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Left with Nothing

washingtonpost.com

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141–150 of 287 posts

Re: Left with Nothing

#141

Post by ahmad19526 »

Reading some of the comments here, everyone is talking about the laws being broken and how they need fixing but I don't think any amount of law writing can make up for the moral bankruptcy that has led to these situations and many others.

I think when people seek money they should ask themselves if what they are doing has any bit 'unethicalness'.. But who knows if those investors knew of the stories that made their investments possible.

We have the concept of a carbon footprint - what about an ethical footprint?

Re: Left with Nothing

#142

Post by maximilianburke »

In British Columbia you can defer your property taxes until the home is transferred (to anyone other than your spouse) or sold. That seems, to me, to be a much more fair and reasonable option than auctioning off these trivial amounts to the morally corrupt and destroying the lives of the indigent, elderly, or sick, as well as their families.

Re: Left with Nothing

#143

Post by to3m »

bolder88 wrote: post #107
eurleif wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tax bands certainly provide a big disincentive for bothering to get a better job/raise. You know that your entire income isn't taxed at the highest bracket's rate, right? So, for example, the highest bracket is 39.6% for income above $400k. If you make $410k, $10k is taxed at 39.6%, and the rest of your income is taxed at a lower rate.

Yes I do know that. It's still a big disincentive to bother earning more money. Why bother trying harder if the government will take half of anything extra you make?

The question is a fair one, and the answer for the majority of people seems to be: because you get to keep the other half.

Re: Left with Nothing

#144

Post by dnautics »

ksrm wrote: post #122
rwmj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are very progressive and we should absolutely have more of them (fair ones, not like the one in this article where you lose your home if you fail to pay some trivial sum). The reasons are best described in the article below, but in summary, we all pay to defend and enhance your property (by supporting the police, roads, local services, etc). It's fairer for property owners to take a larger share of thi…

Absolutely! A land value tax (on the base value of the unimproved land) is an idea that goes back hundreds of years. It has many attractive properties when compared to other taxes like sales and income tax. It's a shame it hasn't really ever taken off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax

There's no way the government will use the appraisal system to screw over the poor!

Re: Left with Nothing

#145

Post by macspoofing »

denzil_correa wrote: post #104

Sorry but WTH?!! 134/197000 is 0.068%. And if this was not enough, I read this - A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with people in the world.

I think so too. Forget the laws, if you're a "investor" who bought a tax lean for $50, and that lean led you to own the deed to a $100,000-$200,000 house of Alzheimer's patient, don't you stop for a second and consider the moral and ethical implications of collecting on that lean?

Re: Left with Nothing

#146

Post by csallen »

do-it-good wrote: post #140
staccatomeasure wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is indicative of how screwed up our legal system is. Lawyers harass regular folks at-will as most people have no recourse (i.e. money to hire their own lawyer, or knowledge of the expanding and complicated laws). Two ways I can think of fixing it - one is offering simple, straightforward hearings in front of a judge with the power to use their own judgement (instead of relying on overly-specific, exploit…

The complexity of the laws is not a coincidence: 1. It gives more power to the government and less power to the people. 2. The majority of lawmakers are lawyers - complexity means them more job/business opportunities and significance in society.

Motive alone does not a case make.

Re: Left with Nothing

#147

Post by rglover »

denzil_correa wrote: post #104

Sorry but WTH?!! 134/197000 is 0.068%. And if this was not enough, I read this - A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with people in the world.

Sad, right? If I had to guess, people are getting increasingly desperate. The things that used to help them get by don't work anymore (or don't meet the full capacity), and in exchange for money, they're willing to destroy the lives of others.

Scary fucking world.

Re: Left with Nothing

#148

Post by drone »

bolder88 wrote: post #52
rwmj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are very progressive and we should absolutely have more of them (fair ones, not like the one in this article where you lose your home if you fail to pay some trivial sum). The reasons are best described in the article below, but in summary, we all pay to defend and enhance your property (by supporting the police, roads, local services, etc). It's fairer for property owners to take a larger share of thi…

Why not just go the whole hog and tax all property. eg you buy a laptop, you have to pay the government a tax each year to keep it. Why just apply it to houses? May as well just prohibit people from owning property. Personally, I think such taxes are a massive disincentive for people to do well. As soon as you have enough money to buy a house, you are penalised for it. Luckily in the UK, we don't have property tax, a…

Many counties in Texas do tax business property. I know I have to pay business property taxes every year to my county.

Here, generally, personal income taxes are replaced with property, sales, and business (franchise) taxes. You pay taxes, as a person, on your vehicle, real property, and per taxable transaction. But, you do not pay it on your income.

Re: Left with Nothing

#149

Post by rwmj »

dnautics wrote: post #128
rwmj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are very progressive and we should absolutely have more of them (fair ones, not like the one in this article where you lose your home if you fail to pay some trivial sum). The reasons are best described in the article below, but in summary, we all pay to defend and enhance your property (by supporting the police, roads, local services, etc). It's fairer for property owners to take a larger share of thi…

>Property taxes are very progressive and we should absolutely have more of them. The naivete, here, is of course, that the wealthy don't have more resources to protect themselves against property taxes or reduce their burden, or deal with enforcement, or mitigate corruption by the state. In reality though, there is no "rules scheme" you can construct that will be as progressive as you want . You'll tack on more rules…

Property is harder to hide than other forms of wealth. You can hide your money in an offshore bank account. It's pretty hard to hide land. If there's a piece of land, someone should be paying the land tax on it (if whoever owns it is hiding, the people can grab it back).

So land tax is fair and progressive (the more land you own, the more tax you pay).

Re: Left with Nothing

#150

Post by unono »

krapp wrote: post #138
unono wrote: post #131

This is why we hackers should all be helping Google get their self-driving cars on the road. It could save so many lives if people could have the option of living in their car.

The kind of people who would be able to afford Google cars are not going to be the kind of people who might end up having to live in them. And if they were, the government would just make Google drive the car to an impound or something, probably, and they'd take that as well.

The guy in the article wasn't completely moneyless, he just came up against the recurring costs of taxes/rent which can trip up the unorganized.

Google car expense is overplayed. In mass production and with competition the cost would go way down.

Also, if the government makes the 'homeless' drive to specific places out in the desert or something, that's better than the current situation where you're exposed to other homeless and dangerous people.

I actually wouldn't mind going 'homeless' for a while to save money on rent, but currently it's really dangerous to do so. Moving to low rent places is also usually more 'dangerous', especially with children. With a driverless car you can just take your family out into the desert or forest and pretend you're camping.

The current system of full-time rv-ing is quite hard because of parking restrictions and because sending kids off too school and getting groceries from out of town is hard, and because the rv's are too small. With self-driving rv's you can have a few of them to space out in.

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