Forced by court order to repay the taxpayers, the government will increase taxes make the repayment.
Imagine you are the head of a company that loses a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Then imagine the public outcry if you announced that you were going to raise your prices to pay off the lawsuit. Would the public get incensed? Would you lose business? Likely both. It's even somewhat likely in this litigious climate in which we live that the decision to raise prices to payoff the lawsuit would spawn yet another lawsuit against you. Ah, but we are talking business, aren't we?
Now imagine that you are a city government and a court finds out that you've ripped off hundreds of thousands of your city water customers by wildly overcharging them for installing new fire hydrants. Imagine that you've been ordered by the courts to rebate $22 million to those city water customers. And then imagine that you announce that the rebates will be paid for by taxing the city water at an even higher rate than before.
In other words, you, the city, will be expecting the water customers to pay for their own rebates by charging them higher rates to fund that same rebate. Yes, the same "customers" that have no competition for water and no choice but to pay through the nose will be paying themselves their own rebate.
Well, then welcome to Seattle where this is precisely the case. And also welcome to a perfect example of why government is legalized theft.
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