To people who hate high taxes,

What's the difference between high taxes and high prices of necessities? You know: Food, shelter, medical care, et cetera? Those are taxes too. Big Government is nothing once you start considering the ramifications of Big Corporation (and nary a republican has told me how Big Corporation is good, though they freely tell me how big government is bad.)

And considering other countries' tax rates, surely ours are fairly low? Especially if you're in the upper class tax bracket?


Definition of tax:

1. A charge, especially a pecuniary burden which is imposed by authority.

When the LandLORD does it, it's Right and Proper.

When the GUMMINT does it, it's Socialifm Moft Foul.

--p!
But all the Landlords vote Republican.
Strange how that works.

Make the rent pay for government services with a split-rate tax that lowers housing costs.

As usual, you're on the money.

One comment: one problem I can see with a split-rate tax is that it would tend to encourage the construction of energy-inefficient McMansions on smaller lots, especially "infill" lots becoming more popular for building sites in trendy urban areas.

I think it would encourage intensive development in desireable areas, though I think this would be a good thing. It would maximise the number of destinations (residences, shops, workplaces) in a given area, reducing transport costs, pollution, and perhaps getting people to walk.

In simplest terms it would encourage increasing the building value to land value ratio in desireable areas: whether this increased value is purely in size, or in quality (read energy efficiency) depends on other factors, though I think that high and rising energy costs would tend to play a strong role here. Furthermore, by eliminating the tax on buildings, it becomes more advantageous to replace an old, outdated, and energy inefficient building with newer, higher priced (and higher assessed) building. It may prove advantageous to replace older single family homes with attatched rowhouses. Building on infill lots rather than expanding the suburban fringe should be encouraged. To maintain urban 'greenspace', public parks should be created. Increased land values around public parks could be used to pay for their creation and maintenance, if the tax on land value is significant enough. A similar situation exists with transit, schools, public safety and all the other public goods that local government provides.

Certainly many of the new homes will be out of reach of lower income families: even a small 1500 s.f. house at $125/s.f. would be more than $200,000 once the lot was included, even after such a tax took some value out of the lot. However, there really would be a trickle down effect for housing: the family that moved into a new house vacates an old one or old apartment. Concentrating development on valuable (read urban) areas lowers the demand (read cost) of suburban and rural land.

As for rural areas, large farms typically differ from small farms mostly in acreage. While this may seem a tautology, consider that most farms require similar buildings: a large farm's may be slightly larger than a small farms, but in all, the building values are much more similar than the land values. Or put another way, the larger farms possess a lower building to land value ratio than small farms - meaning that exempting buildings would benefit small farms more so than large ones.

I get what you're saying about high-density housing being good for the environment. But, I still see a couple of economic problems with this plan:

Wouldn't older people who have been living in their homes for many years be priced out by the new, higher taxes? That's one of the problems with gentrification - the people who have been living in depressed areas for years are eventually forced out because they can't keep up with the property tax increases.

You mention the trickle down effect, and you're right that someone moving into a new infill housing unit will vacate one elsewhere. The thing is, if those units are all going to be expensive, then the place they're vacating isn't likely to be an affordable unit. My personal experience having grown up in project housing in NYC is that people who live in affordable housing aren't usually the upwardly mobile type - they're not likely to be moving into nicer housing any time soon, even if it is available. It'll trickle down, but like the last time we heard that term, the trickle down effect won't have much of an effect on the lowest rungs of the income ladder.

There are also "character" issues. I've seen too many beautiful old homes in my home city of Atlanta torn down for monstrosities that don't suit the surrounding neighborhood. This would seem to encourage and even subsidize that.

Generally, if it's a small change, the problems won't be that big, if it's a big change, it changes the rules of the game, and some people will be in a better position to deal with it than others. If there were a large shift of taxes from other places and onto land values, the vast majority of people would benefit - anyone who works for a living would.

As for the older folks, it's been my experience that very little is done at the local level to inconvenience older folks, they are almost always protected by grandfather and homestead clauses.

I'm not a huge enemy of gentrification, generally it means that a relatively poor family sells their house for a great deal more than they bought it. It is impossible to improve a neighborhood without increasing land values in it. We hope that improving a neighborhood would also improve employment opportunities, such that locals who choose to stay may find employment, at least enough to pay for the taxes (if not a new, higher mortgage).

Let me clarify the 'trickle down' effect: plentiful housing is cheaper than scarce housing. Old housing is cheaper than new housing. Removing the tax on buildings, and encouraging development of desireable areas by raising the tax on land makes housing more plentiful: One family moves into a new $500,000 house, another into their old $350,000 house, another into that families $240,000 house, yet another into that families $180,000 condo, and one more into that families vacated apartment.

The people who benefit the most are those currently renting - taxes on land reduce land prices. In other words, while there is no way around paying for a piece of land's value, taxing it trades tax payments for mortgage payments. Rented land goes for market value, or what the market will bear: raising the tax on land does not enable the landlord to ask for more - if he could have gotten more, he would have already asked for it.

I was a landlord, and I don't vote Repugnican.

There's this stereotype about rental property owners: that they're all greedy, tightfisted old zillionaires that get their only pleasure in life from throwing sick orphans out into the street.

That, like most stereotypes, is complete and utter bullshit. Most of the rental property owners I know are just ordinary middle-class people who wanted to invest some of their savings and wanted to be a bit more hands-on with their investment than the stock market would allow.

I'm sure I'm going to get jumped on by people who will send link after link of bad-landlord stories. The thing is, for every bad-landlord story, there's an equally bad tenant story, and I've got a couple myself.

...all y'all people in the lower 99.9999% who hate those tax and spend LIBBBRULZZZ!!!!! :sarcasm: Idiots. And to you in the upper 0.0001%: bite me!
Yeah, you heard me. You made MORE MONEY ***AFTER TAXES*** under the Clinton tax system than you did under the RayGun/BU$Hitler Sr. tax system and the current PIECE OF CRAP tax system, so take your arguement of trickle down your leg like your Robert Plant doing "The Lemon Song" and blow it out your neo-KKKon ASS.

Lu

Couldn't have said it better myself. :7

:thumbsup:

Billions of dollars in lost revenue, lost productivity, lost lives. And that's leaving out the moral and ethical implications - since they don't matter to right-wingers.

just to have affordable health care. Saves money in the long run.

:)

In some ways, I'm almost a libertarian... except I wouldn't whine and complain when said ideals start to affect me as I am not callous toward those who need help (after all, I believe in a civilized society...)...

Indeed. The libertarians I know are gun-ho on their mindsets... but once something happens that affects their lives because of what other libertarian-types do, the usual empty rhetoric of "get out of my life, wah wah wah" or "That's unfair, waah waah waah!" kicks right back in. They just can't see how big business is worse than big (or any) government...

I never understood the RWers' absolute faith that for some reason, 100% of public service workers are dishonest and incompetent, but 100% of private sector people are nice and decent and do things for the right reason--they would never try to rip you off. :eyes: Where is this written? I worked in government offices for a long time, generally earning a little above minimum wage. If there's any graft going on, it never made its way to me. It's being soaked up by the military contractors and their $700 toilets.

:7

Taxes are levied against income or services you pay for. They are a added cost to a transfer of goods or services imposed by an authority whom you elect. The price of necessities are dictated by where you live and what standards of living you are accustomed to or area you want to live in. You could, if you wished to live as a hermit with almost no costs associated with necessities or work 18 hours a day to own that pricey condo by the beach.

Necessities are not taxes. The high cost of necessities are not taxes. They are choices you make to use or not. I spent two years without health care because I could not afford it for I bought a house I liked as a investment. That was my choice.

Your point, it seems, is the people who complain about high taxes should also complain about the high cost of living or shut up.

You also are confused about the impact of big government. Big government impacts you considerably more than any corporation every thought about having the power too. Not that they won't like to have the power of government. Corporations can impact you only on certain items or services, that you choose to buy or not. The government gives you no option to pay for whatever service or tax they impose on you. Try not paying your taxes or refuse to pay that new impact fee for the house you bought. .

As for our tax rate being low. It depends on how you add it up. As a country we do pay at a lower rate, but when you add up all the fees and taxes on income and services, the federal, state, local and even by block taxes. Most American families of average means pay somewhere at 50% of their income as taxes to some government entity. Remember that tax or "fee" you pay the cell company goes to the government not the company. Last time I looked, a full 30% of the cost of my basic cell phone and cable bill was going to a government entity

This is the same thing my right-wing co-workers say. They have a fundamental view of "individual choice" as being somehow the highest sort of human expression, while ignoring the fact that consensus can be manufactured, and the fact that government is mostly owned by large private money, while maintaining the fiction of "representation."

It's not a black or white issue, of course. Our market choices are important in designing our world, but I suggest that the brainwashing has been far more Huxleyan than Orwellian.

That was the poster point. They aren't, not even close. That was my point.

BTW, there aren't many things that people value more than the ability to make an "individual choice" in their life. Since when is that a right - wing principle or is collectivism of thought still a valid point of view? ?

In one case they're required for individual life and in the other, for the life of the society. If taxes are lowered, the powerful will exploit the weak through market forces. The idea of higher (progressive) taxes is to equalize the mix and give more people a chance to succeed in the market. As I already agreed, it's not a black/white issue; the market must be allowed to work for people's consumer choices. However, I suggest that the masses will be fooled by the corporate market/media machine into thinking that their choices are sacrosanct. If everybody who wanted a huge and wasteful SUV could have one, life on earth would be impossible. Wait - in this country, almost anyone CAN have one, because we've relied only on market forces to determine our transportation system. If we were to rely more on government decisions, supported by taxes, we could build more sustainable transportation, as well as housing, food and fiber and many other necessary systems.

People are so afraid of "social engineering" that they forget it's just a matter of where to draw the line.

Free choice is having the freedom to choose.
In the United States, there is no such freedom. So lets re-frame it from that very aspect and build off the truth.
To make the freedom to choose an actual freedom; the entire system must be overhauled and likely torn up. This starts with boycotts-and nationwide strikes. Do not pretend you have the freedom to choose until; that freedom is actually physically guaranteed.

Individual choice is often used an excuse to dismiss institutional and cultural choices and realities...that's what the Right Wing has been doing for 25+ years.
So even telling a kid from the hood to stay away from a particular lifestyle may do little to stop some cops from shooting him 41 times for reaching for his wallet because of what he symbolizes in american culture. And let's face it: if america wanted equal opportunity for all there would be equal opportunity for all. Regardless of what choices people make, there is only so much room at the top, and increasingly a lot less in the middle.

What we have at present is inequality, by design. How are kids from poorly funded schools supposed to "compete" with kids from places like beverly hills? Sure, some (the exceptions) will be able to compete, but many, perhaps most, won't. We, our society, places tremendous burdens on and has trememdous expectations of those at the bottom of the barrel. meanwhile people like Bush barely pass at places like Harvard and Yale, and then are handed everything to them, including the office of president. and to add insult to injury, the irony of someone like him whining about "quotas" barely get a mention in our so-called press.

"Choice" is a smokescreen for greed and selfishness and for disguising built-in and inescapable inequalities and for defending those who leverage advantages of birth to amass wealth and power and a justification for barbarity and cruelty.

To one degree or another all of our "choices" are very tightly restricted, and those restrictions serve to buttress and defend wealth and power in the hands of the few, often immorally and illegally obtained.
Sure we have a choice. Grovel and suffer, keep silent and invisible - or else. Some choice.

So everyone should focus on less excuses about choice, and simply engage in strikes & mass boycotts like has been causing companies such as Walmart to cave. It works, and its the way to change.

you die? Since you chose to go without insurance, and selling your house in a fire sale likely wouldn't have covered the cost of your medical care, we should just let you die?

Or would you have declared bankruptcy and gotten Medicaid to cover it?

I know a couple of people who were working but without insurance whose medical bills ended up being nearly $800,000 for one situation. for example, treatment for leukemia is very expenseive, especially if you don't respond well enough to the basic treatment and need a bone marrow transplant. Or a fall that breaks your neck and you need several years worth of medical care to be able to function again.

Or there's appendicitis, should we just let it kille you?

"Defense", and corporate welfare programs top the list of misspent taxes.

I have no problem with higher taxes, as long as they're being used for the legitimate operation of our government. We need to put a stop to the borrow-and-spend policies of the Repugnican party - I'd much prefer the pay-as-you-go fiscal policy of the Democrats, because it, quite simply, is more honest - people should be aware of how much the operation of government costs. I've always felt that the Republican predisposition towards running up debt is simply a ploy to conceal from the people how much they're really spending on pork-barrel garbage like the Alaska 'bridge to nowhere'.

Oh, and I have no problem with spending every dollar necessary for defense. It's when our military is used for unnecessary offensive actions (like Iraq) that I have a problem with the expenditure.

Exactly. For years I have said that if I had health care, I would pay high taxes with glee.
And with munition factories going full tilt, I don't want to pay any taxes.

not an economic system. Big difference.

Americans pay higher taxes than almost anywhere in the world but these taxes come in so many different forms and are obscured so as to dupe the citizen into thinking otherwise. And Americans get the least in the terms of social services for their tax dollar.

What we call taxes are essentially a way of stealing the fruits of your labor and couching this theft in an esoteric schematic of financial maneuverings.