The Social Science Of Economics - Predation, Victimization and Violence Endorsed By The State - Part Four. North Dakota Voters Consider Abolishing Property Tax

Many Wall Street firms and other financial predators have teamed up with states to essentially victimize  property holders in our nation.  There is a substantial element of predation involved in the property tax dynamic.  First of all, fear mongering is used to pass major property tax levies.  Second, manipulation is often an element as bureaucrats threaten to cut classroom services and teachers first.  Obviously that is a well-known predatory political technique across every social and community program that matters to citizens.  When property taxes are late, the states have teamed with with predatory firms, including banksters, and the legal community to loot homeowners and slap on excessive fees that oftentimes make it impossible to recover.  These looting fees are always picked up by society in some manner.  Now some of this is based on political corruption, cronyism and a sense of entitlement by politicians at the state level.  That can be fixed.  But what can't be fixed is no person in this country should ever lose their home because they want to work and cannot find economic means or a living wage.  The property tax has this fundamentally-flawed issue behind it. 

If we get beyond the ad hominem attacks of the political parties meant to polarize and atomize citizen action, and listen to the concerns of citizens, there is ample truth reflected in the base of the Tea Party movement.  The base is often hard working, decent people.  Now, the actual Tea Party has been hijacked by corrupt Washington insiders, and the vast majority of the congressional members have already sold out to special interest money.  But, most Tea Party members, just like most Organize Wall Street members, have legitimate concerns about the massive corruption of our government by the dumbed-down corporate state. 

We live in a democracy not a capitalism.  We should live in a society that empowers all citizens to own property as was once the case.   The flip side to that empowerment is responsibility.  Ownership helps create a sense of responsibility and belonging.  One becomes personally invested in their own future.  That includes the future of our communities, our families and our nation.  Frankly, George Bush was right in the bigger picture about the ownership society.  I know that makes many partisan hacks respond with some vitriolic nonsense.  Everyone in our society can afford some level of housing or property were the system set up to empower citizens rather than prey upon them.  Granting the concept of ownership to a predatory financial system was arguably criminal.  But, then his Treasury Secretary was the poster child for Wall Street predation. 

Every citizen in our nation most certainly can be  empowered to own property.  That includes the impoverished, special needs citizens, the wealthy and everyone in between.   Owning property yet having a lifetime obligation of $100-200-$300,000 in property taxes is not ownership.  It's predation and enslavement.   Even homes of modest means in certain neighborhoods can have property tax bills this large or larger. 

Now, some will wrongly believe that property taxes are the only method of giving local control or that government would have to cut social and community services.  More nonsense.  Under the system as it is designed today, the property tax dilemma would need to be offset with taxes somewhere else, but that is easily achievable.  Easily.  Additionally, with a public banking/monetary system, as I have noted a thousand times since starting this blog, both money and interest would become public functions that assist in filling the coffers of our communities in lieu of debt and tax enslavement.    In other words, they would provide the impetus to abolish property taxes.  Easily.  Without a loss of social and community services. 

It has been years since I have written of this but as we discussed many times on here, Thomas Jefferson believed property was such an important democratic concept that he wished government to give property to every citizen.  That's right.  Give.  Everyone.  Democracy.  Not socialism or communism or other ad hominem attacks that would be used today by the dumbed-down corporate state wishing to control the narrative and atomize any reasoned call for change.  I'm sure Jefferson didn't envision the force of the state used to rip that property out of the hands of citizens who were oftentimes forced out of employment and economic opportunity by that very entity because of their complicity in corruption, predation, victimization and violence.    That is the country we live in today.  And, both the state and corporations are complicit in this violence.  Make no mistake, any time a citizen wants to work and wants to own a home and wants to pay their property taxes but cannot, the end result is violence against a citizen of this country. 

There are numerous methods of granting Jefferson's wish in some limited form.  Obviously Steven Spielberg's home isn't going to be granted under a government program.  But, a capped voucher or countless other creative ideas that would fly off of the fingertips of Americans would and could work.   It's not important to get caught up in the how's.  It's important to understand property ownership is possible for all Americans.  At the very least, a public banking system could extend a zero-interest loan on homes up to a certain amount, and provide a flexible mortgage whose payments are cut or even suspended if economic crisis hits for any particular citizen.  As I have noted before, a public banking system would never need to make a profit and loans could be kept on its balance sheet ad infinitum, if necessary.   Think this is unworkable?  We already did in under Franklin Roosevelt.  It was called the HOLC program; something I wrote about many years ago as a possible solution to this mess.  But Obama, Bush and both fascist political parties are too beholden to corruption to implement it.  Instead we see the violence of the state used to dump millions of Americans on the street. 

The world has to be absolutely nothing like it is.  Today's world is defined by violence, predation and victimization of corporations and the state.  Fascism.  A merit-based democracy is easily within reach.  The reality is, if you can dream any change in this world, it most certainly can be done.   Every single advancement by humanity once started as that very dream.  It's just a matter of will and virtue to make it happen.  Or, as is the case in the dumbed-down corporate state, the lack thereof.

Private, for-profit banking will never serve the needs of democracy.  It is an oxymoron.  A form of anti-democratic violence, usury and graft protected by the state since its creation.

Title link here.