Taxes

[Rod Speed]

Only in the USA.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Zillow is often off the mark. According to them, my sturdy masonry house on two acres with two garages (the 20x20 used as a garage, the 20x40 used as a workshop) comps out roughly equivalent to the crappy raised-ranch houses in the subdivision across the street. Sure, they have slightly greater square footage and more bathrooms, but the right buyer for my house would be willing to pay quite a bit more. I won't know for sure, of course, unless I try to sell my house. My plan is to go out feet first, but that may be taken out of my hands if I end up with Alzheimer's or something.

Cindy Hamilton

[Cindy Hamilton]

You'd be amazed how many non-teachers are on the payroll. It seems like every classroom has a paid "assistant" in addition to the teacher (where my teachers got along just fine by themselves with huge baby-boomer classes), and there seem to be a lot of chiefs for each Indian.

Then there's pensions and health care premiums for every one of those people.

Cindy Hamilton

[Cindy Hamilton]

The top 1% pays 30-40% of the taxes and has 99% of the money. WTF?

Cindy Hamilton

[Cindy Hamilton]

They meter the incoming water and charge for outgoing waste based on the amount of water used. I pay more money to have my shit taken away than I do to have clean water come in.

Some people have a separate meter installed for hose bibs and sprinkler systems. That usage is not assesed the sewage fee.

Cindy Hamilton

[Cindy Hamilton]

I apologize in advance for my emotional outburst. I know they don't have

99% of the money.

Cindy Hamilton

[gfretwell]

Zillow has been all over the place on my house. They seem to assume all of the houses are the same here so they peg me at the last sale in the neighborhood. I don't really care since I am not moving.

[trader_4]

Same here. Except for the sprinkler part, IDK anyone that has a separate meter, they just put in a well for irrigation.

[Frank]

Zillow is wrong on mine too. The could have used the county database which is more accurate but still not exact. Reason to not let a county inspector into your house.

[Rod Speed]

Sure, but that’s a lousy measure of the use of the sewer given that so much of the metered water ends up on the lawn and garden and pool etc.

Sure but that is reasonable given that it costs a lot more to process the shit than to clean up the water.

But still doesn’t really count the turds. Those who choose to have a couple of showers a day add a lot more to the sewer that has to be processed than those who only have one once a week.

It’s a very crude measure of the use of a sewer even when there is separate metering of both types of water use and that is in fact quite rare.

And those who have wells arent even metered that crudely for the sewer.

[Cindy Hamilton]

Not as much as you'd think at my house. I don't water the lawn, I rarely water the garden, and I have no pool. Pools are only useful about 3-4 months of the year here. We do dump and refill the hot tub once in a while.

And they use correspondingly more metered water, so that is accounted for.

Most people who have wells also have a septic tank.

Cindy Hamilton

[Rod Speed]

But that isnt that common, so not very relevant.

But it’s the turds that cost to process.

[Cindy Hamilton]

How would you know? Here in between the Great Lakes, we get plenty of rain. There's usually a dry spell from late June to early August, but the grass just goes dormant and comes back to life when the rain starts again.

What is your suggestion for metering the turds? Cindy Hamilton

[Rod Speed]

But its clear that most of the USA isnt like that.

A poll tax that taxes individuals. That has to be a good measure of the number of turds.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Easy. A guy at the sewer plant has one of these as they drop out of the pipe

[devnull]

No need to count turds, just tax people by body weight.

Gluttonous morbidly obese people eat and shit more than lean and trim people so the fatties should be taxed more.

If one can afford to overeat, one can afford to pay a fat tax.

[Clare Snyder]

The BIG expense is the employees that are not in the classroom OR the school. It's the supervisors and administrators at the board level

- the socalled "specialists" and "consultants" that take the obscene salaries. The ones that sit in the opulent offices in the Tajmahal board headquarter edifices. Teachers aids are in many cases almost unavoidable since integration of special needs students into the mainstreem system - with all the spectrum disorder kids etc etc. (and the large class-sizes - when I taught 20 was a big class.)

[Cindy Hamilton]

Shouldn't we charge more to people who eat more fiber? You know-- vegetarians.

Cindy Hamilton

[Cindy Hamilton]

Oh, yeah. I forgot about mainstreaming. (I personally favor tracking.)

When I was in school 35 was a big class.

Cindy Hamilton

[Ed Pawlowski]

When I was in school, 35 was a small class. One nun could handle 60 first graders with no assistants or class mothers.