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Comment by drakeandrews | Hacker News Reader

This, yet again, reinforces my view that funding schools through property taxes is a perverse and ultimately damaging idea. I understand the ideals behind it (schools are funded locally, playing into the strange american fixation with avoiding distributing tax revenues). Affirmative action is mentioned as outdated, but perhaps it is a sign that american society still feels guilty over the fact that not sixty years ago large swathes were still arguing against the integration of schools.

(As an aside, isn't there a thing where the titles of links are changed when they don't match the content that everyone keeps complaining about? Wouldn't this be a prime example of a link whose title should be changed to match the article within?)

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> perhaps it is a sign that american society still feels guilty over the fact that not sixty years ago large swathes were still arguing against the integration of schools

Smaller swaths of American society are still against the integration of schools, for the record. If you survey and abstract the arguments made, you'll find a lot that have the structure, "If this political action (e.g. bill passes; bill is defeated; president elected, etc.) happens, then our children will be forced to learn that apostasy (e.g. gay agenda, lots of sex, non-Biblical whatevers, etc.)." As has been pointed out repeatedly by pro-gay advocates, this is a verbatim, find/replace repetition of arguments against racial integration.

Definitely! This was the most line of reasoning in the article with the most impact. Property taxes are often progressive, disproportionally affecting the relatively wealthy. That's good. But when the benefits are collected and spent too locally, it means areas with higher property values also get better services. It takes away the progressive quality of property taxes.

Continue this to an extreme: property taxes that I pay are only spent on my household. The city/county maintains my property, educates my children. There's no more progressive distribution.

What definition of progressive are you using? They aren't super linear relative to income.

I think you've gotten your definition of progressive muddled. Property taxes are considered to be progressive because property values are widely considered to correlate strongly with income and wealth. Spending those taxes locally (or apportioning funds for local amenaties based on local tax revenue) is regressive, because increased benefit is then therefore correlated strongly with increased wealth and income. Therefore, your example represents a most regressive distribution of tax distribution.

They originate from small New England towns where they would have been progressive. Now that the rich and the poor don't live near each other they're regressive.

I think we agree. I didn't put it as succinctly. Progressive tax. Regressive distribution. That's an excellent way of looking at it.

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