Somebody drew a line around people and called the collection Jackson County. In one part of the county, people had expensive McMansions, so they got high tax valuations to make sure the poor people in the valley could have government services. Although the rich people constituted less than 10% of the population, they wound up paying about 60% of the taxes.
This was OK until money started getting scarce. The rich people grew restless, supposing they should have some services, too. County Manager Chuck Wooten didn’t think they needed that many services, since they were well-behaved and a lot of homes were vacant much of the year. The county had already built three million-dollar luxury projects in the rich neighborhoods, in spite of Maslow’s placement of senior cultural centers in a less fundamental level on his hierarchy than getting thugs off the streets. For the sake of openness, though, Wooten asked what the rich people wanted, and some expressed interest in an indoor designer Olympic pool. It would, after all, create jobs and all.
That strategy for conveying money from the rich to the poor is only satisfying in certain conversations, and this was not one of them. Some suggested the broad brush of traditional assessments was not a perfect idea for other reasons. Although money was needed down in the poor valley, the poor folk living between the cracks of the McMansions had high assessments, too. As revals approach, it is expected that everybody, except maybe government-personhood, will wind up financially-challenged.
Wooten had a couple cute quotes to end both articles (1, 2).
