I’ve already written two posts, and I’m starting to realize that politics is taking a back stage to the soap opera that I’m currently living through. I'm located in New Hampshire, which has traditionally been a conservative state but has recently taken on a distinct tone of purple. The newly elected Democratic legislature just failed in its first attempt to legislate the mandatory use of seat belts. We are the last state in the union to not impose this by law, and for the moment the Dems are being forced to regroup and attempt a more modest proposal. Perhaps they would be satisfied by simply modifying the state motto to “Live Free and Die”.
My family lives about fifteen miles north of Massachusetts and the town is being overrun by liberals and their failed policies. The most recent indication of this was an embarrassing break-out of lunacy in our local middle school, which held a "value diversity" night celebrating the enlightened culture of Saudi Arabia. The festivities included the segregation of women.
Massholes are fleeing their six percent income tax, their five percent sales tax, and a host of oppresive mandates from Beacon Hill. It’s not uncommon now in Massachusetts to spend fifty thousand dollars upgrading one’s septic system to comply with new state mandated standards. This upgrade needs to be done before any house is sold.
And for this enhanced revenue stream you get the Big Dig, with its billions of dollars of cost overruns and the excitement of knowing that you could be killed just by driving home through poorly inspected infrastructure.
Envious Bostonians float the canard of “Yah, you folks in New Hampshire don’t have a sales tax or income tax, but you pay through the nose on your property.” Property taxes are indeed higher in the Granite State than in Massachusetts, but this is an apples to oranges comparison which equates tax rates on the same dollar value assessment. The cruel fact is that the same house in Massachusetts can be up to fifty or a hundred percent more expensive to purchase.
In other words to have the same quality home in Massachusetts you have to pay a much higher mortgage, and the higher assessment value neutralizes any advantage of the lower property tax rate. And that’s before you get to the weekly six percent reduction of your paycheck and fork over an extra fifteen hundred dollars when you buy a new car.
The foliage is nice up here, but that’s not what is driving the migration from Boston.