AHemlocksLie
@AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 2 days ago:
I dunno why you think old people who didn’t save enough for retirement should automatically get to live a good life
Bruh they’re on less than $2k/month. They aren’t living it up. That’s $24k/year. That’s a $10/hour full time job. That’s poverty wages.
by making the housing market worse for younger people.
There are 28 vacant homes per homeless person in the US. It’s not old folks wanting to live in the homes they spent decades in. It’s corporate landlords and bad zoning laws.
When you’re poor, life sucks, that’s how it is.
Only because we let the rich condemn us to it. Productivity is at an all time high. We’ve basically conquered scarcity. The only real reason to continue allowing poverty is to keep forcing us to serve the owner class.
To free up housing stock and keep liquidity and supply in the housing market. To undo the crystallization we see in the market with old people clutching to their houses with all their might. To reduce the overwhelming cost of purchasing ones first home.
See above on how this isn’t their fault.
Sometimes, when you can’t afford something, you need to sell it and get a cheaper version. When that thing is a house, sometimes you need to move away.
But they only can’t afford it because of taxes. They literally managed to afford the entire house and all the maintenance on it. They can afford the house until we decided our elderly deserve to live on poverty wages while being taxed on their housing. I’ve already shown that it doesn’t even have to be that nice a house. It could very easily be a mediocre house that used to be rural and just got consumed by urban sprawl. So now, in their old age, you want to force them out of that home, which means they’ll probably be forced out of their community, which means they’ll lose their support network. Which will really fuck them.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 3 days ago:
It is mathematically impossible for someone in poverty to be unable to afford property taxes, because if their property valuation is so high that taxes are a burden, they’re not poor.
For someone on Social Security, that home may be the only asset of any real worth they have. Social Security pays out an average of less than $2,000 a month. We can squabble over the technical definition of poverty, but look at the reality of it. A 70+ year old person on Social Security doesn’t have good odds of getting hired anywhere that’s gonna pay him worth a shit. They can’t afford modern rent prices on that sort of check. Their only real shot at staying housed without a bunch of other retired and poverty stricken roommates is to have already paid off a home. Their financial situation is very likely to never significantly improve again for the rest of their lives.
Now, I’ll admit some states have very low property taxes that won’t impact things too heavily, but that’s not universally true. Look at New Jersey. They have a property tax rate of 1.86%. For that to constitute half of the average Social Security check, as mentioned in OP, that’d only require a home with a value of $640k, which sounds like a whole lot until you realize the median NJ home price is $540k. That could be a fairly run of the mill house that used to be rural and got caught in urban sprawl, spiking the value. That could be a modest home on a very little bit, not a lot, of farmable land. That could be a home in a rundown part of town that got gentrified over the last decades. That could be a few critical companies moving into the area and spiking home demand. That could just be our housing market doing what it’s done for the last half a decade and just belligerently raising prices to ludicrous levels.
I don’t think that sounds like he’s living it up. I think that on a $2,000/month budget, even if his home value excludes him from the technical definition of poverty, he’s still gonna fucking feel like he’s in poverty, especially if you fuck with his housing.
And yes, if the housing market happens to be whackadoodle and despite the sale proceeds they still can’t afford rent for some reason, then they’d be eligible for subsidies.
Why not just leave them there in that case? What’s the sense in forcing them out of their home just to push them into a new home that has almost the exact same problem? Now you’re paying for subsidies and paying to manage the subsidy program instead of just… Not taxing them. It’s counterproductive.
Including people whose homes, through no hard work of their own, have ballooned to incredible value.
Sure, but you seem to be drastically overestimating what it takes to get there. ALL home prices in America have ballooned to what should be considered incredible value, especially looking at modern build quality.
A person who becomes a millionaire through property value increase is even less deserving of tax breaks than a business owner who makes a million dollars.
And this is why I specifically said to cut the tax for reasonable homes. Dude in a McMansion can downsize. Dude in a slightly over average value home, though, can stay put and forego some taxes as far as I’m concerned. Set a threshold, but tie it to local property values. An average home should be fine. I might be willing to agree to double, but I’d have to think and research more. But beyond the value of a reasonable home, sure, levy taxes on the excess. Something like full property taxes on any value over some threshold.
At least the business owner probably put some work into earning the money.
Eh, I think business owners get too much credit. The vast majority of value created by all but the smallest companies is created by the workers. Most business owners depend on exploiting their workers. CEOs sure as HELL aren’t working hundreds to thousands of times harder than their lowest paid employees. Someone that’s self-employed, sure, busting their ass and earning it, but business owners on the whole, no.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 4 days ago:
Okay, but how do you intend to accomplish that without costing the government more tax money? The most cost effective first step seems to me to be to just not tax a reasonable primary residence. Providing housing the inhabitants don’t own costs someone money in building and maintaining that property, and since we’re agreeing that housing should be a right, the only way I can see to guarantee that would be through government funding. And we probably should do that for some people, at least those most in need, but what’s the sense in forcing people in poverty out of their home of decades just because they can’t afford the property taxes? Why is it that we can agree that everyone deserves housing, but we can’t agree that they should be able to own that housing? There are other ways to raise that tax money, and the obvious choice is to increase taxes on those with a gross excess, not those who have managed to achieve stability after decades of work.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 4 days ago:
And I just don’t agree with that. I don’t think we should have to pay property taxes at all on a reasonably priced primary residence, as set by local and national standards. Housing should be considered more of a right. We all need to contribute to taxes, yes, no dispute there, but I don’t see this as a fair way to do so. Now, if it’s an extra property or a particularly lavish home, yeah, tax the piss out of them. But taxing someone into homelessness should never happen because one of the state’s core goals at least should be seeing that everyone’s basic needs are met, and that includes housing.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 4 days ago:
Assuming the house is worth millions is a faulty premise. Housing prices have exploded in the last 5-10 years, and that can mean that a home bought decades ago is worth many times its original value, causing a huge increase in property taxes, but still being in line with other regular homes. People who bought decades ago might have had the home appreciate to 10x the value of initial purchase, just to end up still in line with median home prices. Selling their house won’t fix the tax rate, it’ll just add some leftover mortgage value after they pay taxes on the profit from selling their massively value-inflated home. So now, instead of just paying property taxes, they pay comparable property taxes and the remainder of a new mortgage.
I can agree on inheritance taxes, but I don’t think it’s super fair to heavily tax a primary home of a reasonable value. Maybe if it’s a mansion, but a simple, normal home, maybe on some farm land? I don’t see a problem with a family having the security of knowing that come hell or high water, they have a home they won’t lose to anything but a natural disaster. We all need to contribute to society as it contributes to us, but I don’t think that should come at the expense of security in basic essentials like housing.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 4 days ago:
While these are fair questions, I think it’s a reasonable stance to take that you shouldn’t literally get taxed out of your home if you come into poverty, which unfortunately can include Social Security recipients. I know we all need to pay taxes and contribute to society to the extent that we’re reasonably able to, but I’m not so sure this is the best way to make it happen. For property beyond your primary residence, sure, but for your only home, I don’t super like it.
- Comment on Github: Nintendo Submit DMCA Notices to Ryujinx Forks 1 week ago:
Fuck Nintendo. I haven’t bought anything from them or for their systems in nearly a decade now, and a large part of it is their greedy assholery. Their bullshit has probably cost them a grand from me alone, and I’m thankful for the savings.
- Comment on ScIence 1 month ago:
…necktie? Nickel?
- Comment on oopsie 1 month ago:
…being fed a manipulative stream of content to piss you off?
- Comment on oopsie 1 month ago:
More like an intense study of how best to exploit human nature for financial gain.
- Comment on oopsie 1 month ago:
Except it’s not their fault. At least, not entirely. Every single fucking centralized social platform tweaks its content algorithm to drive engagement, and they found that the best way was to piss you off. They shove it in your face until you can’t help but say something to fight the unending flow of utter bullshit.
- Comment on There was a time when everyone had common sense 2 months ago:
Our generation has warning labels because their generation actually did it. Buncha lead addled boomers acting like we’re fools for learning from their stupidity.
- Comment on Dear Americans, be prepare to get screwed! 3 months ago:
I had similar thoughts in 2016 when he had a first attempt, and it was a dumpster fire. I’m not optimistic this time around.
- Comment on The struggle 5 months ago:
Got my bachelor’s and wanted to go to PhD, but realizing this has me strongly considering skipping it. I want to do the research, but holy shit, there’s so much other bullshit, and it’s so fucking competitive for funding. Since I’m considering an international move, I also have to consider how stable my position will be so I don’t get deported. I want to push science forward, but I dunno if I can wade through all the bullshit to get my chance to…
- Comment on Failing Manufacturers Are Pushing the Narrative That Consoles Are Dying, Says Ex-Xbox Exec 6 months ago:
And 100 out of 100 times, we build emulators that run on PC. They can take years to make with the complexity of newer systems, but they’ll get there.
- Comment on These notifications are bundled together for some reason. So if I want to be notified when my subscriptions renew themselves, I have to also be notified of random games going on sale, too. 8 months ago:
Aw poor corporate behemoth doesn’t want to spend the pennies (compared to profits) to do things right. If we’re being fair, fuck them for cheaping out at our expense.
- Comment on The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO 9 months ago:
You may enjoy Zero-K more than most other RTS, at least. It’s in the Total Annihilation style like Supreme Commander or Beyond All Reason. One of the ways it sets itself apart is with a diverse array of commands you can issue to your units so they can micro themselves. I haven’t played much of it, so I can’t give a ton of examples, but it has commands to do stuff attack while maintaining distance, compared to how StarCraft 2 forced you to learn to stutter step your Marines, manually alternating between moving and shooting.
It’s also free and open source, based on the Spring engine, and available on Steam. It felt like it played well and was filled out well in terms of mechanics and units when I gave it a try a year or so ago, but I just haven’t been playing any RTS lately.
- Comment on Bugs me when audiobook series do this 10 months ago:
Yeah, the core plot idea was pretty much the same, but the way it played out was pretty different. The whole thing stays way more low key, and I wanna say the whole jail thing never happened. It’s been a long time since I read either version, so I’m fuzzy on the details.
I’ve tried to find a copy of the original before, and I think I found a poorly cloned website with the original links a few years ago, not updated to point at the new clone so I had to tweak it every time to continue. I’d love to get it converted to an ebook so I could archive it, but I haven’t tried in years now.
- Comment on Bugs me when audiobook series do this 10 months ago:
Tangentially, John Dies at the End is fucking great, easily one of my top book series. Kinda prefer the original online version of the sequel, but that’s hard to find these days, and the print version is still good. The movie’s pretty good, although it’s a shame they cut so much. I get why, movies can only be so long, but would have been cool to see all the stories from the book get told.