Socialism: The Rich Man's Party

Socialism: The Rich Man's Party
by Julie Foster

This past Tuesday I participated in my first election in Yolo County, California. I have lived in the county for just about five months, and I had been eagerly awaiting the momentous occasion when I officially exercised my right as a Yolo County citizen. Sounds cheesy, I know. But, being a self-proclaimed neo-libertarian living in the most liberal city in the county (Davis), I just knew that I could help the fight for freedom with my vote. Then I saw the election results.

There were just two items on the ballot: two school board seats and a parcel tax. For those of you who may not be familiar with the ins and outs of tax law, a parcel tax is essentially a property tax, but is assessed per plot of land instead of as a percentage of property value. Put another way, each dwelling unit, whether it be a house or an apartment, pays a flat fee to the city.

This particular tax will take from each homeowner approximately $120 per year and each apartment building owner an average of $60 per unit. The money will be given to the Davis school district.

Roughly 10,000 votes were cast city-wide, and only 1,700 of them opposed the tax. The tax was approved by 82% of the voters. Unbelievable.

Granted, this was a renewal of a tax that has existed for a number of years, so I'd like to give citizens the benefit of the doubt and say that they didn't mind voting for it since it won't change their financial status quo. However, 82% does beg the question: What kind of people would place such a large tax burden on themselves?

Rich people. They can afford it.

Have you ever noticed that it's the well-to-do folks out there in the world that advocate for socialistic programs? They want socialized health care, socialized housing programs, socialized higher education, and the list goes on. The only other dominant group that advocates for such things are the people who don't pay any taxes at all. I'm going to walk a line here and say that those people are also the largest group of eligible, yet non-participating voters.

Here in Davis you won't find many non-tax-paying citizens. Most are upper or upper-middle class families and college students. Even the college students generally come from such families. The city has a heavy handed growth control policy that has caused rents to skyrocket - not the best situation for a college town, and yet the college kids fill up all the rentals.

Davisites loves to place overbearing burdens on developers to keep them from building affordable housing, they have kept out department stores that sell basic needs such as clothing (A popular axiom about the city is that you could not even purchase underwear here - the closest department store was nearly 10 miles away until this month. Gottschalks was finally permitted to open a small store in town last week.), and they have assessed exorbitant taxes on themselves.

My point is that only rich people can afford to do these kinds of things. Most of us "middle-classers" out there would like to use our money the way we see fit, thank you very much. That's not to say that we are not "for the children," as proponents of the tax would argue. A vote against such a parcel tax does not mean that I want children to grow up ignorant in a school with leaky roofs and no air conditioning where there aren't enough text books and teachers must work for pennies.

It does mean that I believe apartment building owners should not be charged potentially thousands of dollars to pay for K-12 schools when the owners house college students who are most likely not from the area and don't have kids yet.

It also means that I believe the school districts, just like every other government entity, should carefully review its budget and remove ALL waste and irresponsible spending before it attempts to raise taxes.

I've said before that I believe public schools are necessary. But I don't appreciate the way government and rich socialists force their agenda into my pocketbook. Middle and lower-middle class people (read: almost everyone in America) cannot afford to keep shelling out dollar after dollar to the government for every new or expanded program the poor demand and the rich find philanthropic. If you want to be philanthropic, give to charity.

If the people of Davis, and other communities, want to give more money to city schools so badly, they can write a check for the $120 to the district on their own.

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