Counterpoint: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism from the original progressive
Marx was not a fan.
I can’t even afford a dingy studio where I’m at… tf
Yeah, that guy could sell his house for 5 times what he built it for
And then where is going to afford to buy another house to live in?
Maybe he should stop eating avocado toast
5? I bought my house a decade ago and it has almost doubled. If he built his house for less than his current property taxes, he would easily get 10x if not higher.
the sign says that property tax each year is a third of his original house cost. Assume he lives in a place with insane 15% property tax:
x*0.15*3=1
x=3*6
x=18His house is worth 18x or more what he paid to build it.
I see both arguments for this as valid. I get that you wanna stay and live your entire life in the place you owned forever. The reality is taxes are needed and will increase forever, which are important to keeping your state functioning (as long as the people in charge are doing a good job and actually using the funds wisely). I wonder what state they are from because I know property tax can be wildly different depending upon that. I’m sure they don’t want to, but there are like 6 states that currently offer no property tax to seniors over 65 and 10 that offer exemptions based on income and age. At the same time it is good to see them complain because maybe they can try to sway the state to also offer the no property tax benefit to seniors as well. Still if he is hurting that much, then it’s probably easier to sell the place and move to another place that will allow him to be better off with less worrying. It’s a valid option even if he doesn’t agree with it.
his point is that his income should have increased to reflect inflation, since his taxes did. it’s actually obscene that half his check goes to property tax on land he’s had forever, and people are talking down about him for it.
Yeah, that makes much more sense. I absolutely agree, sadly most places draw the line on ever allowing that to happen. Although I do remember reading that some states have minimum wage tied to it which was pretty shocking, despite making perfect sense.
I’m not going to offer numbers and percentages but I would propose an overall cap on state property taxes. That would force the state to spend less or finally get rid of funding for things that are not providing the desired results. I would shift the percentage of property tax levied more on commercial than residential. And finally I would have a lower rate for those who own the house and live there as opposed to an owner who is renting out the house.
I don’t understand inflation, so as an old landowner I think I shouldn’t have to pay taxes.
It is kinda fucked up if retired are forced to move out from their house via taxation. Only ones who benefits are real estate companies
That’s the fictional boogeyman used by the rich to gut public services. See the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer association and California prop 13.
The tax cuts go to the rich and corporate land owners.
We could always, also tax the wealthy. This is not fictional. Retired people in the US are facing a crisis as they’re priced out of housing because their social security is fixed and housing prices are skyrocketing.
We could put the stipulation that you’re only exempt from tax increases if the unit is owner occupied, they’ve been there for at least five years, and the resident is retired.
We could also limit the exemption to modest homes, but instead California gives it to mansions and shopping malls too.
If you’re rich, pay your damn taxes.
Its always guys that look like they extract peyote in their kitchen.
What’s wrong with that?
Edit: despite that peyote shouldn’t be just gathered on the wild, because they’re protected
Property taxes do hit retired people differently though. Taxing based on what the government says your land is worth instead of your income is absolutely meant to create opportunities for real estate agents and developers at the expense of the people living there.
Taxes based on assets tax those with assets, instead of income taxes which tax those who work.
If old man owns such a valuable piece of land, he deserves to pay his fair share for the public services he used.
It’s like saying you don’t want to pay for schools because you’re not a student.
The fact that schools are funded by the surrounding area is crap and needs to change. He’s retired with a social security income. He paid into the system his entire life already. Telling him he must sell and move out because he’s not wealthy enough is exactly what we should be working against. It’s a system by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
The fact that schools are funded by the surrounding area is crap and needs to change. It’s a system by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
Unless there is an article or background on the guy in the picture you’re projecting a HUGE amount of stuff you just made up on that guy.
He’s retired with a social security income.
That’s what his sign says. I take him at his word on that one.
He paid into the system his entire life already.
Well, no he didn’t. He didn’t start paying into it until he started earning money. Likely for the first 18 years of his life, he lived of what other people put into the system. Many of those people that paid for him are in the situation he’s in right now, except now he sees it as unfair.
Telling him he must sell and move out
No one is telling him to move out. He certainly isn’t saying he will be forced to move if he has to continue to pay property taxes. You just made that up.
because he’s not wealthy enough is exactly what we should be working against.
He’s not saying he is not wealthy enough. You just made that up. In fact, his sign is indicating he does have he wealth to cover the property taxes via his Social Security. He’s saying he doesn’t’ believe he should have to pay anything one something he bought decades ago while he continues to enjoy the services of the city and society the tax dollars pay for.
No, that’s how American K-12 schools are funded. That and infrastructure. Which is why poor areas have worse schools and roads; and police from outside their tax area. Which is both a great way to punish the poor in the old school protestant fashion and force them out the second the wealthy want their land.
And you know exactly what I mean by paying in his entire life.
Finally, paying half your income on property taxes is not financially sustainable. It’s ridiculous to me that you would even pretend it is.
No, that’s how American K-12 schools are funded.
Partially true, but not absolutely. K-12 in many places in the USA are funded through property taxes. I’m in the USA and my public school system is funded via income tax. No property taxes go to school.
That and infrastructure.
True in some places. False in others. Some places derive income from high property taxes. Other places choose high sales taxes. Yet others do it on income tax.
Which is why poor areas have worse schools and roads; and police from outside their tax area. Which is both a great way to punish the poor in the old school protestant fashion and force them out the second the wealthy want their land.
Again, partially true. Some states have state taxes that fund various projects at the municipal level irrespective of the wealth of the locality.
I don’t disagree that a more equitble system for funding schools should be designed and implemented, but you know know that because I’m trying to have that discussion with you in another thread and you’re weak as water on that and won’t discuss any specifics except “someone else should pay”.
And you know exactly what I mean by paying in his entire life.
I know your words on that don’t match reality, and you’re skipping a really important part of that reality. I’ll admit I was wrong one part of that. I said he likely started “paying into the system at age 18”. We know thats wrong. His sign tells us he built his house at age 25. Age 25 is when he would be first paying the property taxes he’s complaining about. So he’s spent even less time paying into the system and already wants to be except from it for the society benefits he still gets.
Finally, paying half your income on property taxes is not financially sustainable. It’s ridiculous to me that you would even pretend it is.
Again, you’re making stuff up from nothing. What are his expenses? He owns his house. He’s retired so his healthcare is covered by Medicare. If he’s living on just social security he’s likely not even paying income tax because his income is low. What are his other expenses? Food? Clothing? Electricity? Water? He might have a well and not even have that bill. Are you saying half his income can’t cover those things? Further, we have no idea what he earned in life. Did he spend it on stupid stuff? We don’t know. I’m certainly not claiming any of my assumptions of him as fact, but that isn’t stopping you from doing so.
So you’re just doubling down on what if this and that.
Of course you are looking at outliers and I feel like you’re right to the point that outliers like that should have special assessments or breaks.
Where I live, the taxes are pretty high for real estate, but if you are a senior citizen, you can get a discount where your tax rate is locked in at the value that it was when you retired.
I also have some acquaintances who inherited a house and at the time houses were very cheap but they didn’t pay the taxes and they were super upset that they were going to lose their house because they didn’t pay the taxes.
So now they’re bunking up and living in apartments and Scattered because they didn’t want to drum up the two or three thousand dollars a year in real estate taxes that they had to pay to keep an entire house.
Yeah and those laws are great for keeping people who want to age in place in their homes. Unfortunately they aren’t the norm. Usually it’s just a discount but it still goes up.
Gotta be one of the most dogshit takes I’ve ever seen, hope you’re evicted one day!
The Guardian just did an article on this subject
I would be more okay with property tax, IF once you reached a certain age (or disabled), you were not required to pay property tax.
Yes, we can cover the resulting tax shortfall by increasing the tax on single mothers, first-generation low-income homebuyers, and renters.
Look at the result of California’s tax policy (which was designed with aims similar to yours): an entire generation of young people will never be able to afford a home in the place they grew up in, while millionaire retirees get a huge tax break while making thousands renting out spare rooms in their massive houses on AirBnB.
These kinds of special tax carve outs sound nice in theory, because it seems like you are just “not taking money from old and disabled people”, but that tax burden falls on everyone else, as does the massive distortion of the market. You are in fact taking more money from other people, who may be hurting even more.
And don’t tell me, “We’ll fund it by a tax on the rich”. If that’s your proposal, get that tax on the rich passed, and dole out the proceeds to elderly at risk of homelessness. Have it officially be budgeted, so that we can decide if keeping an elderly person in their $2.1m 5 bedroom home is worth cuts elsewhere. As of now, such policies are mostly robbing middle class young people blind.
Solution build excess housing at a loss, intentionally until real estate prices go down.
I like that idea, but it’d have to come with some mechanism to prevent parasites from buying a bunch of them up and renting them out.
fuck if I know what such a mechanism would look like though…
Tax homes based on how many you own, and how many are vacant. Allow two homes at a regular rate; Enough for a summer and winter home. Then ratchet tax rates up as the person buys more.
And if the third, fourth, fifth, etc home sits vacant for more than a few months out of the year? The tax rate goes up even more, so giant corporations can’t just buy entire neighborhoods and sit on them to remove them from the market and increase property values for the other homes they own across town. Because that’s what’s happening now; Giant corps are buying homes and letting them sit vacant, just to remove them from the market so they can charge higher rates elsewhere. Allow a few months of grace for renovations and finding tenants… But after a ~3 month grace period, that tax rate skyrockets.
And then take the revenue from these increased taxes, and use them to fund First Time Homebuyer programs, so home ownership becomes more available to the people who are renting. Incentivize the corporations to actually flip the houses and resell or rent them, instead of just sitting on them.
Nobody needs a summer and winter home tax the living shit out of rich fuckers with 2
Alternate take: If we actually implemented my above plan, you wouldn’t need to be stupidly rich to own two homes. Home prices would be reasonable, because there wouldn’t be giant corporations hoarding all of the real estate.
We have over two vacant houses for every single homeless person in the country. We could give every single homeless person a house, and still have plenty to act as summer cabins. And that’s before you even factor in the fact that the market would be flooded with houses (at least in the short term) from corporations trying to avoid the increased taxes.
at the primary residence up to .25 acres. Anything more than that should be taxed as normal. Credits should be non transferrable, as in if you’re renting your landlord shouldn’t be able to claim you for tax exempt status.
Farms & ranches would have to be exempt. There are some cases where it’s legit important to have a large land area.
If you’re retired or disabled, you’re not working a farm.
If you are working a farm, then you should be paying taxes anyway.
Yeah but not the same level of taxes as some rich dude with a country estate. Farms serve an important function.
Land is land. We don’t get any more. Some land is inherently more valuable than other. We should be disincentivizing ownership of land unless it’s being cultivated or contributing in some way.
By saying that farms don’t pay property tax, we’re creating an avenue for billionaires to create “farms” and skirt taxes.
Instead what we should be doing is guaranteeing that crops will sell. Pay the property tax, use the land, and if your harvest fails at market, then the government covers the gap. But not before. I’m even cool with the government buying the seed and feed. That’s all renewable and contributes to a bountiful harvest. Having taxes to pay on the value of the land encourages it’s use, and pushes the wealthy billionaires away from wanting to own it just cuz. They’ll naturally look for the least valuable land if they just want a big ass estate. Who cares if they build a mansion on a pile of worthless rock?
.25 acres? Can we up that to at least an acre. I need a place for my chickens to roam and to plant my gardens, and I prefer to have a fire pit with outdoor patio furniture and a grill. Many places an acre is the standard plot size. Not good for everyone, but preferred by many
Yes, at least an acre. .25 is nothing.
If that was satire, it was incredibly well done. If it’s red sincere, it’s a great example of why property taxes should still apply at a certain point, and that point should be very narrow.
Reject urb-spreading!
High density, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods for whoever wants to actually live a healthy urban life.
That’s great and all, but you do realize that in the end that ends up being pro large corporations and limiting freedoms of the people. Cities and towns would be best built that way I agree but the chances that we can completely revoke capitalism is verryyy slim. In such every convenient/grocery store in those neighborhoods would be bought up by money and reduce prices to run out small owners. People not being able to grow their own food or raise their own chickens reduces ones ability to feed themselves independently. Communal neighborhood farms are an alternative which I have seen before, but they are rare and require space as well
You realize there are literally dozens of examples of dense urban environments flooded with small private businesses right?
Is this a joke or did you just state these places exist without naming any?
Property taxes always made me think that you don’t actually own it, rather its a different form of rent based on property value. I know its the not the same as renting as you have stored value if you sell, but its difficult to call it “ownership”
Nobody tell him that in Communist China you pay a small land tax once every 70 years or so.
Actually someone do tell him. I bet that little factoid will flip his entire worldview on its head.
So he bought a house for 6k 50 years go and now has to pay 2k in property taxes each year. If he was renting that wouldn’t cover two months.
Does he also complain that the sales tax on candy bar is more than he used to pay for a candy bar when he first bought his house?
The real problem if that’s the scenario is that his social security check is less than $400/month.
Its almost 2000
Which means he’s paying $12k in property taxes a year. That does sound quite substantial. Assuming that’s somewhat equivalent to rates in the UK, I pay around £1400.
Most places are around 1% of value with many having caps on increases in value or other differences in taxed and actual value. This means his house is worth 1,000,000 to 1,600,000
If he was really living on 24k he wouldn’t be able to pay 12,000 in property tax. He bought when it cost almost nothing and spent most of his life paying neither rent nor mortgage unlike most of us and has a reasonable retirement.
He could at any time sell and live better than you or I even if he didn’t have a dime other than the house. Instead he uses his time to whine about his good fortune.
You are making a lot of assumptions there but setting that aside, I’m not sure I’m in favour of turfing a pensioner out of their home to pay tax because they lucked out. Surely it’d be better to settle up after they die. It’s not like he’s preventing a needy young family moving in - presumably anyone buying this house would need to be pretty wealthy!
Do you have stamp duty in the UK? We have both rates (yearly) and stamp duty (once off during purchase) in Australia, and property taxes in the USA are roughly the same as rates and stamp duty combined into one.
“I don’t understand how inflation works and I’m blaming government for it”
If the property tax scales with inflation and social security is also adjusted for inflation, but your property tax is getting more expensive relative to your social security income, something’s not right.
spoiler
I understand that housing prices are outpacing general inflation… that’s kinda my point.
A big part of why housing prices are outpacing general inflation is constrained supply due to long time homeowners paying artificially low taxes.
Here in the United States, this issue and this sign are advocating for what? This man is where? At his county commissioner meeting? This sign implies we want the federal government in our local tax policy? I mean really? GTFO with this garbage. Stay the F out of my busniess, if I don’t like property tax, that comes with my local vote, and has nothing to do with the federal government. I could bet someone paid this tool to stand with this sign because someone who doesn’t understand decentralized local government power wants to make a point about something that has nothing to do with social security.
This sign implies we want the federal government in our local tax policy?
Where do you read this implication from?
I’m really asking because I might be missing something, because my background is so different.
To me it reads like he thinks local taxes should work differently, either be lower, or be raised based on a different factor other than property value. But I can’t see the federal connection.
Or it could be argued that the local county or city is taxing them so much they can’t survive and they are essentially taking federal money even though they claim to not need federal money.
But hey I’m just a guy who knows plenty of people who look like this who advocate for better social programs. In most places that have county commissioners, their salary is paid by a percentage of the property tax. This may explain the increase in tax or the increase in allowing too many high density locations that have a property tax associated with them.
My dad literally went to the city and argued against them raising the book value of his home, which would cause him to have to pay more in property tax.
He won too.
That loon.
Did he go to city council chambers, or did he just vaguely go into the city itself and start arguing with people?
You certainly can argue about your property taxes and win concessions if you have a good reason. It’s not hard to do. You just need to get off your ass and attend the annual tax assessment meeting.
It’s why that annual meeting exists.
Property taxes go towards education. More right-wing bullshit attacking schools.
Then why do the schools in my town look like they’re from 1970 and never updated. Over 10k in property taxes here.
Edit. I’m all for giving my property taxes to help make kids smarter but it doesn’t seem like it’s working
But this is a bad idea.
Areas with high property value have higher quality schooling. Area with low property value have lower quality schooling. The rich stay rich. The poor stay poor.
Maybe education money shouldn’t come from property taxes. Maybe corporations should pay for the education they require their workers to have visa corporate taxes
This isn’t a discussion on property tax, it’s more about social security. There is no reason we cannot scale taxes/fines to income. Many countries pull this off…
bUt tHeN nO oNe wOuLd bE iNcEnTiViSeD tO wOrK oR bEcOmE wEaLtHy
Sorry, oh the irony is rich.