There is no fundamental difference in the fast that the unpaid debt will need to be collected (via higher taxes & fees) from the responsible citizens.
Collection of large unsecured debt after the fact is abysmally bad. If lucky large entity equipped with significant collection resources might get $0.02 to $0.05 on the dollar.
The lost money will have to be made up by the parties who did the right thing (either voting/paying higher taxes or paying $75 fee for coverage).
So when he doesn't pay the $10,000 what then? You are ware that trillions in debt gets written off as uncollectable every year.
So the guy so reckless and irresponsible to not pay $75 upfront will suddenly become some responsible to pay $10,000 AFTER his home is already saved? I think not.
So where does the $10,000 default loss come from? From all the responsible people. So instead of paying $75 they pay $80, or 85 just so this jack wagon can be cheap and save $75. Why?
Simple concept: Pay $75 and home is protected. He didn't pay, his home isn't protected..
The town isn't in the county where the house is located. The town is located in ANOTHER county.
The county where the house is located has devoted $0.00 on fire protection. It has done so by the express will of the voters (like the individual who's house burned). For 20 years there have been proposals to raise taxes to either fund a fire dept or purchase blanket coverage from another county/town. Those proposals have died.
In a perfect economic system in which all debts are always paid, and there is no legal or illegal method to avoid payment you are right.
The reality is collecting of post-service especially on a very very large cost is prohibitive. A huge % of billed amount will never be paid. Thus that costs has to be absorbed by those who do pay.
The town has no taxing authority for non-residents. They have no authority to compell payment and as such the debt would quickly become uncollectable as do trillions of dollars in consumer debt every year.
Why should the town face such a burden just to protect those who intentionally opt out of a low cost protection?
I mean they likely could and the cost "could" be redistributed (maybe every prepaid non-resident pays $120 per year instead of $75) but why?
If I am smart enough to pay the $75 why should I have to pay more because this guy is too reckless to make the easy choice to pay $75 up front and be covered.
Your entire premise boils down to the fact that the fire dept will be able to collect tens of thousands of dollars from the same individual who opted out of paying $75.
There is this thing called bankruptcy. Do you think someone too foolish/cheap to pay $75 would have any qualms about filing bankruptcy to avoid $10,000+ in service fees?
The second issue is that is a contract under durress. Entirely possible a lawyer could get it tossed.
Once again he had a simple and effective option. Pay the $75. He chose not to. The town sent him a letter warning him of lack of coverage. The town then called him asking him to pay for coverage. He declined both attempts to reestablish coverage.
I will say this very clearly.... HE DOESN'T PAY ANY TAXES (as in $0.00) for FIRE DEPT.
His county has NO fire dept.
The nearby town DOES have a fire dept. Town residents DO pay taxes (and thus no $75 fee). The town offers an optional service to NON-RESIDENTS for fire service outside the town.
The county this voter lives in has for 20 years voted down any attempt to raise taxes to fund a county fire dept.
Starting to get it. He wants fire service yet he doesn't want to pay it (either by $75 fee or by higher taxes). There are no free lunches.
Three scenarios: a) he lived in town - he would pay higher taxes and would have fire dept coverage b) he lived in county and paid $75 fee - he would have lower taxes, pay fee and have coverage. c) he lived in county and opted out of fee - he would have lowest cost and no coverage.
He made a choice (a bad choice) to opt for C. Nobody forced him to do that. He though he could not pay and still be protected (others would pay the cost). He was wrong.
By his own admission he a) didn't have sufficient home owners insurance (insurance was less than house value) b) knew he didn't pay and thought the fire fighters would still put out the fire.
The town has no taxing authority for non-residents. The county (via voters in the county like the person you are defending) has chosen for 20 years NOT to raise taxes for a fire dept.
Thus the town fire dept has no mechanism to cover cost of services for non-residents other than a) prepaid annual fee b) postpaid attempt to collect tens of thousands of dollars from someone too stupid/cheap to pay $75.
Which method do you think is more likely to work long term. The town fire dept use to respond to uncovered homes and bill residents. They (not a shocker) found the overwhelming majority of residents simply never paid the bill. Thus to cut default losses they went to a strict prepayment coverage method for non-residents.
At any time if the residents of the county don't like this they could vote to raise taxes and either a) fund their own fire dept b) pay a "universal fee" to the town to cover all county residents.
Why would expect someone who opts out of paying $75.would pay a $5,000+ bill.
The town has no legal authority to tax or fine non-residents. Period. Thus that $5,000+ post-fire bill will simply become an uncollected debt.
There is a reason why many services are prepaid. Hell even my cable bill is prepaid. I stop paying I stop getting cable. If cable company allowed me a lifetime of cable service and then tried to collect $10,000 at the end how successful do you think they would be? How many people would simply not pay? How many broke individuals would file bankruptcy if necessary to avoid payment.
"folks" do have a way of getting coverage it is called $75 per year for non residents.
The firedept is part of the town. The house is OUTSIDE the town. The town has no legal authority to compel payment of either the $75 or $1500 (more like $10,000) cost.
If the guy is such a stupid cheapstake to avoid paying the $75 what makes you think he will ever pay the $10,000? So when he doesn't pay after the fact (and why would he) other responsible residents pay for his free coverage.
No it is pretty simply. Want fire protection a) raise taxes so you have your own fire dept b) pay the $75.
Yeah and a significant portion of that is NEVER collected hence the reason why credit card rates are 10%-36%. They collect more from the paying to offset the default losses.
So the comparison to fire dept is those who are responsible should pay MORE in order to offset default losses from those who are to cheap to pay $75?
And homeowner to cheap to pay $75 fee is going to pay $10,000 fee.
What happens when $10,000 fee is not paid? The responsible tax paying town residents should pay that cost because some jack wagon want to "save" $75 a year.
The TOWN HAS NO TAXING AUTHORITY for non-residents. Pretty simply concept. They can't compel non-residents to pay anything either BEFORE or AFTER a fire. As such logically the best collection method for no-residents is a PREPAYMENT.
He a) didn't pay $75 fee b) didn't have sufficient coverage on his home (likely to save another $50 a year)
however the fire dept should take a financial risk of 100x that to provide services that he opted out of. That he was aware he opted out of. That he has opted out of for years.
Sorry responsibilty starts somewhere. The guy had lots of options: a) he could have paid $75 b) he could have lobbied to have count raise taxes and pay everyone's $75 "universal coverage" c) he could have pushed for a county fire dept. d) he could have had proper amount of insurance on his home. With a low deductible and 100% coverage this might even be cheaper.
He opted not to do any of that. He opted to be foolish with his monetary resources, then he expected to be protected anyways.
Sorry services aren't free. They have costs. Most people realize this some people will be the first to riot if you say we need to raise taxes and talk about "small govt" but will be first in line for free services they didn't pay.
Guy $75 -> $75 more in county taxes -> $75 paid to town Guy $75 -> $75 paid to town
What is the difference. The guy has representation for this taxes. At any point in last 20 years the residents of the county could have passed a law raising taxes and paying for coverage for whole county. They didn't? Why I don't know but the fact that the guy opted out of paying $75 says a lot. Maybe a significant % of the county thinks the same way.
Maybe they don't want "those ebil socialists forcing me to give the town $75, fires rarely happen and I know better how to spend my money than the govt does".
The GOVT of the COUNTY has chosen to NOT have fire dept.
The town has a fire dept (paid for by taxes on town residents) as a friendly neighbor the town offers the county residents coverage because it knows they don't have coverage.
The govt isn't some magical entity. It is (imperfectly) the will of the people. Obviously the fact that the county has no universal coverage means the people of the county don't want universal coverage.
the county gets it's authority FROM the voters of the county. Maybe the voters of the county don't want coverage.
I mean Democracy is about representing the will of the people. Nobody said the people always make the right decisions.
Maybe this incident will either a) cause county to fund it's own fire dept b) cause legislation for county to pay for "universal coverage" via taxes to pass
or maybe the county will still not want "big govt" forcing people to get thing they don't want.
I mean if the people in the county don't want forced coverage who is going to force them to get it.
However the county is controlled by voters, voters such as this guy who felt $75 less in expenses was a good tradeoff for leaving his home vulnerable to fire. The county can have at any point in last 20 years simply funded their own fire dept but didn't. That likely gives some insight into the views and wants of the voters.
Then the firedept gets to be a bill collection service too which increases costs and overhead for the 99.999999999999999999% of people smart enough to protect their home for $75.
Then like any other debt some % becomes noncollectable which further increases costs.
The county has no fire dept. If they (residents collectively) want fire coverage they could simply raise taxes and have a fire dept.
Alternatively the county could raise taxes and simply pay lump sum fee to the town to "cover" the entire county.
Likely neither of those have happened because the $75 fee is a good enough value and easily enough paid that for 99% of county residents they simply pay it (like they do utility bills and homeowners insurance).
Always been this way. The county has NO fire dept. They have chosen (via taxation and voting) to NOT have a fire dept.
The town (which can't tax county residents) offers to use town fire dept to protect non-residents but they are expected to pay.
Town residents = covered & pay via taxes Covered non-residents = covered & pay $75 fee Non covered non-residents = not covered. They chose to not fund a county fire dept, and chose not to pay $75 fee.
There is no technical reason preventing them from starting a fire dept. However doing so would require raising taxes. Given the size of the county and low population density taxes might need to be raised SIGNIFICANTLY (likely more than $75 per capita) to fund a county fire dept.
The nearby town offers coverage (because the county he lives in, pays taxes in, and votes in) has no fire protection of their own. Now fire depts cost money so the town doesn't provide it free to non-residents. IF you live in the town would you want to pay higher taxes to offer free coverage to non-residents outside the town (who don't pay town taxes)? I don't think so. So the town offers (they can't force, they have no ability to tax non-residents) coverage for a modest $75. The homeowner denied coverage. He wasn't covered.
If the town didn't offer coverage to non-residents he also wouldn't be covered and his home would still have burned.
So in the future the county can a) fund a fire dept b) increase county/real estate taxes by $75 per residence and get a blanket contract for whole county to be covered by the town fire dept. c) encourage residents to pay $75.
The town isn't at fault because the county has no fire dept. The town isn't at fault because the county resident (who they have no legal authority to tax) didn't pay the $75 fee. The town isn't at fault because the county govt didn't just step in and pay for coverage for all county residents.
Then the county should raise taxes and get a fire dept.
This is the TOWN fire dept. The county (where man lives, and votes, and pays taxes) has NO firedept. The town can't legally collect taxes from non-residents. There is nothing stopping the county from collecting taxes, getting their own fire dept, or simply paying for all residents (o be covered by city fire dept).
Town residents pay taxes for the fire dept. So what is the solution? a) town fire dept NEVER responds to calls outside the town - his house burns b) town fire dept offers $75 service to people outside the town - which he had the option to pay c) town fire dept protects everyone outside the town at no cost - which means costs are paid by city residents.
I think the town fire dept providing coverage to people OUTSIDE THE TOWN for a modest $75 fee is a good compromise. Why should city residents (via taxes) pay to cover non-city residents? The town could simply never respond to calls outside their town but that isn't optimal either.
How about you start a private fire dept which offers post-paid coverage?
How quickly do you think you would go out of business relying on no upfront money and collecting tens of thousands of dollars from people who's home's caught fire?
There already is an easier solution. It is called pay the $75 and be covered.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no fundamental difference in the fast that the unpaid debt will need to be collected (via higher taxes & fees) from the responsible citizens.
Collection of large unsecured debt after the fact is abysmally bad. If lucky large entity equipped with significant collection resources might get $0.02 to $0.05 on the dollar.
The lost money will have to be made up by the parties who did the right thing (either voting/paying higher taxes or paying $75 fee for coverage).
So when he doesn't pay the $10,000 what then? You are ware that trillions in debt gets written off as uncollectable every year.
So the guy so reckless and irresponsible to not pay $75 upfront will suddenly become some responsible to pay $10,000 AFTER his home is already saved? I think not.
So where does the $10,000 default loss come from? From all the responsible people. So instead of paying $75 they pay $80, or 85 just so this jack wagon can be cheap and save $75. Why?
Simple concept:
Pay $75 and home is protected. He didn't pay, his home isn't protected..
No you are wrong yet again.
The town isn't in the county where the house is located. The town is located in ANOTHER county.
The county where the house is located has devoted $0.00 on fire protection. It has done so by the express will of the voters (like the individual who's house burned). For 20 years there have been proposals to raise taxes to either fund a fire dept or purchase blanket coverage from another county/town. Those proposals have died.
The county has no fire coverage at all.
The problem becomes collection.
In a perfect economic system in which all debts are always paid, and there is no legal or illegal method to avoid payment you are right.
The reality is collecting of post-service especially on a very very large cost is prohibitive. A huge % of billed amount will never be paid. Thus that costs has to be absorbed by those who do pay.
The town has no taxing authority for non-residents. They have no authority to compell payment and as such the debt would quickly become uncollectable as do trillions of dollars in consumer debt every year.
Why should the town face such a burden just to protect those who intentionally opt out of a low cost protection?
I mean they likely could and the cost "could" be redistributed (maybe every prepaid non-resident pays $120 per year instead of $75) but why?
If I am smart enough to pay the $75 why should I have to pay more because this guy is too reckless to make the easy choice to pay $75 up front and be covered.
Your entire premise boils down to the fact that the fire dept will be able to collect tens of thousands of dollars from the same individual who opted out of paying $75.
That isn't a logical premise.
There is this thing called bankruptcy. Do you think someone too foolish/cheap to pay $75 would have any qualms about filing bankruptcy to avoid $10,000+ in service fees?
The second issue is that is a contract under durress. Entirely possible a lawyer could get it tossed.
Once again he had a simple and effective option. Pay the $75. He chose not to. The town sent him a letter warning him of lack of coverage. The town then called him asking him to pay for coverage. He declined both attempts to reestablish coverage.
He wasn't covered and his house burned.
I will say this very clearly....
HE DOESN'T PAY ANY TAXES (as in $0.00) for FIRE DEPT.
His county has NO fire dept.
The nearby town DOES have a fire dept.
Town residents DO pay taxes (and thus no $75 fee).
The town offers an optional service to NON-RESIDENTS for fire service outside the town.
The county this voter lives in has for 20 years voted down any attempt to raise taxes to fund a county fire dept.
Starting to get it.
He wants fire service yet he doesn't want to pay it (either by $75 fee or by higher taxes). There are no free lunches.
Three scenarios:
a) he lived in town - he would pay higher taxes and would have fire dept coverage
b) he lived in county and paid $75 fee - he would have lower taxes, pay fee and have coverage.
c) he lived in county and opted out of fee - he would have lowest cost and no coverage.
He made a choice (a bad choice) to opt for C. Nobody forced him to do that. He though he could not pay and still be protected (others would pay the cost). He was wrong.
Per the idiots own words:
"I thought they'd come out and put it out, even if you hadn't paid your $75, but I was wrong," said Gene Cranick
http://www.firefighternation.com/forum/topics/tennessee-firefighters-let?commentId=889755:Comment:4873745
By his own admission he
a) didn't have sufficient home owners insurance (insurance was less than house value)
b) knew he didn't pay and thought the fire fighters would still put out the fire.
The town has no taxing authority for non-residents.
The county (via voters in the county like the person you are defending) has chosen for 20 years NOT to raise taxes for a fire dept.
Thus the town fire dept has no mechanism to cover cost of services for non-residents other than
a) prepaid annual fee
b) postpaid attempt to collect tens of thousands of dollars from someone too stupid/cheap to pay $75.
Which method do you think is more likely to work long term. The town fire dept use to respond to uncovered homes and bill residents. They (not a shocker) found the overwhelming majority of residents simply never paid the bill. Thus to cut default losses they went to a strict prepayment coverage method for non-residents.
At any time if the residents of the county don't like this they could vote to raise taxes and either
a) fund their own fire dept
b) pay a "universal fee" to the town to cover all county residents.
What happens when he doesn't pay?
Why would expect someone who opts out of paying $75.would pay a $5,000+ bill.
The town has no legal authority to tax or fine non-residents. Period. Thus that $5,000+ post-fire bill will simply become an uncollected debt.
There is a reason why many services are prepaid. Hell even my cable bill is prepaid. I stop paying I stop getting cable. If cable company allowed me a lifetime of cable service and then tried to collect $10,000 at the end how successful do you think they would be? How many people would simply not pay? How many broke individuals would file bankruptcy if necessary to avoid payment.
"folks" do have a way of getting coverage it is called $75 per year for non residents.
The firedept is part of the town. The house is OUTSIDE the town. The town has no legal authority to compel payment of either the $75 or $1500 (more like $10,000) cost.
If the guy is such a stupid cheapstake to avoid paying the $75 what makes you think he will ever pay the $10,000?
So when he doesn't pay after the fact (and why would he) other responsible residents pay for his free coverage.
No it is pretty simply. Want fire protection
a) raise taxes so you have your own fire dept
b) pay the $75.
win-win.
Yeah and a significant portion of that is NEVER collected hence the reason why credit card rates are 10%-36%.
They collect more from the paying to offset the default losses.
So the comparison to fire dept is those who are responsible should pay MORE in order to offset default losses from those who are to cheap to pay $75?
Doesn't sound equitable to me.
And homeowner to cheap to pay $75 fee is going to pay $10,000 fee.
What happens when $10,000 fee is not paid? The responsible tax paying town residents should pay that cost because some jack wagon want to "save" $75 a year.
The TOWN HAS NO TAXING AUTHORITY for non-residents. Pretty simply concept. They can't compel non-residents to pay anything either BEFORE or AFTER a fire. As such logically the best collection method for no-residents is a PREPAYMENT.
Yeah the guy is such a financial genious.
He
a) didn't pay $75 fee
b) didn't have sufficient coverage on his home (likely to save another $50 a year)
however the fire dept should take a financial risk of 100x that to provide services that he opted out of. That he was aware he opted out of. That he has opted out of for years.
Sorry responsibilty starts somewhere. The guy had lots of options:
a) he could have paid $75
b) he could have lobbied to have count raise taxes and pay everyone's $75 "universal coverage"
c) he could have pushed for a county fire dept.
d) he could have had proper amount of insurance on his home. With a low deductible and 100% coverage this might even be cheaper.
He opted not to do any of that. He opted to be foolish with his monetary resources, then he expected to be protected anyways.
Sorry services aren't free. They have costs. Most people realize this some people will be the first to riot if you say we need to raise taxes and talk about "small govt" but will be first in line for free services they didn't pay.
Obviously the guy is paying $75 LESS in taxes.
I mean govt spending isn't magic.
Guy $75 -> $75 more in county taxes -> $75 paid to town
Guy $75 -> $75 paid to town
What is the difference. The guy has representation for this taxes. At any point in last 20 years the residents of the county could have passed a law raising taxes and paying for coverage for whole county. They didn't? Why I don't know but the fact that the guy opted out of paying $75 says a lot. Maybe a significant % of the county thinks the same way.
Maybe they don't want "those ebil socialists forcing me to give the town $75, fires rarely happen and I know better how to spend my money than the govt does".
The govt IS in charge of fire protection.
The GOVT of the COUNTY has chosen to NOT have fire dept.
The town has a fire dept (paid for by taxes on town residents) as a friendly neighbor the town offers the county residents coverage because it knows they don't have coverage.
The govt isn't some magical entity. It is (imperfectly) the will of the people. Obviously the fact that the county has no universal coverage means the people of the county don't want universal coverage.
the county gets it's authority FROM the voters of the county. Maybe the voters of the county don't want coverage.
I mean Democracy is about representing the will of the people. Nobody said the people always make the right decisions.
Maybe this incident will either
a) cause county to fund it's own fire dept
b) cause legislation for county to pay for "universal coverage" via taxes to pass
or maybe the county will still not want "big govt" forcing people to get thing they don't want.
I mean if the people in the county don't want forced coverage who is going to force them to get it.
However the county is controlled by voters, voters such as this guy who felt $75 less in expenses was a good tradeoff for leaving his home vulnerable to fire.
The county can have at any point in last 20 years simply funded their own fire dept but didn't. That likely gives some insight into the views and wants of the voters.
Then the firedept gets to be a bill collection service too which increases costs and overhead for the 99.999999999999999999% of people smart enough to protect their home for $75.
Then like any other debt some % becomes noncollectable which further increases costs.
The county has no fire dept. If they (residents collectively) want fire coverage they could simply raise taxes and have a fire dept.
Alternatively the county could raise taxes and simply pay lump sum fee to the town to "cover" the entire county.
Likely neither of those have happened because the $75 fee is a good enough value and easily enough paid that for 99% of county residents they simply pay it (like they do utility bills and homeowners insurance).
Ouch. I haven't had a heart attack (yet). Still $5K, $50K, or $130K no entity could survive by offering retroactive insurance.
Always been this way. The county has NO fire dept. They have chosen (via taxation and voting) to NOT have a fire dept.
The town (which can't tax county residents) offers to use town fire dept to protect non-residents but they are expected to pay.
Town residents = covered & pay via taxes
Covered non-residents = covered & pay $75 fee
Non covered non-residents = not covered. They chose to not fund a county fire dept, and chose not to pay $75 fee.
His county HAS NO FIRE DEPT.
There is no technical reason preventing them from starting a fire dept. However doing so would require raising taxes. Given the size of the county and low population density taxes might need to be raised SIGNIFICANTLY (likely more than $75 per capita) to fund a county fire dept.
The nearby town offers coverage (because the county he lives in, pays taxes in, and votes in) has no fire protection of their own. Now fire depts cost money so the town doesn't provide it free to non-residents. IF you live in the town would you want to pay higher taxes to offer free coverage to non-residents outside the town (who don't pay town taxes)? I don't think so. So the town offers (they can't force, they have no ability to tax non-residents) coverage for a modest $75. The homeowner denied coverage. He wasn't covered.
If the town didn't offer coverage to non-residents he also wouldn't be covered and his home would still have burned.
So in the future the county can
a) fund a fire dept
b) increase county/real estate taxes by $75 per residence and get a blanket contract for whole county to be covered by the town fire dept.
c) encourage residents to pay $75.
The town isn't at fault because the county has no fire dept.
The town isn't at fault because the county resident (who they have no legal authority to tax) didn't pay the $75 fee.
The town isn't at fault because the county govt didn't just step in and pay for coverage for all county residents.
Then the county should raise taxes and get a fire dept.
This is the TOWN fire dept. The county (where man lives, and votes, and pays taxes) has NO firedept.
The town can't legally collect taxes from non-residents. There is nothing stopping the county from collecting taxes, getting their own fire dept, or simply paying for all residents (o be covered by city fire dept).
Town residents pay taxes for the fire dept. So what is the solution?
a) town fire dept NEVER responds to calls outside the town - his house burns
b) town fire dept offers $75 service to people outside the town - which he had the option to pay
c) town fire dept protects everyone outside the town at no cost - which means costs are paid by city residents.
I think the town fire dept providing coverage to people OUTSIDE THE TOWN for a modest $75 fee is a good compromise. Why should city residents (via taxes) pay to cover non-city residents? The town could simply never respond to calls outside their town but that isn't optimal either.
When the guy can't pay the fine what then?
How about you start a private fire dept which offers post-paid coverage?
How quickly do you think you would go out of business relying on no upfront money and collecting tens of thousands of dollars from people who's home's caught fire?
There already is an easier solution. It is called pay the $75 and be covered.
He could afford to pay for a home but not $75 to insure it? Really?