2015 NJ property taxes increased at quickest rate in 4 years, up $537 million

I agree with you to an extent. Many people would throw out "jobs" as a red herring, but I think those issues are closer related than it seems. NJ is in a weird situation when it comes to commuters. How many other states can you think of where you have large pockets of suburbs that commute to 1 of 2 major cities that are out of state? Pretty much any county north of Middlesex is within spitting distance of NYC, and every county south of Mercer is spitting distance of Philly. Heck, how often do you see people from out of state asking this sub about a good place to move to to commute into NYC?

NJ needs money from home owners because we can't sustain off the income tax of workers like we used to. The bear share of J&J's, Dow Chemical's, Cambell's blue collar manufacturing jobs left the state ages ago and they're never coming back (yes this is a country wide issue, but NJ is practically ground zero for this shift).

If you were to lower property taxes, you would incentivise people in the cities to move here. If you do that and raise the gas tax you might negate any savings a potential NY-er/Philly-an would gain from moving to the burbs, thus eliminating the incentive, and you're now the hurting NJ middle class takes another blow (remember how bad it was in 2008 when gas hit $4 a gallon, and good luck getting around in public transportation here). Not to mention we're already pretty dense as is and can our crap-tastic infrastructure handle it if we were to come up with an effective incentive to move more people here? I doubt raising the gas tax would make up for the gap since NJ isn't the destination it once was. AC is hemorrhaging since the dawn of NY and PA state gambling, and trucks can just as easily re-route through PA if it becomes cheaper to drive through there with a raised gas tax.

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