their landlord is paying them. Hmm, guess how the landlord gets the increased amount needed?
It is like some weird counter-Darwinian phenomenon–those who are less productive, more immune to reality-feedback and most likely wedded to demonstrably stupid policies eventually predominate and drive out the rest.
The last ones to go under in ancient Rome were probably the scribes and the government contractors who provided bread and circuses.
Portland may be “the worst” in that area, but even if Vancouver, WA is less bad now, isn’t Washingon (state) overall worse than Oregon (state)? As evidenced by Seattle. So it may not be all that long before Vancouver is worse than Portland. After all, Vancouver has to keep up with Seattle!
The State of Washington does not have an individual income tax. They do have business taxes, a sales tax, and property taxes.
Oregon does not have a state sales tax. I only remember one time that a proposed state sales tax was on the ballot. In a rare moment of sanity, it went down by a six to one margin.
Counties in Oregon can impose a county sales tax, but that would be a great way to lose your seat on any county commission in the next election.
I was thinking more in terms of criminality, not prosecuting criminals, homeless camps, etc.
“It Takes a Villiage”?