Michael Erickson <sysengr@atc.boeing.com> makes an interesting attempt at
starting a systems thinking approach on this list with
>...So what causes people to lose their homes?
and then asserts that the government taxation of property is a root cause
of this phenomenon.
>...but I think there are some
>even more basic systemic "things" at work, and I think it starts where
>most of our problems start... in the "how we think" area.
The idea of taxing property to fund education grew out of the notion that
the size of home was related to the size of family because people often
moved to get the extra bedroom needed for the latest addition. The
surrogate was needed by the other notion of universal education not
enabling the user to pay.
Any form of taxation is discriminatory. It becomes more so when the
underlying assumptions, that lead to the creation of the tax, change the
perceived discrimination and its effects.
>From an LO perspective, perhaps this just empahsizes the need to dig down
to the underlying reasons why things are as they are, and then, when we
are grounded in valid causes, to craft a new system that supports the
revised causes.
So rather than debate whether property tax is good or not, let's
bang around my two assertions regarding the root cause of universal
property taxes:
1) That education should be universal,
2) That "user pay" is not acceptable, and
3) That house tax is a surrogate for family size,
from the above viewpoints, namely, were they ever valid, and are they
still relevant now. I suspect the ensuing debate will illustrate to us
some of the challenges we are facing with any LO implementation...Keith
--Keith Cowan <72212.51@CompuServe.COM>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>