Russell McMahon wrote:

>> Ah, but what's "bad"?  My definition of that would be that I didn't 
>> get the result I wanted!  :-)

Now here's a universal truth! :)

>> You obviously can't have voting on illogical issues, such as "No 
>> taxes and free fuel for everyone".
> 
> There's no reason that you can't. [...] 
> 
> [...] commenting on California's "proposition 13" where I made the
> apparently unnacceptable comment that voters attempted to have their
> cake and eat it too. Apparently that's not what actually happened :-) 

And this isn't what happened. What happened is that some bake the cake, and
others have it and eat it. But that's what usually happens with public
finances :)

Since the amount of money the public administration spends is mostly
determined by other factors, this issue was simply about how the (property)
taxes are distributed. Which in this case meant that on otherwise similar
properties some have to pay a lot more than others, because of a different
/history/ of the property. This may be fairer, or unfairer -- depending on
your point of view. It just takes something into account that often is not
(the history of the property). Nothing really illogical here, especially
not when you consider that in CA property prices can rise 100% in 2 years
-- and that the rise is caused by the "newcomers". So why not have them
take the lion share of the burden? :)  (I'm not stating an opinion here,
other than that both sides have reasonable arguments other than cakes.)

Gerhard
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