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High property taxes are good

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Re: High property taxes are good

#281

Post by pmontra »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #144
chadash wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can always choose to live in a cheaper home. So your 90 year old grandpa has been living in a two bedroom apartment on the lower east side for 65 years. When he moved in at age 25, it was considered a crummy but affordable neighborhood, but now it's expensive and desirable. You want a 90 year old to have to move? I agree that maybe a 65 year old couple no longer needs to be in a 3,000 square foot home, but ther…

Why does grandpa get to live in a two bedroom apartment in the LES during retirement when so many other people can't afford it despite working for a living ? If he owns, you'd think that he could sell the two bedroom and downgrade to a one bedroom to keep the monthly cost down. Or even a studio. But at some point it's an incredibly desirable, expensive neighborhood and I'm not sure anyone deserves the privilege to li…

> I'm not sure anyone deserves the privilege to live where they want as long as they want.

You'll grow older and possibly understand. There are things that must be experienced, they can't be learned in any other way.

Re: High property taxes are good

#282

Post by ketchupdebugger »

property taxes are used to pay for services that the local government provides. when property taxes are high, it means that either the local government is proving more services, the local government is in debt and needs to raise taxes to finance its debt, or the cost of those basic services has risen. At the end of the day your local government needs to spend almost every penny it gets. If they have extra money, they are going to spend it on stupid things like tanks for the police.

High property taxes will make housing cheaper, but it wouldn't make housing affordable. Sure that house might only costs 100k but with a 2k per month property tax, no one can afford it.

Re: High property taxes are good

#283

Post by honkycat »

justinzollars wrote: post #115
humanistbot wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might enjoy Somalia.

I live in very high tax San Francisco, which is similar to Somalia in many ways. Our politicians are corrupt (Nancy Pelosi is a world class Options trader), we have a meteoric increase in crime, and we let people die on the streets - 1,300 over the last 2 years [1]. 1. https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/San-Francisco-drug-ov...

People on the left are viscous critics of the democratic machine politicians. Pointing to them isn't an effective critique because: yes I agree. Liars and crooks all of them.

Running to the right and embracing authoritarianism is much preferable to the politicians than, say, a general strike and a unionization movement. Which would actually harm the people in power instead of squishing those at the bottom.

Re: High property taxes are good

#284

Post by samatman »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #228
awillen wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the point, though - the land tax makes it so that it is productive to add more density. We want people to demolish that SFH and turn it into a townhome because we need more housing, so that's a feature of the tax, not a bug.

> That seems like the point, though - the land tax makes it so that it is productive to add more density. It will still force density eventually as the home's structure value depreciates (demo costs are the same no matter how much the home is worth). Any new structures will be pushed into higher value uses. BUT let's say we instituted a blind land value tax tomorrow: many people would be forced out of their homes AND…

Jumping straight from one tax regimen to another is a recipe for suffering, sure.

Instead, we might imagine a State shifting from 10% income tax to N% land value tax, by lowering the income tax 1% per year, and raising the LVT 1 * (N/10)% per year, until a decade later, the State's income is land value tax, not income tax.

That should give everyone the opportunity to make plans, and adjust over time.

Re: High property taxes are good

#285

Post by naasking »

tptacek wrote: post #210
naasking wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mistake to assume that builders are responding to demand. All actors in a market have only partial information. To take my city as an example, the housing market started heating up, so builders started constructing condos and tried to pack as many units into their building as possible, thus improving supply. This created a vibrant urban centre for young people who live on their own in modest apartments and dro…

The premise of a market is that everybody is acting with partial information, and the market aggregates and allocates over time. I'm no anti-government squish, but there is no evidence, and a lot of countervailing evidence, that local governments can effectively (or even non-harmfully) make policy to influence the housing mix. When it comes to housing construction and tax incentives, what they need to do is (1) set t…

> I'm no anti-government squish, but there is no evidence, and a lot of countervailing evidence, that local governments can effectively (or even non-harmfully) make policy to influence the housing mix.

I disagree. No planning has lead to many ghettos. The planning we've done here has avoided ghettos. I think the data is very clear on that.

> When it comes to housing construction and tax incentives, what they need to do is (1) set tax incentives to discourage egregious misuse and encourage density, and (2) get out of the way.

Except as I've been saying, if you encourage too much density your cities become unlivable for families, and you encourage urban sprawl and all of it's subsequent problems.

> the idea that we need to carefully control the mix of 1bdr apartments vs 3bdr apartments is... risible?

Who said anything about "carefully controlling" anything? Certainly not me.

Re: High property taxes are good

#287

Post by tptacek »

sokoloff wrote: post #252
landryraccoon wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you say more about the influence of renters? It seems to me to be the opposite. The mortgage interest tax deduction is a massive regressive government subsidy for homeowners, and penalizes younger people who rent or cannot afford to buy a home. So I’m curious what suggests to you that renters have political power. To me it seems the opposite - tax policy massively prefers owners over renters.

Renters are overwhelmingly living in properties that have mortgages against them and commercial loans are always deductible. The deduction for mortgages on owner-occupied property serves to put prospective owners (including current renters) on a more equal footing when bidding against landlords for property.

It is an immense giveway to the top income quintiles, which receive between 70-80% of the benefit, and giving "prospective owners" preference over "landlords" practically by definition reduces density and thus affordability.

Re: High property taxes are good

#288

Post by rcpt »

throwthroyaboat wrote: post #73
anonymousiam wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prop 13 solved two problems at once. It forced a reduction in the out-of-control government spending, and it saved seniors from losing their houses. IMHO the only problem with Prop 13 was the "grandfathering" clause. The cuts should have been perpetual and across the board.

Doesn't Prop 13 also apply to commercial property? And second/third/30th houses? I think they smuggled a bear in as a rabbit with this one.

The intent of the law was malicious. That's why it applies everywhere.

Angry voters wanted a "tax revolt". Jerry Brown's Prop 8, on the same ballot, would have given homeowners a specific break but they wanted blood.

Re: High property taxes are good

#289

Post by tptacek »

naasking wrote: post #285
tptacek wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of a market is that everybody is acting with partial information, and the market aggregates and allocates over time. I'm no anti-government squish, but there is no evidence, and a lot of countervailing evidence, that local governments can effectively (or even non-harmfully) make policy to influence the housing mix. When it comes to housing construction and tax incentives, what they need to do is (1) set t…

> I'm no anti-government squish, but there is no evidence, and a lot of countervailing evidence, that local governments can effectively (or even non-harmfully) make policy to influence the housing mix. I disagree. No planning has lead to many ghettos. The planning we've done here has avoided ghettos. I think the data is very clear on that. > When it comes to housing construction and tax incentives, what they need to…

I see no evidence at all that increased density is a livability problem for families, and plenty of --- in fact, overwhelming --- that inadequate density is a bar for access to communities in the first place. So, no, I reject this argument outright.

Re: High property taxes are good

#290

Post by [deleted] »

horsawlarway wrote: post #264
raldi wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just let property owners declare a value for their land, and give anyone the right to buy it for 120% of that value at any time, with the existing owner given a grace period where they can restate their estimate.

My strong suspicion is that this will completely fuck over the elderly and marginalized communities. It also requires property owners to do EXTENSIVE research and information gathering CONSTANTLY to ensure that the number they put down is reasonable. Many of them literally can't (ex: my 87 year old Neighbor Phylis doesn't care what her house is worth, because she plans to die in it, and isn't seeking to maximize util…

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