So your theory of taxation is that fairness is the equalization of suffering of the taxpayers? And here I thought “socialism is about making everyone equally miserable” was just a silly caricature.
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No. No one said that the 1% should pay so much that they are poor, that’s your fantasy. Most people here are arguing that we have needs within a society that we should all pay in to maintain. Much of the elite are not actually paying into that, because they are able to hide their wealth away in such as way that they pay much less in taxes as a percentage of their income. This hurts the rest of us, who pay in more and have much less to spare than the elite. When my taxes go up, it means more than when Romney’s does. A fair tax base could do things like more effectively maintain our roads, or pay for a single payer health care system that doesn’t bankrupt people for getting ill. If you want to continue down this road of capitalism, without backlashes from the have nots, then you need to have this. Otherwise, it’s chaos all the way down and the rich are going to have to live in gated communities away from the rest of us (more than they already do, I guess).
If you honestly think that Romney paying more in taxes is a bigger tragedy than someone going bankrupt for not being able to pay for basic health care, than I honestly don’t know what to say to you other than it speaks volumes about your moral compass. I’d suspect you agree that going bankrupt to pay for cancer therapy is indeed a problem, at least I’d hope so.
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I dunno. He could be pretty hard to take about, say, 47% of the time.
Most people I know with real jobs would happily vote to repeal every unfair tax rule abused on form 1120s by Mr. Romney’s army of toadying fiduciaries if we didn’t have to hear another story about his spouse’s horse elevator.
Or was it car dressing? Dog roof driving … ?
I forget. But it’s getting tougher every year to endure the interminable whines and special pleading of idle speculator man-children.
Favorable IRS treatment for carried interest isn’t really a subsidy! I’m a job creator! Whah!! Where’s my juicebox?!!
Get a real job, hippies!
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Therein lies the crux of the entire problem, IMO.
As long as we only value each other for however much we each can be exploited monetarily, our society is screwed.
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This reminded me of something- the old saw about whatever you tax you get less of, whatever you subsidize you get more of. Lawmakers thought they were subsidizing homeownership, but really they are subsidizing mortgage interest. It’s probably not an amount that’s more than a blip in an economy as large as the US, but you know all those ads about consolidating credit card debt under a second mortgage? And I’m sure the other homeowners here get the same barrage of letters I do encouraging us to take out a home equity line of credit. There you go- this deduction is creating more mortgage interest. Secondarily subsidizing consumer debt. And that actually destabilizes homeownership, as now if you can’t make the payments instead of declaring bankruptcy you lose your house.
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Maybe this is being theoretically nitpicky, but if a business’s costs go down (or up), whether that ends up as profits or lower (or higher) prices depends entirely on the competition in the marketplace… In hot real estate markets, I’m sure what you say is true, because buyers are under pressure to pay the maximum they can afford. But it’s also easy to imagine that in a stagnant or depressed market, that a landlord could find a way to fill units by using this subsidy to charge less rent and still be able to make a profit.
ETA: wow, not sure how I ended up talking about landlords when you were just talking about house prices, but the principle is the same. I would just change the last sentence to in a stagnant or depressed market, the homebuyer gets a cheaper house because the seller feels pressure to take worse offers, as opposed to multiple offers bidding each other up. The subsidy doesn’t really come into play, and ends up in the buyer’s pocket, not the sellers.
I can guarantee you that someone like Mitt Romney imposes more costs on the government than the average taxpayer. Just to name a few examples:
- When someone owns a huge estate, that means that considerably more public infrastructure (roads, electricity, plumbing, sewage etc.) is dedicated to supporting their property than the average urban apartment dweller.
- Police are much more likely to spend time and resources protecting the assets of a multimillionaire than a working-class schlub. If Mittens picks up the phone to dial 9-1-1 you can be assured they are going to show up promptly and take him seriously.
- Anyone rich enough to own a business benefits from all KINDS of government support that the average taxpayer can’t get.
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Could you at least try to read the responses you are getting, and even think about them long enough to understand the facts being presented and the conclusions made from those facts?
Because so far, your tangential responses show that you aren’t reading and/or aren’t understanding and/or don’t care to understand.
We’re not seeing any actual thought from you, just the same old regurgitated talking points which are not factual. That says you don’t actually know anything about the subject. There are people on this thread (including me) whose careers mean we’re speaking with authority, not prejudice and fear. Why not learn from someone who knows what they’re talking about?
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He did break out the straw man argument reply on me, so he is doing a good job of regurgitating.
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Because that’s just too much like right?
Imagine if people actually listened to and learned from each other, rather than playing an endless game of one-upmanship that keeps them permanently distracted.
It would detrimental… to the powers that be, who like the status quo just fine as it is.
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Me too. When it comes to ukeleles, bananas, steampunk, Disney parks trivia, hip-hop history, privacy issues, copyright issues, interesting facts about BMW airhead bikes, and keeping up with what the important “Oberlin sophomore” demographic thinks about political and economic affairs, boingboing is the best place on the net.
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Christ, the system is an asshole!
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Increasing housing subsidies to lower income families (however one defines “subsidy”) will, ceteris paribus, cause rents to go up in parallel as more dollars chase existing housing stock.
Only if we make it easier and cheaper to build more housing will the desired beneficial effects come to pass. NIMBYs and regulators, over to you.
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Had your heart broken? You’ll love again some day.In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
Which is part of what is so grotesque about giving “subsidies” to high income earners to buy very expensive houses. Subsidies increase prices which increase mortgages which increase the cut the banks gets, which increases the wealth of the investor class. Yeah, subsidies are kind of a mess. What we ought to do is end the ownership of land.
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That line was oddly specific.
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What about enacting these reforms?
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Prohibit non-resident ownership and non-infill residential development.
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Control and progressively tax excessive rents and excessive transactional fees and gains.
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Acquire excessively leveraged properties at real market value by eminent domain and convert to locally managed affordable housing.
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Cancel regulation of “free market” risks for bondholders, e.g., limited discharge remedies for mortgage, consumer and student debt.
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I have no idea how we could sensibly accomplish anything. It just feels like we are way too deep in the hole. If there were sweeping changes it would crash the markets which would just lead to massive profits for those who already have liquid assets. If we make debt very hard to take on it will cause a lot of short term pain for the poorest people and long term gain for the richest.
I have three modes for dealing with the problems of the world: 1) push gently towards very incremental changes while tending to everyone’s emotions; 2) angry desire to burn it all down; 3) despair. Unfortunately it makes me very skeptical of radical-but-constructive solutions.
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Please sign me up for this one. And not all of these challenges from insufficiently democratic markets are new fortunately. History helps.
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