DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
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DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
6d ago
My parents visited China where stop lights are all yields. They were happy to return to Albuquerque driving.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
6d ago
No only to 3, it’s safest to flow with traffic and not be a rock in the stream, 5, I can always brake, and 6, I expect the rules I live by to be an agreement with other drivers, not a tool for me policing them.
As for additional driving scissor statements, I prefer to back into a parking spot, or pull through a double spot to be facing out. Some people call it “getaway parking,” others deride it as “ghetto.”
First, because my brain has been fully engaged in estimating my car’s size and position relative to other vehicles and the stationary world for at least five minutes, and I’m less likely to be in an accident in that altered state.
Second, because when I depart that spot, I can see somewhere between 3 and pi radians without obstruction, and can easily see pedestrians, shopping carts, and other vehicles.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
6d ago
This kind of thing is why I miss the low effort thread. News gets quick takes, “olds” get analysis, and bundling the twain gets a mad muddle.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
8d ago
What drew me into the FairTax at first were the end to FICA and the concept of permanent untaxed ownership. Since then, the more I compare it with other revenue collection methods, I haven’t found anything I’d characterize as a poison pill, or even anything I’m having to hold my nose over. I’ve only found more to love about it, practically and philosophically.
I personally haven’t run the numbers, but my parents sold the family home my dad spent his working years buying, and moved into a home they inherited. The math for making the former a rental in walking distance from the University of New Mexico campus, one of the highest occupancy areas of town, wouldn’t work out considering upkeep and repairs, a property management company, property taxes, income taxes, and the accountant they’d have to hire at least the first year to add rent to their income taxes. If the FairTax were enacted, they’d pay a simple 23% out of their renters’ check each month. It would be clean income after that, no profit/loss calculations messing up their Social Security, and no worrying about the next administration making their lives hell for 3% in the polls.
Your question 1, “am I [to assume] this tax policy will make people tilt even harder towards ownership vs rental?” I have a feeling this is so. I’ve always understood home ownership to be a part of the American Dream which (question 2) society is invested in encouraging. In America, every citizen is a nobleman, and his home should be his estate.
The most disordered people I know have been lifelong renters. An “efficiency” apartment is an abomination, a box built to impart pain and despair, but even the townhome apartment one of my best friends had stank of fear and giving up. And with vulture capital buying up complexes, it’s an even worse situation.
But aside from philosophical and psychological ideals, I’m sensitive to structural inequality. There’s a point to be made about giving everyone slack at once, not just one class. My gut says the slack is to be found in ensuring owners of second homes are renting them long-term to families that want to escape apartment life instead of renting them as Vrbos and Airbnbs. It seems abominable to me that hotels are long-stay while houses sit empty three out of seven days a week.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
8d ago
· Edited 8d ago
Let me add a thought experiment: what would be the effect on the housing market were all rental property owners exempted from the portion of income tax derived from renting? Grok suggests three outcomes:
- Grey Tribe: Tax exemptions for rental property owners would incentivize investment, increasing rental supply and potentially lowering rents. However, it might inflate property prices as demand for investment properties rises.
- Blue Tribe: The policy could exacerbate inequality, favoring wealthy landlords while offering no relief to renters or low-income homeowners, potentially widening the wealth gap.
- Red Tribe: Exempting landlords from income tax might destabilize public finances, reducing funds for community services like infrastructure, which could harm housing market stability and neighborhood quality.
Distorting the market in favor of “necessary” goods usually ends up with those goods costing just as much, other goods costing more, and inequality rising. That’s the primary reason the FairTax has no loopholes for housing, food, or medicine, just a flat pre-calculated rebate that makes governance effectively free for people at or below the poverty line.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
they really ought to be throwing themselves at the much easier problem of verifying prayer. It would be super cheap and testable anywhere
All that tells you is whether the prayer answerer is a deterministic system, or imitating one, or something which isn’t either, and whether the person praying “has the password” for getting the result they want.
(One problem often pointed out in schools is how much of schooling is essentially guessing what the teacher wants to hear.)
Biblical Christianity on the other hand is about being so different after being saved from sin that one might as well be a new person, “born again” as a new creation with God’s law written on one’s heart and the Holy Spirit urging loving choices toward any and all, even one’s enemies.
People with autism, like me, often have trouble understanding non-transactional relationships, as well as where duty and authority come into play without resentment in a loving relationship between unequals. God is not a system or a tricky genie.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
9d ago
Second buyer doesn't get taxed on the appreciation; the developer pays FairTax out of the first “retail” sale if the first sale occurs after the FairTax is legislated into existence, otherwise the govt. already got embedded taxes a myriad of ways. Sell at a loss, the govt. doesn’t pay anything.
As a renter, you’re already paying the income taxes of your landlord and property mgmt company’s hirelings, embedded in the price of your rent, similar to “utilities included”. This is a market distortion which is expected to be compensated for by rentals dropping 23% and then having the 23% added back in (30% exclusive) on the receipt as FairTax.
Used homes not being FairTaxed (except renovation/remodel costs) is a philosophical reward similar to owning DVDs costing less than renting them a dozen times or paying streaming and rarely watching. Besides, the homeowner will be paying FairTax on everything they’ll use for upkeep in the future.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
13d ago
TANSTAAFL, no matter how rich.
If they’re financing businesses through loans, the businesses will be buying services and goods on the open market using the loan money, and those will be FairTaxed. The goods or services those businesses sell will be FairTaxed. That’s less money returning to the investor.
If someone rich buys a used mansion, either they’ll refurbish/remodel it to their own standards using FairTaxed services and goods, or the seller will refurbish/remodel it before putting it on the market and raise the purchase price from “fixer-upper” to “like new”. And if they try to work around the FairTax to refurb it, the contractors will get caught and charged with tax evasion, so the contractors will be sure to include FairTax in their receipts. Trickle-up taxation.
According to Google search summary by AI, “New home sales and improvements, which would include land, would be subject to the tax. Sales of existing homes and, presumably, existing land, would not be taxed. This is consistent with the FairTax's exemption of ‘used items’ to prevent double taxation.”
If the rich are buying used stocks (not IPO), why should they pay FairTax? If they’re buying new IPO stock, they’re transferring ownership of a used company from the private proprietors, who built it by buying and selling FairTaxed goods or services. If they’re buying and merging companies, same deal. The difference is they can’t just sell it at a loss to cut their tax liability. (I’m looking at you, Hollywood Accounting!)
If the rich buy a big, big boat worth a bunch of bucks in Bahrain and keep it in the Bahamas, why should the federal government of the USA get a single dime of that purchase?
As to the fairness of power, prestige, reputation, value speculation, and all the other ancillary benefits of capitalism, the existing income and investment tax system has no ability to curb them, so the FairTax doesn’t even try. The tax system should be focused primarily on efficiently collecting necessary revenue for the government, not solving all the social ills caused by the 1% of the 1%. That’s what antitrust is for.
Thank you for engaging with me on this, there’s little I love as much as talking FairTax.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
14d ago
The FairTax would make it so the truly rich couldn’t spend money without the government getting a quarter of it. Anything else either has loopholes or drives them out of the country.
It turns out I’d already read Just An Assistant (which explicitly defends bondservanthood, not chattel slavery) and up-thumbed it a while back.
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