Those who insist (inaccurately) that so-called “pay-for-spray” and an “on your own” theory of governance were epitomized by firefighters in rural Obion Couty, Tennessee refusing to put out a fire – and indeed watching it burn – because the homeowner had declined to pay a subscription fee for fire service from a nearby municipality have implied that “pay-for-spray” means that “ability to pay” is the determining factor for whether a homeowner receives fire coverage.
In this particular case, they have argued, the problem would have been alleviated had the County imposed a 0.13 percent property tax. The difference between “pay-for-spray” and a 0.13 percent property tax, they have asserted is the difference between a vision that “primarily serves the well off and privileged sectors of the country” and a vision that “believes in an American Dream that works for all people, regardless of their racial, religious, or economic background.”
Why don’t we put this to the test? Let us assume that the homeowners in this incident simply couldn’t afford the $75.00 subscription fee. Let us also assume that the home had a value of about $60,000, placing it in the bottom quartile of homes in Obion County. Finally, let us assume that the supposedly more equitable solution of a 0.13 percent property tax advocated by the likes of Think Progress and Keith Olbermann were implemented.
What then is the result? The homeowners now have to pay an additional $75.00 in taxes rather than paying a $75.00 subscription fee for fire coverage. The amount this homeowner, who we again assume to be indigent, has to pay is still $75.00 more than he can afford.
Ahh, you say, but if you don’t pay your taxes, you still at least get the fire coverage.
True enough, but this rather misses something important, as Kevin Carson explains n a comment at Unqualified Offerings:
But we should keep in mind what the real alternative is. The real alternative that Olberman & Co. advocate in place of letting your house burn down for nonpayment of fees is… to put your house up on the auction block for nonpayment of taxes.
Gosh, you mean paying taxes isn’t all rainbows and gummi bears?
So, under either solution, the indigent unable to afford $75.00 still loses their house.
There are, of course, still two differences between the solutions: under “pay-for-spray,” you lose not only your house, but everything and everyone inside it, while under an auction, you just lose your house; on the other hand, under “pay-for-spray,” you lose your house only if you’re unlucky enough to be the victim of a fire, while under an auction you lose your house because you can’t afford the tax, whether or not you’re unlucky enough to be the victim of a fire.
That’s not to say that a tax isn’t the best way of handling fire service in Obion County, Tennessee (I’m not qualified to answer that), or that there aren’t better alternatives than both “pay-for-spray” and taxation (there are certainly alternatives that the County can consider that aren’t being discussed on the national level). It’s just to say that the notion that the difference between “pay-for-spray” and service taxes is inherently one of serving only the privileged versus government “working for all the people regardless of . . . economic background” is laughable. Both solutions privilege exactly the same set of people at the expense of exactly the same set of people, just in different ways.
Do you really think that 75 dollars is going to put the house in arrears? and if so couldn’t they rent?
I figure this was either an idiot getting greedy, or someone who didn’t even realize what they were refusing.
With taxes your pets don’t burn to death.Report
@ThatPirateGuy,
Did you even watch the local news report? According to report, the home-owner said the fire took two hours to spread from the burn barrels to the house. And there was no mention of pets.Report
@ThatPirateGuy,
1. On the issue of burning pets, that’s part of what I was alluding to when I referenced losing “everything and everyone inside of” the home.
2. Are the odds of being put in arrears for a $75 delinquency in a given year smaller than the odds of being the victim of a fire in that same year? I would certainly suspect the opposite is true. At a minimum, the odds of being placed in arrears would certainly increase significantly each year one was unable to make the payment, while the odds of being a fire victim would remain essentially constant from year to year.
There are certainly plenty of reasons why one would and perhaps should prefer a tax-based system to a “pay-for-spray” system, but a preference for the average person over the privileged is not one of them.Report
@ThatPirateGuy, Its possible to choose rationally not to insure against certain risks. Just sayin’Report
“That’s not to say that a tax isn’t the best way of handling fire service in Obion County, Tennessee (I’m not qualified to answer that)”
Any enthusiasm for the idea that perhaps the voters of Obion County may have arrived at the solution best suited to the imperfect geographical and economic realities of providing rural fire-protection service?Report
@Tony Comstock, I don’t know, but certainly the voters of Obion County are in a better position than I to evaluate those tradeoffs.Report
I lived for a while in a county in the US that found they couldn’t afford a number of things, but the most pressing was full time 9.1.1. rescue services. People were understandably upset and demanded ambulances. The problem was every time they tried to raise the revenue, people were upset about that. At one point, they were considering a soda tax, which was a source of outrage. So I can understand why some areas would rather have a pay-for model than listen to angry taxpayers.Report
@Rufus F., But isn’t that an obvious case of the inanity of being up in arms about paying taxes for essential service that you want and don’t have the social capital to set up except via government?Report
@Michael Drew, Sure it is. I’d just get sick of listening to it, if it was up to me to allocate those funds.Report
Someone needs to explain the Laffer Curve to Obion County, so they can lower taxes and increase revenue.Report
@Mike Schilling,
Uh, what? So you think:
a) property values in the county are highly elastic with the property tax rate, and
b) that the current property tax rate is higher than the optimal in terms of revenue generation?
Interesting.Report
@Douglas2,
I think that lowering taxes to raise revenues would be as effective in Obion County as it has been nationally.Report
People in the cities pay county taxes also so the folks in the cities would be paying twice for fire protection. You need an emergency services district or give the county the ability to add a municipal services tax to those who do not live in the city. This is the same problem with libraries and the like, if a city has one, and the county does not have the ability to set up a taxing district to charge those in the county for services. Actually for libraries the case is less clear a fee there makes more sense, since rarely is going to a library an emergency, and the fee would be for a card to check out books.Report
@Lyle, not necessarily. Where I’m originally from, unincorporated areas pay special taxes for police protection from the Sheriff’s Department while those living in cities with their own departments don’t. I don’t see why it couldn’t work that way for fire protection as well.Report
@Trumwill, Indeed that is what an emergency services district does it collects taxes to pay for fire and possibly ambulance. The names vary from state to state, and how to do it varies depending on the states laws and if a township or similar structure covers unincorporated areas. Basically the idea is to let the voters of an area decide to tax themselves for the services.Report
There’s also the concern about my neighbor letting his house burn down, and my home value suffering as a result of his bizarre cost-benefit analysis. Though I’m sure the population density is small enough for this part of Tennessee that they wouldn’t really feel like my neighbor anyway, so at least if they choose to burn they burn alone.Report