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Speak Out: Should Property Tax Be Discontinued?
Tell us your thoughts on property tax in the comments below!
North Dakota voters will take to the polls today, Tuesday, June 12, to decide if the state property tax should be abolished.
According to USA Today, the tax generates approximately $800 million in annual revenue, which mostly goes toward funding local governments and schools. There is no secondary plan currently to replace funding if the measure passes Tuesday.
So, "speak out" and tell us what you think about property taxes. Would you like to see it abolished in Georgia? If so, from where should needed funding come?
Thanks. We'll email you the next time we update this story.
Jake Lilley
12:20 pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
"Property and Law"
By: Frédéric Bastiat
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss3.html#Chapter 3
"All our past constitutions proclaim that property is sacred, a fact that seems to indicate that the goal of social organization is the free development of private associations or individuals through their labor. This implies that the right to property is prior to the law, since the sole object of the law would be to protect property"
"Property and Plunder"
By: Frédéric Bastiat
http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss6.html#Chapter 6
"I believe that I can prove that the right to property is essentially democratic, and that all that denies or violates it is basically aristocratic and anarchistic."
Jake Lilley
4:41 pm on Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Zoning and taxes represent government claims on private property. Only property that is free from taxation and zoning restrictions can be considered "private." Property that does not exist under these conditions is not privately owned and controlled; rather, it is owned and directed by the societal collective. So do I support the liberation of "private" property from government claim?
"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own."
-James Madison, Essay on Property, March 29, 1792.
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet" and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."
-John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787.
Walter E-Williams,
Professor of Economics,
George Mason University
"Walter E Williams - The Issue is Private Property"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZByO72Seq0