site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   32551 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It's definitely designed to take from enemies, but I think the primary goal remains to prevent people from escaping inflation by buying assets.

The government has liabilities to pay for and it will use its powers for financial repression if it has to. Anyone who has value anywhere is at risk.

"Taxing unrealized gains" is quite literally just confiscation. They just decide you owe them some money based on some fictitious number to pay for some value they think they can extract from you.

Now if someone whom the mafia already doesn't like happens to have things that can be stolen, that's even better. But it's not that complicated why they do it. It's the money.

Home property tax is not actually tied to home value, except in a relative way within a jurisdiction -- property tax paid depends most directly on municipal budgets, which is something property owners can influence.

This is a big difference.

So you've proven that... property taxes sometimes fall even as values rise? That seems to be a restatement of my point if anything; the fact that they were not 100% anticorrelated in LA just means that the budget increased faster than the growth in the number of taxpayers. (plus whatever California weirdness that Nybbler is pointing out)

This is not a thing that would ever happen with a flat tax on unrealized gains -- frankly your analogy sucks, and I'm not sure why you're bothering to defend it.

California is unrepresentative when it comes to property taxes, thanks to Proposition 13. Elsewhere, @jkf is right. Property tax is a derived value, generally set by fixing a municipal budget, then dividing by assessed value of total ratables. If all houses double in price, nothing happens because assessed value doesn't change. If there's a re-assessment which captures the doubling, nominal tax rate falls because it's an output.

All you've shown is that Portland, Oregon has increased taxes, which should not be at all surprising. You have not shown that increasing home values cause higher taxes; it appears they do not in Oregon. The taxes are set as I said -- they start with the budget and set rates accordingly. Oregon's even weirder because of a bunch of initiatives which attempt (unsuccessfully, so far as I can tell) to limit tax increases.

The taxes are set as I said -- they start with the budget and set rates accordingly

You could say the same thing about any tax and any government. Yes, the same institution chooses both.

I do not mean it in this loose way. I mean it in a direct way; the government starts with a budget (probably based largely off last year's budget) and then derives, mathematically, the tax rates from it.

Taxes do indeed tend to go up; this is not the result of higher assessments, but because local governments love spending as much as any other government.

More comments

Because you don't buy and sell shares of everyone else's houses on a market.

Because home asset values don't appreciate anywhere near the same way equities do.

Because market price is always higher than appraisal price.

Because the government subsidizes home purchasing (which inflates prices you can sell for).

Because tax law allows for deductions that make paying the property tax (which is low single digits) easier.

Two very different systems with different incentives.

Unrealized cap gains tax is far far worse and home propety tax is already awful, albeit mostly accepted.

Depends very much on the time and place.

Hard no. Residential real estate annual appreciation is between 2-6% as an asset class over 30+ years. An index funds beats that. Home's have been a "source of wealth" for Americans because, again, purchase subsidies and favorable tax treatment. You're using a loan to buy equity you can't afford on your own. The stock equivalent would be the government giving everyone favorable rate loans to buy SPY or something.

If anything, homes are far less liquid than stocks, which makes paying it much harder

Well, no. You pay home property tax and your mortgage payments with cash you generate elsewhere, usually income. Your mortgage payments are known in advanced and are fixed or within a certain rate so you can plan for them (or, you don't and 2008 happens again). At the same time, however, your home equity generally appreciates so, over the long run, you can come out on top.

In taxing unrealized gains, you have no idea what the potential payments could be. You can't plan for them. You have to manage risk much more closely, only this is upside down world where you have more downside risk (in tax payments) the more an asset goes up.

In short property taxes are on raw value (not appreciated)

I mean this is just a factual error. Your home is assessed in value every year and that's what you pay taxes on.

If I buy a home with 20% down, and the rent covers the mortgage

Are you calculating return based on renting out one's primary residence?

Taxing the rent you don't have to pay (imputed rent) was a trick the government tried to pull a long time ago; the Supreme Court said no, though the usual suspects say they didn't really say that.

More comments

The rates, mostly.

Pedantically it's not quite a property tax, it's a wealth tax. Paying for local infrastructure and redistribution are not morally the same. I don't like wealth taxes in principle because I do think they amount to confiscation and require the government to spy on everyone.

But while I can tolerate the Swiss doing it with their careful handling of the information and 0.5% per year, 25% unrealized + 44% realized is just straight up confiscation and essentially places a ceiling on personal wealth.

Combined with the ongoing monetary policy of the US and ensuing inflation, I find this highly problematic. And yes, that same monetary policy argument also applies to property tax.

No. The capital gains rates for individuals (what we are talking about) under Bubba ranged between 20%-28%. Much lower than 44%.

Per the policy, this is deducted from the 44% when you eventually sell the assets, so this is just requiring earlier payment, not an increase in overall tax burden, unless you were planning to die to avoid paying taxes, but that's exactly what is being fought here.

See my run through the numbers here.

If you pay off your capital gains taxes by selling your capital (and paying the taxes to pay your taxes), then you'd sell off half your stake by the time it gets ~10x the value (higher multipliers for faster growth). And you'd still have to pay 44% for the part you haven't yet sold.

In that scenario, you'd be purely better off with a 70% (realized only) capital gains tax than the 25% unrealized + 44% realized tax.

EDIT: just realized you had already responded to my comment before posting this one. My numbers are completely incompatible with your description of the "net change", so it would've been nice to have my math directly challenged rather than pointing out an exception for private companies.

Bold of you to assume I supported Clinton's tax policy or indeed welfare economics.

this is literally just false

Just because there's some specifically defined ritual to divine the fictitious number doesn't make it real.

If a bunch of people behind desks decide my property has a certain subjective value to them and that I should pay them rent on that subjective value to have the right to continue owning things that may have a different value to me, I'm going to call that confiscation. Because that's all it is.

What's the moral justification for a wealth tax if not redistribution?

Well one reason is you got your basic facts wrong.

Bro — you made a whole post saying “Clinton was a moderate and had tax rates at XYZ.” Your rates were massively off and despite that probably won’t change your conclusion. So yes you are playing fast and loose with the facts.

More comments

Redistribution is the moral justification. Did I suggest otherwise?

Why object to confiscation as a qualifier if that's what it is then?

unless you're a die-hard libertarian, that more economic inequality justifies more progressive taxes

Unless you are more right wing than a social liberal, you mean. I don't believe fairness requires economic equality. Indeed I believe it requires economic inequality.

this is somehow qualitatively different than what came before

Well I'll just explicitly state it then: USG has engaged in confiscation before. Notoriously I might add. Which I also oppose.

One doesn't need to believe fairness requires economic equality to believe more inequality implies more progressive income tax system.

I suppose I am erasing a bit the margin between social liberalism and social democracy. But that's a small constituency.

Indeed I do not value the welfare of masses more than the sanctity of private property. In this I am to the right of social liberalism.

But that's not a niche position, even distributists are with me on this. It's just not very compatible with soft or hard managerialism, which is inherently at least as interventionist as socdems. But I'm opposed to managerialism, so...

More comments

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats