Second Hand Smoke Solution?

[dadiOH]

Shhh. *THEY* could be listening.

[Robert Green]

reduction in smoking related deaths.

I read a fascinating article that I wish I had bookmarked that basically said that if you go back 30 years and look at all the financial and sociological predictions, they all turned out pretty far off the mark. Anyone saying today they know what will happen in 2043 is basically blowing smoke. (Hey, that makes its on-topic for this thread!)

I suspect by the time the dreaded "SS" collapse is scheduled to occur that the "playing field" will be so radically different that predictions made today just won't be accurate. Considering 9/11 and the 2008 collapse and how few prognosticators considered anything like them, I think they were right. What's the old saying (slightly modified)? "Life is what happens when you were making plans/predictions."

[sms]

Some districts around here get big "voluntary" contributions (Palo Alto), but where I live the school boards put parcel taxes on the ballot. I can only recall one of them ever failing and it was because they a) didn't put a time limit on it (it went on forever) and b) it had automatic increases based on inflation.

I suppose parcel taxes could be viewed as "voluntary" since you have to vote for them and they typically pass with well over 70% of the votes (they need a 2/3 vote to pass), but they aren't thousands of dollars per year, just a couple of hundred dollars. Presently, there's $250 in parcel taxes for elementary and middle schools, and $98 for the high schools. The plus side is that they don't constantly beg parents for money (other than for sports and extra-curricular activities).

The parcel taxes also mitigate the unfairness of California's proposition 13. We have parents in the district that have moved into their parent's houses and pay extremely low property taxes, under $1000/year while sending multiple kids to public schools. We have landlords that rent properties at extremely high rents to large families while paying property tax rates set in the 1980's. They are subsidized by recent residents that are paying 15-20x as much in property taxes for similar value properties. The parcel taxes are a fixed amount, not a percentage of the property value.