[Biggd]

Originally Posted by AC2717

I think Tax burden is relative, as in yes you will always pay taxes, and you maybe should choose where to live based on real estate taxes and income taxes and sales taxes alike. One situation works better or worse for one vs the other. Being in Laconia and Maynard MA, relatively small towns/cities in the country and reviewing the budgets, and agreeing that town budgets the majority is made up in Labor - with benefits and pensions and being a large sum of money. Towns refuse to go to a 401k style retirement and they continue on benefits when you can retire after a short period of time and collect whether it's $200 a month or $1000 a month scale depending of course, but your benefits continue. This would kill a private business today and is why it has changed. It is an outrageous amount of spending for a town, and the larger departments get these numbers continue to go as for example the 45/50 year old retires and still receives benefit for the rest of their lives 30+ years.

Now would agree perks of the job, and pay is a little lower than the private sector but that is not the case much anymore. For example look at the post office. very large labor force that still has a pension program and benefits long after retirement, every year they are taking a larger and larger loss but the government looks at everything else instead of their number one loss leader - Labor costs, so they will just continue to price themselves out of mail/package delivery service.

As far as pricing out those like in my case somewhat long time property owners. The higher the taxes go, the more get priced out of the market of affordability. The buyers at these rates, are usually buyers with multiple properties and leads to less use of all their properties, which majority leads to less spending in the community whether "rich" or middle class due to their costs. I would leave with one thought, Gov's Island, how many of those properties are occupied during most of the year even the summer, how much money other than taxes are being spent in the area off of those homeowners???

Personally, I'd much rather see empty homes than homes filled with disruptive renters.
My neighborhood is so quiet in the winter, snowbirds fly South, I love it!