John Aden Lewis
Having spent several weeks basking in the warm glow of self-congratulation for voting to raise my own taxes in the name of bettering our local schools, I recently passed a few minutes asking myself: What’s this really going to cost me?
The approval of the recent school bond referendum means that the average Metuchen household will soon be smacked with a $250 annual tax increase. Of course, I try not to think of the yearly increase as equaling $250 dollars. Instead, I think of it as 68 cents per day. That seems much more reasonable.
Still, my materialistic side has begun its accounting. In Metuchen terms, $250 dollars means about seven sushi dinners at Mr. Pi’s, 715 bagels, 17 round-trip train tickets between Metuchen and Penn Station, and a minivan’s worth of stuff from Variety Village. Lord knows how many frozen hot dogs I could buy at Costco, and if I ventured as far as the Menlo Park Mall, I could buy myself an I-Pod.
It’s almost enough to make me want to rescind my vote.
Soon, however, my better self begins to take over, and I can hear the whisperings of wise relatives, both dead and alive. They whisper: “sacrifice”, “delayed gratification”, “there is a relationship between suffering and wisdom”, and “education is the greatest of all goods.”
But that I-Pod would be pretty cool, wouldn’t it? If the bond referendum had failed, I could get the I-Pod this year, and download 250 songs next year. After a few more years, I could save up for a plasma TV and a Bose radio.
I mean, do our kids really need to play on Astroturf? Kids are resilient, aren’t they? They’ve got flexible joints, so I’m sure a dirt-potholed field won’t hurt them. And do they really need fancy Internet wiring in the high school? Can’t they do their Internet projects at home?
After 25 years, $250 per year comes to nearly $6,000! That’s a down payment on an SUV!
“Ah,” respond my wise, whispering relatives, “$6,000 buys only one-third of one year’s tuition at some of the local private schools. It buys you slightly more at a parochial school, but not much more.”
But $250 dollars a year! Do you know how many ice cream cones that buys me? How many cups of Starbucks? And if I save, sacrifice and delay gratification, I could pay for a high-end Caribbean cruise, a new laptop, a digital camera, or some nice jewelry for my wife.
“You fool,” they whisper. “It’s a twenty-five year bond issue. Have you forgotten about inflation? What do you think $250 is going to buy you twenty-five years from now?”
“How much?”
“Eighty-two dollars worth of today’s goods. That’s how much.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And by 2030, a round-trip train ticket to Penn Station will cost you $42. So, for the price of less than five round trips to New York, you have chosen to make a massive improvement to your local schools.”
Now that I think about it, $17.2 million seems like a lot now, but taking the long view, I’m wondering why we didn’t decide to spend a little bit more.