AHemlocksLie

@AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  God dammit, we can be tracked by the fucking tire sensors? Fucking hate this timeline…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  repeating the digital beacons of everyone else

  You can’t perfectly mimic everyone else and accomplish something unique at the same time, even if it’s something as simple as pulling up a webpage nobody else around is requesting. Your device must in some way identify itself to the network so it can actually receive everything they request, and that’s an avenue for identification and tracking.

  Not too long ago I was watching a video about a guy that was a 100% match in the eyes of AI as someone that was trespassed by the casino. When the cops showed up and he presented his documents, the cops brought him to the station as they thought he must have given false ID when he was originally trespassed.

  Sure, modern AI can’t push the limits like I’m talking about, but I’m not talking about doing all this with modern AI as it is now, and things are advancing extremely rapidly. Processing power available is, too, as companies churn out as many new data centers as they can. It might not be as long as we hope before the things I suggest become feasible.

  He was eventually able to prove his innocence but the fact he was taken into custody because AI messed up makes me have no issue with people doing stuff to intentionally poison the data.

  Yeah, modern AI is trained unethically at just about every step of the process, so poison away.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Even if businesses are willing to settle for good enough, governments most certainly will NOT. Those attempting to evade detection will be those they’re most interested in identifying, which is why I mentioned that failure to successfully falsify will get you flagged as having attempted it and probably how. From a government’s perspective, the ones attempting to evade detection are the ones most likely to be criminals or, even worse in their eyes, rebels. Governments, especially authoritarian ones, will make sure the tech constantly pushes the boundaries of what’s possible, or at the very least defeats the vast majority of known evasion techniques.

  Then, if business really has left the evaders unidentified, they’ll start adopting the tech from government. Better data with no R&D? Why wouldn’t they at that point? Governments might even subsidize it because it helps them spread the greater surveillance network.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The clothing they wear solves most of those

  For now. This cat and mouse game will continue on and on. We’ll develop evasion techniques, they’ll learn how to recognize and see through them. We’ll develop new ones again, they’ll learn them again. What about if you speak near a camera? It’ll learn to analyze voice and diction. Voice scrambler? AI is learning to descramble video, can probably learn it for voice, too. Your clothing style will become a data point and an expensive one to consistently falsify. The locations you’re seen at is suggestive. If you walk a dog, good fucking luck convincing it to help you falsify data for the AI monitors.

  Still, this is predicated on the assumption that you can recognize and falsify enough of the data points. My point is that they will collect however many data points it takes to make it nigh impossible to get a failure to identify you or a false positive. And if it’s a false positive, we have to question the ethics of pinning your trail on some other random dude.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  That won’t stop corporations and governments from surveiling. They’ll still collect highly accurate information about you. They may not trust public data, but they’ll still trust the systems they use to surveil. They’ll still be right.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It turns out that Juggalo makeup blocks facial recognition technology⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  It won’t work alone for long in the age of AI. You won’t be tracked and identified by face alone. It’ll be a complex array of data points. Your face, your hair, your eye color if the cameras have the resolution, your height, your gait, your posture, your scars and injuries, your visible birth defects, whether you use mobility aids, the wireless devices emitting signals in your pockets, the list goes on and on. They’ll assemble dozens of data points and make it extremely difficult to falsify enough to avoid detection instead of just getting flagged as suspicious.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human experimentation, one way or the other.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not talking about people who had a “cure” but about those who shared their experiences openly while being censored and dismissed. People who are not part of a campaign.

  You’re assuming you can tell when a stranger on the internet is part of a campaign or mistakenly parroting something from a campaign. The internet is heavily astroturfed, especially social media. Several hugely popular pieces of misinformation have been traced back to just a handful of accounts that look like and pose as regular people but, upon thorough inspection, are very clearly lying either for money or for propaganda. Those accounts lied, not got it wrong, lied, and millions of people parroted it. Many of them lied a bit themselves and framed it as something that totally happened to someone they directly know.

  You assume a lot, and the way you associate everything with anti-vaxxers only shows how much governments have turned this into a political issue.

  …Motherfucker, it’s not a politics issue, it’s a science issue. Antivaxxers have REPEATEDLY shown they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. At best, they’re scared of what they don’t understand and make mistakes. At worst, they’re grifting at the expense of people’s health. Many just want to feel smart, like they’re in on a secret the rest of society can’t recognize, and they’re willing to endanger people’s health and wellbeing to get that feeling. In no case are they overall correct, even if they manage to occasionally brush against truth as they flounder. You wanted examples of why regular people might go on the internet and lie about the vaccines, and antivaxxers are a great example because everything that comes out of their mouths on that topic is either half baked or, relevant to the question at hand, an outright lie. Some of them will just make up random shit on the fly to defend their incorrect beliefs. Shit, some people are just pathological liars, and some portion of them will be antivax or whatever.

  If I say someone close to me had side effects after the vaccine, suddenly I’m assumed to also drink bleach and take dewormers.

  I don’t think anyone with sense and information doubts that people experienced side effects. When I got my COVID vaccines, we had to wait a little while on site in case we had an allergic reaction or any other sort of adverse reaction. What most of the doubters don’t believe is the people suggesting it’s way more dangerous than anyone thought because the vast majority of the evidence is someone claiming that their cousin’s uncle’s dog’s vet’s new girlfriend he just met totally suffered life altering consequences. The vast majority is bullshit, whether the person saying it knows it or not, and the remainder is such a small portion, it most likely doesn’t make a significant difference from reported results and risks.

  At this point, you’re basically unable to think critically or discuss the negative. Being part of a herd also comes with some dangerous aspects.

  No, I can do that. The problem is that critical thinking leads me to the realization that there’s never any fucking evidence, at all, ever. Some schmuck that may or may not be AI with a username I’ve never seen before can write some words on social media about a thing that totally definitely happened to someone, but that’s it, that’s all it is. There’s never unadulterated pictures or video. No medical records from the hospital visit such a severe reaction surely must have required. No articles from a respected journalist known to thoroughly vet sources. No medical or scientific studies that hold up to thorough scrutiny. Do some people have severe negative reactions? Yeah, the manufacturers literally warn us of them. Is it the huge threat that some people made it out to be? Almost certainly not according to the available legitimate evidence.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human experimentation, one way or the other.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Cue the classic Arthur meme, “do you really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?”

  How about for money? How many grifters pushed their own protective supplements? You think pharma maybe would pay some astroturfers to push the ivermectin that didn’t do dick for anyone that didn’t have worms already because it’s fucking dewormer? How many antivaxxers made up bullshit about it just like they do every other vaccine? How many wealthy people down played everything and helped push lies so their workers would get the fuck back in the office/factory? How many people just said some stupid shit and doubled down to protect their ego when called out?

  Like here’s the real issue. You’ve put no real thought at all into why someone might lie about it, as evidenced by the fact that you can only conceive of it being state actors while I came up with all those people incentivized to lie off the top of my head. And then, after putting no real effort into reflection or anything, you look around at all the people who can come up with reasons you’re wrong and claim it feels like a cult.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Human experimentation, one way or the other.⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Probably more to do with the fact that there is, at most, a tiny grain of truth at the core, but it’s wrapped in a mountain of bullshit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Valves first title with a 3 in it⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Nah, that’s too obvious, could have just been a coincidence. This, though…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's OK to just like lemon water.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s only after your mouth and esophagus. Those aren’t really geared to tolerate exposure to strong acids or bases. Even foods that aren’t acidic enough to immediately damage these regions can still contribute to tooth enamel being worn away, for example. It’s either strong enough to at least consider the impact on those, or it’s weak enough that adding lemon is a questionable move.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's OK to just like lemon water.⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  True, but your body will not enjoy water that’s very alkaline, so there’s a chance it’s sufficient since lemon is pretty acidic.

  Plus, if the whole point of it is to be alkaline, why directly counter that with what you add?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you got in a time machine⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you’ve got a spare PC or one that’s always online, you can host something like Jellyfin for yourself. Make your own streaming service. With blackjack and hookers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I knew I should have cancelled the order 😑⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I bought something that never shipped once. Seller just never responded to anything. Tried and tried to get in touch with eBay, scoured their site for contact info, but ultimately never even got to talk to anyone about it. No way to even ask for a refund.

  So I called the bank and filed a charge back. And I got every penny back.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sorry to bring this up again so much later, but I apparently missed the notification at the time, and with the conversation just seeming to start to turn productive, it seemed like a waste to just ignore it.

  Because the entire housing market is unreasonable in almost every city in the Western world. It’s not just a few outliers here and there that can be compared to some average. The average itself is completely out of whack. We can’t just rein in the crazy part of the market; the whole market is crazy.

  This is a result of our markets emphasizing residential real estate as an investment tool. Homes aren’t just places to live, they’re pathways to profits, even if you live in them, and especially if you don’t. Countries like Japan don’t encourage it the same way, and it helps keep housing prices in check. It’s obviously not perfect, but after some quick checks, it does appear that even the most expensive cities in Japan are still less expensive than ones in the most expensive US cities, even with all their population density and the pressure that puts on housing.

  Either we pick a semi-arbitrary value and tax above that (your plan) or we introduce a graduated, progressive tax on all homes (my plan). Introducing exemptions and especially benefit cliffs has historically always had crazy unforeseen negative consequences. A tax on all homes will by itself automatically bring the market closer to equilibrium.

  I could support a bracketed plan. I just think the bottom bracket should be 0%, and I probably think the bracket should be bigger than you do.

  Moreover, I would argue that anyone who owns a home at all is already of enough means that they don’t need tax breaks.

  If they’re well off, I’m not opposed to them paying more taxes. But since I think housing should be a right, I don’t think anyone should be taxed out of their homes except maybe those who are far more than simply comfortable in an average family home. I’m not opposed to ensuring people contribute. I just don’t think this is an appropriate mechanism for it. People care about a society that cares about them. Let society ensure they keep their homes if they’re paid off.

  Home ownership is not essential. Having shelter is essential, which is why I support taxpayer funded grants to homeless people etc, but home ownership is not and should not be a fundamental right. If you can afford to buy a house, you can afford to pay taxes.

  And this is where we disagree. The only truly secure shelter is one you own. Shelter that no landlord can evict you from. Shelter that no government can seize for taxes. I’ve no problem with renting for people who don’t want to commit to a home for whatever reason, but if someone wants to own their home, they should be fully capable of buying and owning their home. If you want to tax people on their homes, make sure every single person who genuinely wants one and is willing to work for it is able to get one. Then we can consider taxing homes, but not before.

  But relevant to this conversation, social security in its current form is not a pension. If all you’re living on is social security, you probably can’t afford to retire. If you’re physically unable to work, then that’s disability. If you don’t have enough money saved up to pay for the life you want, but happen to be age 65, you’re not retired. You have to keep working. … I’m ignoring social security because it’s not a retirement plan

  For 1 in 7 recipients, Social Security is at least 90% of their income. That’s over 10 million people. For those people, it very much is their pension. It very much is their retirement plan.

  Now you get to experience the pain of renters being priced out of their own neighborhoods, but also with a small golden parachute to take with you.

  This just comes across as bitter, as if you’re happy to see someone who managed to succeed in spite of a rigged system suffer. I don’t think that perspective is productive. Like I said earlier in this post, people care about a society that cares about them. Housing is one of our most fundamental needs. We shouldn’t be in the business of strong arming people out of reasonable homes. They still need an income to survive, and that provides a way to tax them.

  And it makes things less bad in general for everyone by helping to bring housing costs down across the board.

  This is true. I just don’t think it’s the right approach.

  Also, just to keep this conversation in perspective, I don’t think this is the MAIN reason why housing is crazy in places that have similar tax carve-outs for homeowners. I actually think that’s zoning and local NIMBYism.

  I think this is somewhat true, but I think they’re also symptoms of homes being treated as investments. A lot of NIMBYism arises from people trying to protect their most valuable investment and trying to make sure it continues to appreciate in value. This is also true to an extent about zoning, but part of zoning was at least initially racially motivated, so it’s a bit mixed on that one.

  In general, I think your intentions are good, I just think you’re a little too eager to squeeze people who are marginally better off than you compared to the real problem, which is the parasitic owner class. And I don’t mean just home owners, I mean business owners, landlords, the people who make money off the money they already have. They do no actual work, collect all the profits, buy up our necessities, sell them back to us, pay as little tax as possible, and leave us to squabble over how the rest of us are going to finance society.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is dehydrated⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  If you have to worry about it getting in you and disturbing your gut biome, hell yes. That thing is for external use only.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon is dehydrated⁩ ⁨⁨7⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  …how high are you setting the pressure on that thing?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Financially rewarding and you will always have a job⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t forget that loans are probably deferred through the PhD, so that’s like 4+ years of accumulated interest on top.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Oh Kurt Gödel, you lovable logician freak.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think they ever publicly stated what the flaw was. Would love to know, too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft has never been good at running game studios, which is a problem when it owns them all⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, it did eliminate competition. They’re no longer competition once Microsoft buys them. They’re employees, possibly if a subsidiary, who contribute to Microsoft’s profits.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Asus and Lenovo’s handhelds get price hike as Valve pauses some Steam Deck sales⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And on Switch, it’s forbidden typically. Which is part of why people advocate for the Steam Deck instead. From Nintendo’s perspective, this very much is a vulnerability. It’s just not leading to custom firmware or ROM dumps from what I understand, so it’s not even close to the most significant vulnerability.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Unfortunately, this is science too.⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not just valid, I’d argue important. It doesn’t make the most exciting headlines and doesn’t get funding very well, though, so it’s not done nearly as often as it should be. A big part of science is not taking things at face value and verifying that there is sufficient proof for claims.

  Plus, if both results agree, it statistically tightens the probability of a coincidence. The chances of a 5% chance event happening twice in a row is 0.25%, and three times in a row is 0.0125% so repetition can make the results more certain.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  They don’t follow a standard protocol because the industry is dominated by just a few players, and it isn’t in their interests to do that since they want to make customers dependent on them. The industry is dominated in part because the fingerprint tracking creates extra overhead that’s harder for smaller or starting businesses to deal with.

  They don’t just have to maintain a database. They have to handle all of the logistics of accurately collecting and entering the data for it. They need legal counsel to get it right. They need to work with distributors and/or retailers to get an idea where they’re going so a fingerprint can be linked to a retail purchase. They have to deal with the inevitable subpoenas at a minimum, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they fulfilled requests without a legal order. It becomes a lot of extra labor beyond just making and selling printers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable - The Oatmeal⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  We’d have quality printers if it was legal to make an open source one. Unfortunately, every printer is legally required to be a snitch and uniquely fingerprint everything it prints with a discreet dot matrix so the feds can track you down if you print something illegal.

  So now, the only companies that can make and sell printers are those capable of and willing to maintain a database of all the printers they sell and the fingerprint they add to all prints.

  Your printer is absolute shit because it’s a snitch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  When old retired people are able to hold on to houses they shouldn’t be able to afford,

  Only because you want to tax them while letting them live on a poverty income. I might see your point if Social Security payouts were substantially increased, but they aren’t, and you aren’t proposing that we change that, either.

  In addition, old homeowners paying lower taxes means a greater tax burden on new homeowners, again meaning higher prices.

  Once again, you completely ignore that under my proposal, those young people wouldn’t be paying the property taxes, either. So this is a completely irrelevant point to what I’m proposing.

  Lower supply = higher prices

  Now try applying this to rent seeking scalpers, too, not just people trying to live in the homes they bought with their own hard work. How’s it impact the housing market when the guy buying up homes doesn’t even want to live in them? You think maybe a little more heavily than someone just trying to not be homeless?

  The math is inescapable, and no emotional screeching will change that truth

  That’s a really fucking bold claim to make when you’re the one who hasn’t done any math here and completely fucking ignored my math. I at least actually did my own research and math on tax rates and Social Security to make an informed conclusion that they are NOT all millionaires. You just keep screeching about irrelevant millionaires even when I already said multiple times that exorbitantly valued homes shouldn’t be tax exempt.

  Prop 13 and its variants are absolutely an exception for the elderly. And their heirs, which is just blatant bullshit, but that’s a whole other conversation.

  Yeah, you’re 100% right, it is a whole other conversation, one I’m not part of. I haven’t mentioned Prop 13 once, nor did I even know what it was. And at a glance now that I’m aware, it’s not what I’m fucking advocating for. You wanna try actually addressing the points I’m making instead of just ranting at me about whatever pissed you off?

  That IS saying people shouldn’t pay taxes. Unless you disagree with the entire concept of taxing wealth.

  That sure is a blind logical leap you’re making there. Especially when I already agreed to property taxes on high value homes, multiple times. I SPECIFICALLY said no property taxes on homes of a reasonable value, as defined by semi-local values. I say semi-local because living in a particularly town or area shouldn’t exclude you from taxes just because your neighbors are rich, too, but I’d be willing to make some locality concessions because of how home values vary by region, probably averaging out to at least some extent with the whole state. Hell, you could also do it as a sort of minimum threshold like we do with tax brackets. Properties valued under $XXX,000 get no tax with XXX dependent on region, anything above that pays full taxes on the value above that threshold, double taxes on value above a secondary threshold, and double it with no minimum threshold if it’s not your primary residence.

  The same way a yacht is worth money. If you believe those assets should be taxed, then a home should be taxed.

  Ah, yes, because a home providing shelter in line with local averages and basic human needs is definitely the same thing as a luxury item that serves no true need in life. Because we should tax luxury yachts, we should also tax basic necessities like homes? That’s the clownest of clown takes.

  And I do believe that wealth should be taxed entirely separately from and irrespective of income. The tax RATE should obviously be progressive and not a flat tax. But no blanket exemption, especially not for poor pitiful millionaires, whatever their social security check dollar amount is.

  I think we agree here but disagree on implementation. Personally, I see a wealth tax as a means to prevent wealth consolidation at the top, so I do not see it as reasonable to apply to someone who simply owns their home and has a respectable retirement fund because that’s not making a significant contribution to wealth consolidation. I would obviously include an exemption for a primary residence of reasonable value. Extra emphasis on “of reasonable value”, because you seem to need a little assistance with your reading comprehension since you’ve ignored it literally every single time I’ve said it, which has been many times at this point. I’d probably set the minimum threshold for a wealth tax substantially higher than you, though. Norway, for example, taxes wealth above ~$110k USD, I think it is, and they only consider 1/4 of the value of the home. This may sound like a reasonable starting point until you realize the average home price is around $500k, which means you’re already often looking at taxes on an average home. At a first guess with minimal research behind it, I’d say the threshold should probably be 2x-4x as high and with a bigger carve out for homes, again only if they’re reasonably valued. I don’t think you should start getting hit with a wealth tax the instant you actually start getting ahead.

  And at the risk of wasting my time by typing out only to have it ignored yet again, I’m going to reiterate that I’m NOT SAYING THEY SHOULDN’T BE PAYING TAXES. People should generally pay taxes. I just don’t think we should be levying taxes on basic human necessities, and even states with a sales tax often acknowledge that to some extent by making basic food items tax exempt. A wealth tax with reasonable exceptions for things like reasonably valued homes and a large savings that still don’t make them rich are fine. Income taxes are fine and should be higher at the higher end of the brackets, probably with another new bracket or two on top.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  And these precious poor old homeowner people you keep defending ARE MILLIONAIRES.

  I literally did the math to prove that isn’t always the case. This is why I didn’t bother providing more facts, you’re just going to prioritize your feelings over hard facts.

  And even if a barely over median home value DID make them a millionaire, that’s a gross condemnation of the housing market, not a literally barely above average home owner. The idea that someone living in the home they bought and owning no other properties might be responsible for the housing problems is absolutely ludicrous because that’s the fucking point of housing. If you think people living in their own homes is the problem with the housing market, I really have no idea how to address the utter void of reasoning required to reach that conclusion.

  Lmfao old people living in their homes is a bigger problem than corporate landlords?

  SPECIFICALLY concerning the abysmal lack of housing, yes. Not generally. Don’t twist my words.

  Yeah, my point still stands. Housing is for people to live in. People living in their own housing will never be the cause of the problem when that’s the whole fucking reason we build housing. I really don’t understand how you could blame someone living in their only home MORE than you blame corporations who buy homes for the express purpose of renting it out for profit, the literal fucking definition of rent seeking behavior.

  No exceptions just because they’re old.

  I’m not advocating for exceptions for the elderly. You expressly avoided quoting my actual proposal, no taxes on a primary residence of a reasonable value in relation to state home values. That’s not saying people shouldn’t pay taxes. That’s saying that their home shouldn’t be a tax burden so long as it’s a reasonable property.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Lmfao old people living in their homes is a bigger problem than corporate landlords? That’s absolutely ludicrous. And you want to keep harping on these expensive ass houses when I already demonstrated that you can spend half your Social Security on a barely over median value home AND agreed with you that it shouldn’t apply to particularly lavish homes. You’re not interested in facts. You’ve found your enemy to hate, and somehow, you chose elderly retired people instead of the moneyed interests routinely fucking us all over. I’d devote the time to explaining why that’s wrong and providing evidence, but you’ve clearly demonstrated that your clown ass will just ignore it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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 ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ 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.