Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008 | Proposition A deserves to be defeated! It is possibly one of the most regressive taxes in the histoy of the United States. A “regressive” tax is where poor people pay a much higher percentage of their income than wealthy people. An example is that a man who earns $50,000 a year and his neighbor who earns $100,000 a year both drive about the same amount of mileage, and pay the same amount of gas tax. But relative to their income, the poorer man pays twice as high of a percentage. The income tax, on the other hand, is a progressive tax — wealthier people not only pay more, but a higher percentage than poorer people.
Prop A is regressive in TWO ways: Everyone, rich or poor, pays $52 a parcel, so this would be a much higher percentage of income for poorer people than wealthy people. Secondly, in cities like Chula Vista, wealthy people own multi-million dollar homes on the eastern edge of the city, while the lowest income people live for the most part along the western edge. The people along the western edge have no probability of being threatened by a wildfire, while the wealthy people on the eastern edge have every probability of being threatened by a wildfire. Yet they both pay $52 per parcel.
Prop A represents the largest transfer of wealth from poor people to wealthy people in the history of Chula Vista! Apparently there was no attempt to match the probable benefit to be received with how much one would pay. Too bad.