Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The person or company that "pays" the tax does not bear the full burden of the tax. As a homeowner, who else bears my tax?
The whole economy. If your cost of living is higher (due to LVT), the minimum wage you will work for is higher. The amount of discretionary spending (someone else's income) or investment you can make is lower. Obviously these effects on an individual level are small, but when aggregated across the entire economy are very large. In a world of LVT, everyone pays LVT because everyone lives somewhere. You either pay it a…
True Rate of Unemployment
321–330 of 377 posts
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course two people with low incomes shouldn't have two kids. But (as detailed in my other comment) you need a 4 person household with 2 kids to get tax negative at $50,000/year. Even a 3 person household with 1 kid isn't tax negative in most of the US at $50,000/year. So the other poster's argument that $50,000/year isn't so bad because of transfers, tax credits, subsidies, etc. doesn't hold up to real-world exampl…
It holds up outside if costal urban areas, there are plenty of places where you can get a 2b/2ba home with garage with that salary. You can't get it in high cost states like CA, NY etc...
What's the size of the household? Could a single person in rural America making $50,000/year save up enough to buy a house? Sure. Could two adults in a $50,000/year as a household? Possibly if they're very frugal. Two people with 1-2 kids? This is where the situation changes dramatically.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Then maybe it's time you look up how unemployment statistics are calculated in Switzerland and you will be surprised that you counted into them." Not to criticise, but just to point out that this sentence doesn't quite make sense in English, and it's not immediately apparent what you mean. The sentence has to precisely opposed interpretations.
> this sentence doesn't quite make sense in English > The sentence has to precisely opposed interpretations. Muphry's Law still holds true.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
THERE IS NO POST You just pulled numbers out of... A single person making $50,000/year is not tax negative in the US. You need a 4 person household with $50,000/year in gross income to get clearly tax negative to the point where their take-home income is $50,000 or slightly above. Even a 3 person household isn't tax negative.
Dude I said in the original post a person with $22,500 BEFORE TAX ends up with $49,000 AFTER TAX AND TRANSFERS. There is no additional income tax after receiving the negative income tax! That's the final number!
A single person with no children making $22,500 before tax does not come away with $49,000 after tax and transfers. Look it up, dude.
I assume you saw the CBO distribution-of-income report and didn't actually read it. The distribution-of-income figures look at HOUSEHOLD averages. So you're talking about families with children, retirees, etc. who are getting EITC, the child tax credit, SNAP and Medicaid.
Single people without children get virtually none of those and are actually in the worst position of all because so little is available to them.
According to CBO, the lowest fifth of HOUSEHOLDS (making $20,000–$25,000) get about $45,000–50,000 in "income after transfers and taxes."
A large chunk of that ~$25,000 in average HOUSEHOLD transfers is Medicare and Medicaid, which CBO counts at the government's cost. It's not cash that the individuals actually receive. You can't take $10,000 in "value" you're receiving under Medicaid (where "value" is the government's cost) and spend it on rent or groceries.
Even worse, they've done studies on Medicaid and it turns out that the value of the transfer is skewed because the average recipient would only spend 20–50 cents per dollar of program cost on healthcare if they didn't get the transfer and purchased healthcare themselves. So that means that if you receive $10,000 in Medicaid transfers (again the value based on the government's cost), you'd really only "feel" $2,000-$5,000 in benefit in terms of your actual wellbeing.
Bottom line: single people making $22,500 before tax ARE NOT getting $49,000 "AFTER TAX AND TRANSFERS". Some families, retirees, people on disability are but the vast majority of those transfers are not cash-based, can't be spent freely, and their value is based on government cost, not the actual cost of what the recipient might spend without the transfer.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that they would rather try to win an internet argument by showing indifference to what others have to say than learn something might hint at traits that keep them unemployed. Harsh but maybe this helps changing their mindset.
Who is "they" in this argument?
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's not what "land of opportunity" means in the US. It means upward social mobility, plentiful job opportunities across a wide range of inudstries, decent work for decent pay, ample rewards for hard work. Socioeconomically, the post-WW2 era is widely considered America's peak. The strong economic growth was broadly shared and created the largest and most prosperous middle class in modern history. During this time,…
>The vast majority of Americans aren't calling for a new Gilded Age, although that's sort of what they're getting now, which is a big reason so many Americans are dejected and angry. I'd be interested to see the economic mobility stats for the gilded age. Because the vibe I get is that it was better than today for the people who wanted to work hard and were flexible but there were also a ton less opportunities to jus…
The "vibe" you get? You were there?
I'd point out that during the Gilded Age, women were largely excluded from the work force, blacks were forced into sharecropping and tenant farming while under threat of racial violence including lynching, Chinese workers were forced into the most dangerous jobs and then punished for the privilege (see the California's Foreign Miners' Tax), and so on.
But I guess if you were a white Murican with ambition and a willingness to do whatever it took to succeed, it was a great time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
A land value tax would fix rich people parking money in real estate. A wealth tax or capital gains tax would not.
No then the money would go into inflating the stock market or gold etc. And won't get back into the economy.
From there, hopefully the government uses it wisely in ways that redistribute wealth and stimulate growth, but that is orthogonal to how the money is raised.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is a rosy view of (at least) the 1980s-1990s. There were definitely jobs that paid way below what it cost to live, and there were plenty of people who needed to take a second or third job to survive. It just wasn't the norm like today.
According to this, around 6% of workers had multiple jobs in the 90s, versus 5% or a bit above today: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12026620 Frankly, the biggest reason for these sentiments is straight up false nostalgia. The 90s wasn't some utopia. There were plenty of shit jobs. People struggled. Notice how none of the positive vibes are backed up by numbers. It's just "people owned houses and cars by worki…
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/median-house-prices-vs-inco... shows houses have gone from 3.5x median income to 6x median income since 1985.
Or here's a source that makes the comparisons via number of hours worked, showing that people today need to work thousands of hours more than Boomers did to afford the same things: https://dailycaller.com/2026/08/29/life-mainstays-college-ho...
Or here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bf5814b4262c498fb73303b... showing that college tuition has gone from 8% of household income in 1968 to 20% in 2020.
The 90s wasn't a utopia, but also, look at the media landscape of the time as a reflection on society - Fight Club, Office Space and American Beauty were reflections on the unfulfilling banality of life being too easy to find purpose. Married with Children (1987) and The Simpsons (1989) center on men who are supposed to be relatable-losers in low status, low paid dead end jobs (shoe salesman and power plant worker) and yet both have two story houses and are supporting multiple kids, because that was just normal and relatable to the blue collar average Americans watching the show at the time. Rocky (1976) has a protagonist who owns a house in Philadelphia despite being "poor", if it were filmed today they'd have to make him sleeping in his car for the character to represent the same level of desperation that audiences understood him to be in at the time.
Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#329Re: True Rate of Unemployment
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
The topic of this sub-thread is whether a "land value tax would fix rich people from parking money in real estate". You have the option to pass on such a tax burden, as do any other home/land-owner(s), which is relevant to the conversation. What point are you making relevant to that?
I am wondering what protects normal people. I hear a proposal what prevents the ultra wealthy from hoarding, but I am not seeing how this doesn't negatively impact normal, single family residences. It seems the goal is maximizing tax revenue, punishing hoarders of land, and pushing for communal living. The exact case I think it is imperative to avoid is removing the elderly (cough, less useful) from their forever hom…