School Follies

If one wishes to know why property taxes are so high here in New Jersey, one need only recall the extravagance of the Trenton Democrats. Consider (July 19, 2005) post, commenting on the $136 million Taj Mahal being built on your nickel in Union City.

Union City pays less than 10% of the costs of running its own schools – and them’s only the dishonest, "official" figures, which don’t include the costs of the bonds we sold for the schools we built for them.

Today’s Ledger reports that local officials in South Jersey are, unsurprisingly, terrified at the prospect that Abbott funding might be curtailed and that they, themselves, might be actually asked to pay for their own schools.

Horrors. Imagine if the state stops permitting one town to sponge off its neighbors. Whatever shall we do?

We like to moan about high property taxes, but without some method of check-mating the redistributionist impulses of the Trenton Democrats, far better to live with property taxes than income taxes. Every nickel of the property taxes a Denville resident pays gets spent in Denville. Any mis-named "property tax reform" which directs money to Trenton rather than to Denville will inevitably result in the money being spent on white elephants in Camden, not used for schools and services in Denville.

Repealing Abbott outright and redistributing aid among all children equally – every kid in the state gets precisely the same amount of money, to be used for such education as his parents think appropriate – will reduce property taxes, advance freedom, and improve education.