BlameThePeacock

joined 2 years ago
MODERATOR OF
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

That doesn't apply when the item has ongoing costs like a land value tax. People don't bid up items that return a negative value. This is why cars go down in value over time.

A high enough land value tax is the same as a government rent amount, but still allows for individual ownership and the benefits thereof (like being able to make changes to the property)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

You're absolutely correct. People are yelling for change, but refuse to vote for that change.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There are multiple ways to crash the value of housing.

One of the easiest would be a 100% capital gains tax on property values (not building value). You can no longer profit from simply holding onto land. You can develop it and earn a profit from the building work you do, but just holding it and doing nothing no longer generates any value. This profit motive is what's pushing the investment in property that drives up prices, and removing it would crash the value of land overnight.

Or, and this is my preferred option, a monthly land value tax (again not on buildings) that is set high enough to replace all of the income taxes, then drop income taxes to 0%. This way we tax people based on how much land they use (which includes how desirable that land is just based on the assessments) not based on how much work they accomplish. People who live in smaller amounts of land (like a condo) pay less tax, and people who want giant mansions near cities can pay the rest of us a bucket load of money that the rest of us workers now save on taxes. Instead of replacing income taxes, I also wouldn't mind seeing a similar universal basic income system.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (2 children)

You handle it the same way we're handling the crazy high rents right now, by letting some people get hurt. It's just a matter of who.

In the current system we have, it's the non-homeowners that are getting fucked, and recent home purchasers too, but since new non-homeowners keep joining the population (kids grow up, and immigrants) that means continual pain for more and more people in a never ending pyramid scheme of sky high prices.

If we crash the market in the way I propose, current homeowners will get absolutely fucked (including me), but going forward the prices will now be affordable and controlled for everyone. It will also make for a much healthier overall economy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

I miss Costco having one-way aisles during COVID, it significantly improved the shopping experience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (8 children)

In the case of the housing crisis, it really isn't.

The longer we continue this pyramid scheme of propping up house prices the more people will be hurt by it.

We need to pass government policies that crash the value of housing by 50-80% instead of continuing to pretend that we can build our way to cheaper houses after the market has shown again and again it will not do that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

You act like they weren't already making non-ethical decisions WITH humans.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There's no legal way to force them no, but they can offer them contracts to get them to do it they just have to pay.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (10 children)

Building enough housing to the currently homeless will not solve homelessness.

Especially if it's setting up a benefit to pay for housing, because that's just going to push lower rents up and force other people out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago

What exactly is the benefit of an intertie if it's always running at max capacity?

How would it "make infrastructure more reliable against extreme weather"?

It can't be used in the event of a local station going down, because it was already running at max capacity anyways. So yes, it stays up while the local generator goes down, but it's not enough to keep the grid up by itself.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

May as well just cut off your ears at this point because a lot of people are going to be very rude to you anywhere you try to spout this shit outside of the Klan rally the commentor mentioned.

Stop worrying about what's in other people's pants, you'll have a much more relaxed life.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (4 children)

As with Rome, the limitation is often communication and transportation.

You'd have a hard time even keeping Mars part of unified empire with Earth given our current technology level. We simply can't move things back and forth easily enough until we figure out fusion reactors (or some other power source) to a much higher level than we currently have.

Any sort of empire spanning more than a single solar system would require faster than light travel and communications.

view more: ‹ prev next ›