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Left with Nothing

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Re: Left with Nothing

#231

Post by dnautics »

rch wrote: post #221
dnautics wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why not just calculate my share of the public fire suppression expenses based on area? remember: > there is no "rules scheme" you can construct that will be as progressive as you want . What you propose may be 'fair'[0], in the context of providing services*. But that is not the goal of progressivism, which is redistribution of wealth and creation of an more outcomes-equal society (a concept I'm personally not oppos…

I'm not actually opposed to progressive taxation either, by other means. I can think of a few solutions* to your counterexample though, and that's the point. There's no reason to expect a solution to be fair in all cases, or perfectly fair in any. I'd only argue that there is often, or perhaps always, a more equitable and direct way to provide for common services than property taxes. *I choose the BLM as a neighbor p…

I think by attempting to patch the system, you are merely shifting the corner cases which are unfair. And the more byzantine the rules system is, the fundamentally unfair it is to the politically and economically disposessed, because their ability to deal with the bureaucracy (and the rules system) is diminished. To wit: the more rules you have, the more difficult internal consistency becomes, and the government will naturally tend to bin individual citizens into whichever category they can extract the most revenue from, instead of doing due research into the highest efficiency for the taxpayer. The responsibility to identify the deductions falls on the taxed. This becomes regressive, as the ability of the wealthy to argue for and appeal their binning category to the one that is 'rightful' in your byzantine system, is greater than that of the poor.

And the unfairness will always over time become skewed towards the wealthy and powerful (municipal authority:'well obviously we are authorized to make exceptions like X as precedented by our rules system in code ZZZ, subparagraph Q; if we give an advantage to corporation Y by implementing change T, it may not necessarily be in the spirit of total fairness - but we will create jobs! and thus it will be in the public interest'). If fairness is your dominant value, the only perfectly fair and sustainable solution is zero. If progressive redistribution is your dominant value, you will wind up with a lot of difficulty over the 'how much is enough' question, and the implementation will almost always find a way to be anti-progressive.

Re: Left with Nothing

#232

Post by gnaritas »

snitko wrote: post #189
gnaritas wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a democracy, the government and the citizens are not different parties; they are citizens and their incentive is that they have to live here as well even after they're no longer in power. To say governments never care about their citizens is silly, a government is not one mind, it's a collection of said citizens.

Theoretically. In practice, as soon as you get power, you have very little incentive to serve those who elected you and all the incentives in the world to make money from special interest groups. You can't fix that with any number of new rules and legislation. Instead, think about this: why do you need some people sitting in a pathetic building ruling over you? Why do you think society cannot do without them and what…

> In practice, as soon as you get power, you have very little incentive to serve those who elected you and all the incentives in the world to make money from special interest groups.

Special interest groups are citizens teaming up to push their agenda, those are people who elected you. Special interest groups are not inherently bad nor are they automatically against the will of the electorate. Many are actually representing the electorate.

> Instead, think about this: why do you need some people sitting in a pathetic building ruling over you? Why do you think society cannot do without them and what is it that only governments can do, but people and companies can't?

There you go again treating government and people as if they're different things. You're presenting a false choice, it's not government rule vs freedom from it, it's government rule vs local warlord rule. Power abhors a vacuum and government is our solution to that problem, it's how we live civilly together. It's not nor will it ever be perfect as no human system is, but it's vastly preferable to the alternative.

The idea that people can live peacefully without a form of government is just silly, someone has to enforce rule of law and it can't be someone's private security force or the guy with the most goons wins every time. Either the people choose a government or someone will choose one for them, or decide to rule himself.

Re: Left with Nothing

#233

Post by will_brown »

rayiner wrote: post #158

The article doesn't come out and say it, but the impetus for tax sales is that foreclosure proceedings are pretty onerous and take forever. At the same time, property taxes are the primary source of revenue for the local government and must be collected. So it doesn't seem ridiculous at face value to sell the debt to private investors and let them do the collection while being able to recoup the fees involved in fore…

>I'm skeptical of the "lien holder gets the equity" claim because it doesn't work that way outside of DC or in foreclosure generally, so I'd be very surprised it it wasn't a misunderstanding on the part of the author.

I agree. The author suggests the owner owned the home free and clear, which I do not think is true. As you noted judicial foreclosures do not occur overnight, a free and clear owner of a $197k house would have plenty of time to: 1. take out a mortgage/HELOC for the $500-$5k tax lien, or 2. more extremely sell the home, pay the lien and walk away with the equity ($192k) before the filing of the foreclosure. Further, there is no judge that would not give such a defendant the time to pursue those options even during the proceeding if in fact the defendant owned the property free and clear.

>Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies.

This is from the article, and I think this is where the author could have been a little more forthright, by saying under such foreclosure and subsequent auctions the proceeds go 1st to any government liens, 2nd to mortgage holders based on superiority, and 3rd the remaining equity goes to the owner. Of course other lien holders could be shuffled into the equation (such as construction liens or HOA liens).

Re: Left with Nothing

#234

Post by krapp »

unono wrote: post #150
krapp wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

But what if they're driving all of the homeless people out to the same spot in the desert? Cars, sure, are better than nothing but better still are cars the government can't use to expel or trap undesirables.

I'm sorry, but the idea of self-driving cars just creep me out.

Re: Left with Nothing

#235

Post by mathattack »

downandout wrote: post #191

I'm all for making money, but this seems predatory and downright evil. Under no circumstances should someone be able to foreclose on a property because they hold a lien for less than 1/1000th of the value of the property, then take all of the equity. According to the article, this is only allowed in a small handful of jurisdictions - most require the proceeds above the amount owed to be passed along to the owner. It'…

You hit in the math correctly. Small fractions of home values should not be sent to the vultures. That said, I don't blame the vultures as much as I blame the politicians who sold out their citizens. It can take years for a bank to kick someone out of their house for a much bigger default. The politicians empower criminals to do more for much worse.

Re: Left with Nothing

#236

Post by gutnor »

rayiner wrote: post #186
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…

What do you think was happening in the months and months before the lien sale happened? There were a million opportunities to avoid the whole process through a straightforward administrative process, no lawyers involved.

That assumes you are still capable to follow that process. Apparently the current procedure does not take your present circumstances into account. (like mild dementia, alzeihmer, nursing home example in the article)

In Europe, once you get too incapacitated to take care of your stuff, social security take you in charge. After you die, they repossess your property and sell them to recover their cost. What's left is then given to whoever is supposed to inherit. I am not quite sure what would be acceptable with the more liberal US culture, but profiteering of the weak is certainly not an american value.

Re: Left with Nothing

#237

Post by will_brown »

doki_pen wrote: post #63
will_brown wrote: post #54

Ironically, a lot of houses owned by banks as a result of foreclosures ("REOs") are in turn getting foreclosed for failure to pay taxes and HOA fees. Banks were/are not equipped to manage the number of properties they own as a result of foreclosures and they lack the basic infrastructure to maintain these properties not limited to paying taxes and HOA fees, but violations of certain civil statutes like failing to mai…

This simply means that the banks should hurry up and auction the houses instead of sitting on them and waiting for their value to increase.

Agreed, but there is a lot of debate on this for the following reasons. The banks own so many homes, that there is an argument that they could flood the housing market with under priced homes which would slow the housing recovering by driving down the prices of all homes. Additionally, there is a lot of speculation that part of the $1.2 trillion stimulus packages went directly to the banks to account for the above argument and actually requires the banks to slowly release their inventory of homes in order to prevent flooding the housing market with under priced homes (again because that would continue to drive down value across the board).

All that said, as mentioned above I do agree with you, because assuming banks are keeping homes off the market this only artificially keeps home prices stable, and many of those REOs are failing into disrepair. In my opinion it is better to have ownership and people in homes, even at a short term cost of flooding the market with under valued homes. After all it is the banks who originally to the risk on these loans they foreclosed on and they lost.

Re: Left with Nothing

#238

Post by rch »

dnautics wrote: post #231
rch wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not actually opposed to progressive taxation either, by other means. I can think of a few solutions* to your counterexample though, and that's the point. There's no reason to expect a solution to be fair in all cases, or perfectly fair in any. I'd only argue that there is often, or perhaps always, a more equitable and direct way to provide for common services than property taxes. *I choose the BLM as a neighbor p…

I think by attempting to patch the system, you are merely shifting the corner cases which are unfair. And the more byzantine the rules system is, the fundamentally unfair it is to the politically and economically disposessed, because their ability to deal with the bureaucracy (and the rules system) is diminished. To wit: the more rules you have, the more difficult internal consistency becomes, and the government will…

Agreed: we're stuck with a byzantine tax code for the foreseeable future, and it will continue to be monumentally unfair. But that fact doesn't stop us from taking real property value out of the equation altogether, at least in unincorporated areas.

Would you at least agree that things don't have to be quite so complicated once you get out of the city?

Re: Left with Nothing

#239

Post by nthj »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #80
acchow wrote: post #10

Can someone point me to the laws and regulations that allow this? Someone who owns their home completely (with no mortgage) can lose the entirety of the home due to unpaid taxes? Even if the value of the home far exceeds the tax debt? This is mindboggling to me.

The local county government can put a lien on your real property for failing to pay your property taxes, in some places, even for not mowing your lawn (an exaggeration of property maint. codes). In Texas, investors can buy a "Tax Deed" at auction. The property owner has two years to buy the lien back, for a defined price, IIRC the taxes owed + 50% for each year. After the 2 yr repayment window, the purchaser of the t…

Texas laws regarding property and property taxes seem rather un-Texan.

Re: Left with Nothing

#240

Post by noarchy »

Property taxes are, effectively, rent paid to the local government by people who otherwise think that they own said property. Fail to pay it, and you get evicted. It is quite a racket already, but combine this with crony deals with private companies, and corruption shows its ugly face. It is all "legal", since the ones carrying out the scheme also happen to make the rules.
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