Cryophilia @ Cryophilia @lemmy.world

Posts

25

Comments

5,114

Joined

2 yr. ago

What's wrong with taking from them? It's not like they earned it.

I’m not convinced

The data is pretty conclusive.

Likewise, the influence of rent control on new residential construction and supply seems to be similar. Approximately two-thirds of the studies indicate a negative impact, while several studies discover no statistically significant effect whatsoever.

From a comprehensive survey of all existing studies on the effects of rent control. However, they do note:

Furthermore, if private construction experiences a decline, governmental intervention becomes a possibility. This could involve the construction of public housing or financial support for private investors engaged in social housing development. Consequently, the total number of completed dwellings can remain steady or even rise, potentially leading to a misinterpretation of rent control's impact as beneficial.

Which afaik is the case in the UK. Government is compensating for the negative effects of rent control by spending taxpayer money on it.

Because no one has really come up with such a system that's workable, I guess.

Interesting theory but not particularly relevant to capitalism here and now?

Capitalist markets are built off of the idea that people are inherently self serving

You think they're not?

Ok fine I'll address some of the things I've been ignoring.

Extra emphasis on “of reasonable value”, because you seem to need a little assistance with your reading comprehension since you’ve ignored it literally every single time I’ve said it,

Because the entire housing market is unreasonable in almost every city in the Western world. It's not just a few outliers here and there that can be compared to some average. The average itself is completely out of whack. We can't just rein in the crazy part of the market; the whole market is crazy. Either we pick a semi-arbitrary value and tax above that (your plan) or we introduce a graduated, progressive tax on all homes (my plan). Introducing exemptions and especially benefit cliffs has historically always had crazy unforeseen negative consequences. A tax on all homes will by itself automatically bring the market closer to equilibrium.

The average home price in San Jose, CA is $1.4 million. That is crazytown. We can't look at that as a benchmark to try and bring prices in line with.

Moreover, I would argue that anyone who owns a home at all is already of enough means that they don't need tax breaks. Proportional to your equity obviously, someone who just closed on a house shouldn't be slapped with a tax bill based on the whole value of that house. But we have a 0% income tax rate on the lowest incomes because that income is essential to living. Home ownership is not essential. Having shelter is essential, which is why I support taxpayer funded grants to homeless people etc, but home ownership is not and should not be a fundamental right. If you can afford to buy a house, you can afford to pay taxes.

I might see your point if Social Security payouts were substantially increased, but they aren’t, and you aren’t proposing that we change that, either.

Housing policy is already a big enough conversation. Incidentally, I actually support universal basic income, which you could look at as substantially higher social security payments.

But relevant to this conversation, social security in its current form is not a pension. If all you're living on is social security, you probably can't afford to retire. If you're physically unable to work, then that's disability. If you don't have enough money saved up to pay for the life you want, but happen to be age 65, you're not retired. You have to keep working.

I haven’t mentioned Prop 13 once

Mathematically, it's close enough to what you're advocating for: a tax carve-out for homeowners, incidentally with the same tear-jerking "old people forced out of their homes by evil taxes" argument. It has the same supply-demand effects as well.

So, to summarize:

• I'm ignoring your "reasonable price" point because it's either arbitrary or unworkable
• I'm ignoring social security because it's not a retirement plan
• I'm equating you with prop 13 because the socioeconomic effects are essentially the same

Instead I'm addressing the core of your point, which is that homeowners should not pay taxes on their home (within reason, mansions etc excluded). To which I say, "yes they should, all of em". Again, if you have enough money to buy a house, you have enough money to pay taxes. If your house increases in value such that you can't afford the taxes anymore, fucking congratulations, you just made a bunch of money. Now you get to experience the pain of renters being priced out of their own neighborhoods, but also with a small golden parachute to take with you. And it makes things less bad in general for everyone by helping to bring housing costs down across the board.

Also, just to keep this conversation in perspective, I don't think this is the MAIN reason why housing is crazy in places that have similar tax carve-outs for homeowners. I actually think that's zoning and local NIMBYism. But this definitely contributes a fair amount.

When old retired people are able to hold on to houses they shouldn't be able to afford, it lowers the supply of housing in the area, which likely has higher house values because it's an area with jobs, attracting young working people. San Francisco, Seattle, Cincinnati, Austin, hell practically every mid to large city. Lower supply = higher prices. In addition, old homeowners paying lower taxes means a greater tax burden on new homeowners, again meaning higher prices.

The math is inescapable, and no emotional screeching will change that truth. You may not LIKE it, it may not give you the warm fuzzies, but that does not mean it's wrong. Don't call your emotional response "fact". It's wrong.

I’m not advocating for exceptions for the elderly.

Prop 13 and its variants are absolutely an exception for the elderly. And their heirs, which is just blatant bullshit, but that's a whole other conversation.

When property values go up, taxes should go up proportionally. If a proportional tax increase means you can't afford your home anymore, then you can't afford your home anymore.

You expressly avoided quoting my actual proposal, no taxes on a primary residence of a reasonable value in relation to state home values. That’s not saying people shouldn’t pay taxes.

That IS saying people shouldn't pay taxes. Unless you disagree with the entire concept of taxing wealth. A home's value is wealth. You may not want to think of it that way but it's worth money the same way a stock portfolio is worth money. The same way a yacht is worth money. If you believe those assets should be taxed, then a home should be taxed. And I do believe that wealth should be taxed entirely separately from and irrespective of income. The tax RATE should obviously be progressive and not a flat tax. But no blanket exemption, especially not for poor pitiful millionaires, whatever their social security check dollar amount is.

Lmfao old people living in their homes is a bigger problem than corporate landlords?

SPECIFICALLY concerning the abysmal lack of housing, yes. Not generally. Don't twist my words.

And these precious poor old homeowner people you keep defending ARE MILLIONAIRES. Fuck em. They're dragons sitting on their hoards, and the fact that it's a smaller hoard than the corpo fucks does NOT make them our friends or allies or deserving of our pity. Their greed is making things worse for all of us.

So what they want to live in their community? So does Zuckerburg, and we'd be well within our rights to drag him out of his home and onto the street. Taxes are your debt that is owed to the community, and everyone who doesn't want to contribute their fair share, based on the wealth they have, can get fucked. No exceptions just because they're old. Pay your damn taxes.

That's what government is supposed to be for. To regulate. Capitalism is like a car, or a train. When under control, harnessed, maintained, directed, it is an amazing engine for accomplishing things. When out of control, it's deadly.

You think the government just takes taxes and burns it? Taxes are required for government to function. Saying "they only can't afford it because of taxes" is as silly as saying "I only can't afford a new car because of how much it costs".

There are 28 vacant homes per homeless person in the US. It’s not old folks wanting to live in the homes they spent decades in. It’s corporate landlords and bad zoning laws.

Corporate landlords, while scum, have little to do with the housing crisis. And yes, it is zoning laws, but it's also old people wanting to clutch to homes they shouldn't be able to afford anymore.

If taxes were fair, there would be far more housed people. The old retired people could sell their million dollar home and move out to the crappy shithole with cheap houses and no jobs that you apparently want young working people to somehow live in. AND, the retired people would spend their money THERE and make that place less of a shithole. AND, the increased housing stock would lower prices and help counteract the very problem you're talking about - high taxes due to high home valuations.

Firstly, I think your focus on housing is too narrow to solve wealth inequality.

Second, if landlords are handed a $100 monthly tax bill they tend to increase their tenants rent by $100 a month.

Third, you ignore the effects this will have on new home construction, which will be SEVERE.

Fourth, and this is a minor thing, I think when discussing housing policy we should always be trying to disincentivize suburban sprawl snd incentivize density. Having more people own single family homes is not necessarily a great thing, maybe better than having corporations rent them out but not as good as having more dense walkable transit filled urban cores. I'd even go so far as to say that while having people own condos is best, having people rent apartments is still better (on a large scale) than having people own single family houses.

We make withholding contributions to our annual tax bill every paycheck, we can force wealthy people to make a large number of withholding contributions spaced throughout the year to avoid market effects from it happening all at once. If they over-contributed, they get a refund, and if they under-contributed, they owe a bill and possibly a penalty.

Social security and Medicare tax applies to all income.

This alone would be HUGE. It's ridiculous we have a cap above which income isn't taxed.

The one related semi reasonable complaint I've heard is if Bezos has say $20 billion in wealth, mostly stocks and other non-monetary assets, and gets assessed a wealth tax based on it, and then Amazon stock craters and he's only worth $10 billion, he still has to pay tax as if his wealth is still $20 billion. Assessing taxes on assets is just tricky that way.

To which I counter: we already have a similar solution to a similar problem. Payroll tax withholding (or quarterly estimated taxes for the self-employed). Require Bezos to make deposits throughout the year based on his projected wealth, and then if his wealth drops and he over-contributed, he gets a refund.

I’m not finance expert, but can’t think if any laws that disable a banks ability to lend.

There's tons of regulations like this attempting to combat money laundering or doing business with terrorist orgs, rogue nations, etc.

I disagree, in good faith, with the end of lobbying. Emailing your congressperson is lobbying.

I totally agree with ending bribery, which is often thinly disguised as "lobbying" but is just honestly bribery.

Not in my experience. Seeing a large fraction of their paychecks taken out for taxes causes rage for some people.

As for rich people in general, most of them, AFAIK, actually built their wealth from ground up.

Why in the world would you think that's the case? We could look up stats but we shouldn't have to. You already realize that the children of self-made rich people will themselves become rich without any effort. Logically, it would follow that over generations there would end up being a much higher proportion of "descendants of self-made rich people" than "self-made rich people".

But also with better building regulations. Some of those houses were flimsy, asbestos filled pieces of crap.

Rent control tends to decrease the supply of housing by making it unprofitable to build more. It turns into a lottery, massively helping the few who can find a good place but massively hurting those who can't.