You’re completely incapable of ever arguing honestly.

Monkey see, monkey do

flings poop

That’s funny, the only “democrats” I’ve seen supporting Putin have been…well, “Leftists”

My thinking is, we can build a spaceship big enough to throw him AND Putin into the sun

Well, I’d like to jettison him into the sun for being an unapolagetic genocidal war criminal, and I work night shift, so that’s pretty much literally the maximum amount of daylight possible between us.

So just anyone to MY left. I don’t get how Netanyahu fits into it

So you actually do think that I think Biden is a MAGA?

I thought that was probably what you meant. But then I was like, wait so is he saying I think Biden/Clinton/etc are MAGA? That doesn’t track.

I guess you could still stick the landing by suggesting Dem centrists are to the right of Netanyahu but that’s just too convoluted to be a good insult.

Uhhh…yes. Also some people to his left. I think Netanyahu is too extreme even for some MAGA.

rig the election

I estimate you are 70% of the way along the Leftist to MAGA pipeline. Next step is a vague conspiracy theory about “those people” who did the rigging and every other thing. Then you just need a forceful personality to convince you who “they” are (Democrats, immigrants, etc).

Someone has no idea how primaries work.

remove them and people remove their garbage

This is some cute magical thinking

Better than seeing trash everywhere dude

That’s the function of the parks service. And it’s taxpayer money, so it’s my money paying for it too.

It’s common decency in plenty of places around the world to take your garbage with you until you find a can.

But you’ve removed all the cans rather than fix your budgeting problems.

Ok fine I’ll address some of the things I’ve been ignoring.

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,

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. 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.

The average home price in San Jose, CA is $1.4 million. That is crazytown. We can’t look at that as a benchmark to try and bring prices in line with.

Moreover, I would argue that anyone who owns a home at all is already of enough means that they don’t need tax breaks. Proportional to your equity obviously, someone who just closed on a house shouldn’t be slapped with a tax bill based on the whole value of that house. But we have a 0% income tax rate on the lowest incomes because that income is essential to living. 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.

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.

Housing policy is already a big enough conversation. Incidentally, I actually support universal basic income, which you could look at as substantially higher social security payments.

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 haven’t mentioned Prop 13 once

Mathematically, it’s close enough to what you’re advocating for: a tax carve-out for homeowners, incidentally with the same tear-jerking “old people forced out of their homes by evil taxes” argument. It has the same supply-demand effects as well.

So, to summarize:

• I’m ignoring your “reasonable price” point because it’s either arbitrary or unworkable

• I’m ignoring social security because it’s not a retirement plan

• I’m equating you with prop 13 because the socioeconomic effects are essentially the same

Instead I’m addressing the core of your point, which is that homeowners should not pay taxes on their home (within reason, mansions etc excluded). To which I say, “yes they should, all of em”. Again, if you have enough money to buy a house, you have enough money to pay taxes. If your house increases in value such that you can’t afford the taxes anymore, fucking congratulations, you just made a bunch of money. 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. And it makes things less bad in general for everyone by helping to bring housing costs down across the board.

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. But this definitely contributes a fair amount.

When old retired people are able to hold on to houses they shouldn’t be able to afford, it lowers the supply of housing in the area, which likely has higher house values because it’s an area with jobs, attracting young working people. San Francisco, Seattle, Cincinnati, Austin, hell practically every mid to large city. Lower supply = higher prices. In addition, old homeowners paying lower taxes means a greater tax burden on new homeowners, again meaning higher prices.

The math is inescapable, and no emotional screeching will change that truth. You may not LIKE it, it may not give you the warm fuzzies, but that does not mean it’s wrong. Don’t call your emotional response “fact”. It’s wrong.

I’m not advocating for exceptions for the elderly.

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.

When property values go up, taxes should go up proportionally. If a proportional tax increase means you can’t afford your home anymore, then you can’t afford your home anymore.

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 IS saying people shouldn’t pay taxes. Unless you disagree with the entire concept of taxing wealth. A home’s value is wealth. You may not want to think of it that way but it’s worth money the same way a stock portfolio is worth money. The same way a yacht is worth money. If you believe those assets should be taxed, then a home should be taxed. 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.

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.

And these precious poor old homeowner people you keep defending ARE MILLIONAIRES. Fuck em. They’re dragons sitting on their hoards, and the fact that it’s a smaller hoard than the corpo fucks does NOT make them our friends or allies or deserving of our pity. Their greed is making things worse for all of us.

So what they want to live in their community? So does Zuckerburg, and we’d be well within our rights to drag him out of his home and onto the street. Taxes are your debt that is owed to the community, and everyone who doesn’t want to contribute their fair share, based on the wealth they have, can get fucked. No exceptions just because they’re old. Pay your damn taxes.

You think the government just takes taxes and burns it? Taxes are required for government to function. Saying “they only can’t afford it because of taxes” is as silly as saying “I only can’t afford a new car because of how much it costs”.

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.

Corporate landlords, while scum, have little to do with the housing crisis. And yes, it is zoning laws, but it’s also old people wanting to clutch to homes they shouldn’t be able to afford anymore.

If taxes were fair, there would be far more housed people. The old retired people could sell their million dollar home and move out to the crappy shithole with cheap houses and no jobs that you apparently want young working people to somehow live in. AND, the retired people would spend their money THERE and make that place less of a shithole. AND, the increased housing stock would lower prices and help counteract the very problem you’re talking about - high taxes due to high home valuations.

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.

I dunno why you think old people who didn’t save enough for retirement should automatically get to live a good life by making the housing market worse for younger people. When you’re poor, life sucks, that’s how it is.

What’s the sense in forcing them out of their home

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.

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. I see no reason why old people should be exempt from this.

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. They can sell and pay rent in a more modest place. 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.

the obvious choice is to increase taxes on those with a gross excess

Including people whose homes, through no hard work of their own, have ballooned to incredible value.

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. At least the business owner probably put some work into earning the money.