Anti-tax crusaders are just dumb

I have talked about issues like this so many times that I have become weary. I would like to institute a rule that would require anyone wanting to change the tax structure to actually understand how government is funded and how it works.

Oh yeah, here is the article

And yes, they are running an initiative that would freeze property taxes in Arizona. It would work in a similar manner to the disastrous prop 13 from California. Maricopa and Pinal counties in particular would be hurt by this. It would likely just force tax increases in other areas.

California public schools, which in the 1960s had been ranked #1 nationally in student achievement,[citation needed] have fallen to 48th in many surveys of student achievement.[6] Some have disputed Proposition 13's direct role in the move to state financing of public schools, because schools financed mostly by property taxes were declared unconstitutional in Serrano vs. Priest, and Proposition 13 was then passed partially as a result of that case.[5] California's spending per pupil was the same as the national average until about 1985, when it began dropping, which led to another referendum, Proposition 98, that requires a certain percentage of the state's budget to be directed towards education.[3]
Public libraries have seen a decrease in funding from cities.[5] Fire departments were gutted because of a drastic loss of funds.[citation needed] Police departments received generally the same amount of funding, from 15% in 1978 to 16% in 1995.[5] Cities also cut water, gas and electricity expenses.[5]
California's Proposition 13 has introduced major problems of equity and efficiency into the state's tax structure.[7] An analytical approach to examining a tax policy is to apply the traditional principles of taxation, including equity, allocative efficiency, revenue yield/elasticity and administrative and political feasibility. Equity reflects the basic values of how our society determines different groups should be treated; these values include horizontal and vertical equity, ability to pay and benefits received. Allocative efficiency refers to the ways in which a tax policy influences changes in private consumption behavior. Revenue yield and elasticity refer to whether a revenue policy has the capacity to increase in the future in order to continue enabling government agencies to meet the demands of its residents. Lastly, administrative and political feasibility refer to whether a tax policy can be implemented and enforced with relatively little effort and is politically possible.
Proposition 13 freezes the value of properties at the time of purchase with a possible two percent annual assessment increase. Therefore, properties of equal value have a great amount of variation in their assessment, even if they are next to each other.[3] Assuming that the price of a house is somewhat a determinant of a person’s wealth (and therefore ability to pay) and benefit received, this feature would lead neighbors or business owners who purchased a property at different periods of time to pay a different assessment, without any relationship to ability to pay or benefits received.[3] Overall, these qualities create serious inequities and potentially introduce some amount of regressivity into the tax structure.[citation needed] (FROM WIKIPEDIA)