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The Middle-Class Squeeze

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11–20 of 58 posts

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#11

A lot of the ails mentioned in the article seem to arise from Western societies' preference on income taxation vs property taxation. Low property taxes force the governments to finance its expenditures mainly through sales and income taxes. The former are optional, the latter happen to penalize those who elect to participate in the workforce (which large property owners can safely sit out).

Absolutely. What would be great is a high land value tax, used to fund a basic income and/or lower income taxes.

It would help fix inequality, reward hard work, punish idle land rentiers and punish urban sprawl, all at the same time. What's not to like?

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#12

A lot of the ails mentioned in the article seem to arise from Western societies' preference on income taxation vs property taxation. Low property taxes force the governments to finance its expenditures mainly through sales and income taxes. The former are optional, the latter happen to penalize those who elect to participate in the workforce (which large property owners can safely sit out).

Or you could tax capital gains at the same rate as income. Poor people generally don't have capital to have gains on.

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are the most regressive form of taxation there is - it actually punishes good investments. If I buy a great house in a down market, when the market rebounds now I'm going to be punished year after year with higher taxes based on the financial "gains" that I haven't even realized yet. With a sales tax, good investments are rewarded by only taxing consumption, which can be avoided for those that wish to…

exactly. it punishes risk takers.

Good. Wall Street doesn't know how to safely derisk on its own.

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#14

A lot of the ails mentioned in the article seem to arise from Western societies' preference on income taxation vs property taxation. Low property taxes force the governments to finance its expenditures mainly through sales and income taxes. The former are optional, the latter happen to penalize those who elect to participate in the workforce (which large property owners can safely sit out).

I've heard this argument many times; investment involves risk, potentially 100% of invested capital or more, unlike a paycheck.

I don't know of a paycheque with no risk. Lay-offs are a type of risk, I hope you will agree with me. Given the capital obligations e.g. mortgages paid using the paycheque you can see how the risk is even more than just the unpaid labour. Also labour markets are not liquid.

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#15

A lot of the ails mentioned in the article seem to arise from Western societies' preference on income taxation vs property taxation. Low property taxes force the governments to finance its expenditures mainly through sales and income taxes. The former are optional, the latter happen to penalize those who elect to participate in the workforce (which large property owners can safely sit out).

I suspect this is why the Texas economy looks to be doing so well right now.

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are the most regressive form of taxation there is - it actually punishes good investments. If I buy a great house in a down market, when the market rebounds now I'm going to be punished year after year with higher taxes based on the financial "gains" that I haven't even realized yet. With a sales tax, good investments are rewarded by only taxing consumption, which can be avoided for those that wish to…

Incorrect. "Regressive" does not just mean "bad" according to some arbitrary definition of bad. If the poor pay more of a tax than the rich as a percentage of their income or wealth, then the tax is regressive. Otherwise, it is progressive. The word regressive is used to describe the incidence of a tax on a population. A property tax is generally progressive because the poor do not own real property. The rich pay mor…

> A property tax is generally progressive because the poor do not own real property.

Won't those taxes still be passed to the poor as higher rent?

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#17
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. "Regressive" does not just mean "bad" according to some arbitrary definition of bad. If the poor pay more of a tax than the rich as a percentage of their income or wealth, then the tax is regressive. Otherwise, it is progressive. The word regressive is used to describe the incidence of a tax on a population. A property tax is generally progressive because the poor do not own real property. The rich pay mor…

> A property tax is generally progressive because the poor do not own real property. Won't those taxes still be passed to the poor as higher rent?

How does rent control come into play here?

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are the most regressive form of taxation there is - it actually punishes good investments. If I buy a great house in a down market, when the market rebounds now I'm going to be punished year after year with higher taxes based on the financial "gains" that I haven't even realized yet. With a sales tax, good investments are rewarded by only taxing consumption, which can be avoided for those that wish to…

Incorrect. "Regressive" does not just mean "bad" according to some arbitrary definition of bad. If the poor pay more of a tax than the rich as a percentage of their income or wealth, then the tax is regressive. Otherwise, it is progressive. The word regressive is used to describe the incidence of a tax on a population. A property tax is generally progressive because the poor do not own real property. The rich pay mor…

> If the poor pay more of a tax than the rich as a percentage of their income or wealth, then the tax is regressive. Otherwise, it is progressive. The word regressive is used to describe the incidence of a tax on a population.

Although this is effectively the definition of progressive and regressive taxation today—because that's how the terms are almost always used by the large number of people who have only the most casual understanding of tax policy—it is a perversion of the original and long-standing textbook definition, and of the way in which the terms are still used by some economists.

By the original definition, a progressive tax is simply one whose rate of assessment increases ("progresses") with the value subject to taxation [0]. Thus an import duty on bananas is progressive if it taxes them at a rate of 1% ad valorem for the first $1MM's worth, and then at a rate of 2% of their value above $1MM.

Note that the original definition and the popular corruption coincide when the thing being taxed is a person's income. (Together with the mistaken association with "progressive" politics, this seems to be the source of the perversion of meaning.) But the two definitions often differ, and the term "progressive" in the context of taxation originally had nothing to do with how the burden of taxation is distributed across society.

0. This is also the definition given in the Wikipedia article, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax (and given by several of the cited sources), although much of the article anyway discusses the burden-of-taxation interpretation.

Re: The Middle-Class Squeeze

#19
Most of the squeezing seems to come down to cronyism, which is a problem in just about any system. For example, the government pushing of subprime mortgages (at the urging of cronies) over-inflated housing prices, and then when the balloon burst, the cronies won again by having the government take over their debt. The question should primarily be how to restrain cronyism, and thereby provide the best outcome for the most people. Cronyism seeks to restrain trade in a way that is advantageous to only a few politically connected players.

A pure socialist system or a pure capitalist system would probably not have these issues, but then these are both unicorns.

Cronyism seems to be the primary way a socialist system operates. If you're politically connected, you tend to get best access to the goods and tend to be able use regulations to handicap competitors. This makes sense as in a socialist system, the people running the government are more actively engaged in the economy, and the tendency to reward friends and punish adversaries is hard to fight.

In a capitalist system, cronyism can also occur if players collude or if a player obtains a monopoly (or some other type of controlling position). In either case, the system then becomes distorted as players increasingly use coercion instead of mutually beneficial exchange. For example, Apple colluding to keep down the wages of workers.

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