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Opening Arguments

Class warfare

The property tax mess affects everybody and has polticians of all persuasions scrambling for solutions. But Dan Carpenter, the Indianapolis Star's predictably liberal columnist, finds it a useful club with which to bash business, the governor and other evil Republicans and, especially, all those rich creeps who don't deserve their palatial homes anyway:

There is some comfort in the makeup of the disaffected. All socioeconomic levels are found within an easy walk of the governor's residence. But for the time being, at least, those areas hardest hit by the shock and awe of 2003-2007 retain their share of habitués with means and savvy, the kind of folks to whom politicians listen. Why, Daniels even felt behooved to question favoritism toward business, an about-face that has his Chamber of Commerce sputtering. (One hopes our Democratic mayor looked up from his business tax abatements long enough to notice as well).

When two Republican state senators are calling for an investigation into oppressive taxation, you know your protest marchers aren't a bunch of ragtag radicals. Even if the GOP leadership, legislative and executive, skews to the outskirts, their social peers remain the governor's neighbors and cannot be ignored. Whether they will be satisfied in their thirst for justice is another question, for the very reason that their pain is not all that widespread. 

An ugly thing, envy.

Comments

A J Bogle
Mon, 07/16/2007 - 5:22pm

No envy, Even Theodore Roosevlet said that the wealthy should pay more taxes because they benefit more from a free society and government. The bottom line is that property taxes are a regressive tax - that unfairly burdens the elderly and young families in starter homes, as well as lower and middle class homeowners, all of whom must pay a larger percentage of their incomes towards property tax. Of all the taxes the homeowners property tax is the most unfair. It should be either reduced or eliminated for all - this would be the only fair way of dealing with it.

Leo Morris
Mon, 07/16/2007 - 5:23pm

Hey, we agree on something.

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