Luxury Tax

I always hated the Luxury Tax space on the Monopoly game board, conveniently located between the highest priced properties in the game — Park Place, and Boardwalk.It always hit me at a time when I could least afford it, at the exact time I needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

It killed me because when I would land there on my early times around the board I would be aiming for Boardwalk, so I could buy it and begin my massive plan to take over the world. Or I would even hope for Park Place, so I could have one in hand and hopefully snake eyes would get me the other straightaway.

But then I would count in my head, and I would count on the board, and I would land directly between them. Instead of laying out money for quality real estate that would pay me back in the long run I was forced to fork over $75 dollars and wait another round. It would also effectively slash into my “Pass Go” pay, as I would realistically only make out $125 dollars richer for the trip than the customary $200.

When I would land on that spot later in the game it was with mixed emotions. I liked it if I was trying to avoid hitting someone else’s hotels on Boardwalk or Park Place, but I didn’t love it because it still cut into my pocketbook when I was hoping to skip the whole side of the board. And if I owned either Boardwalk or Park Place I always wanted to land on them instead.

That $75 bucks became a symbol for everything I wanted to avoid in the game. If I was able to navigate that side of the board without hitting it I knew I was on my way to winning the whole thing. But if I was locked into a game where I landed on it multiple times I knew things weren’t going well.

So what did the game makers do? They increased it to an even $100 in 2008. Screw them. I’m still playing with old school rules. And it still hurts.

Sam