09-15-2018, 03:27 PM
The point people are missing is that somebody's ox is going to get gored.
It is not a zero sum game. The money is going to be raised. It is not like if they don't get this source of money that is the end of it. No matter what arguments abound about the running of the schools the money will have to come from somewhere. Our choice is this tax or another; perhaps an increase in the GET, they don't need your permission to do that. Would you rather have a 1% "education GET surcharge? How about raise the income tax rates?
As for shenanigans at the legislature: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." H. L. Mencken. It's our legislature we asked to be treated this way, or at least the 26% of eligible voters who actually bother have.
Thumbing through a real estate magazine of luxury homes the cheapest was more than a million dollars, most were 5, 10 even more than 20, and there were hundreds of them, and that is just the Big Island. These houses are the border wall to the beach.
Fifty years ago we could hike in and fish or camp, no Kapu sighs no walls. The ranches or plantation didn't care. Those days are gone and our children are poorer for it, so if some guy wants a 20 million dollar trophy house in Hawaii, I am inclined to let him help educate the native children, rather than taxing the wages of his gardener, or the pencils of his child.
It is not a zero sum game. The money is going to be raised. It is not like if they don't get this source of money that is the end of it. No matter what arguments abound about the running of the schools the money will have to come from somewhere. Our choice is this tax or another; perhaps an increase in the GET, they don't need your permission to do that. Would you rather have a 1% "education GET surcharge? How about raise the income tax rates?
As for shenanigans at the legislature: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." H. L. Mencken. It's our legislature we asked to be treated this way, or at least the 26% of eligible voters who actually bother have.
Thumbing through a real estate magazine of luxury homes the cheapest was more than a million dollars, most were 5, 10 even more than 20, and there were hundreds of them, and that is just the Big Island. These houses are the border wall to the beach.
Fifty years ago we could hike in and fish or camp, no Kapu sighs no walls. The ranches or plantation didn't care. Those days are gone and our children are poorer for it, so if some guy wants a 20 million dollar trophy house in Hawaii, I am inclined to let him help educate the native children, rather than taxing the wages of his gardener, or the pencils of his child.