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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

The problem is the wealth in concentrated in the few, who do not want to give it up, and needed by the many, who do not have (or know) the leverage needed. Of course this has always been the case since cities were first invented. All civilizations come to some kind of end, and new ones arise.

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Yup, precisely this. Obviously this is super hard/impossible to calculate, but everybody should be paying in a certain fraction of what they are getting out of the system.

ex. The entrepreneur that gets access to the road system, educated workforce, police/legal system protection... if they didn't have that then they couldn't profit from their widget. So pay something significant back to the system, or you can't participate in the system.

City populations are some of the most unequal in all society. Extremes in close proximity. I've read research on this in the past, although I don't have any links at the moment.

That can lead to better mobility though, can't it? Instead of living in a town full of poor people who you can't sell anything to. lol.

Total wealth is not important as long as everyone is paying for shared infrastructure based reasonably closely to the value they derive from it. That’s the social contract that’s being broken as for example developers depend on good local schools but they pay nothing for them. Building a new house is inherently different from selling an existing one, but zoning changes are handed out for free.

> concentrated in the few, who do not want to give it up

This bit is true, but we should remember that no one wants to give up anything, rich or poor. That's human nature.

You don’t speak for me. I would rather pay my taxes than have the money if I know every one else is in the same situation as me in being obligated to pay taxes. That is not the current status quo. Tax shelters and tax minimization strategies generally are tools that are not beneficial to market participants equally. It’s simply not worth the trouble unless you are offsetting a substantial tax liabilities. It’s not always the case that tax liabilities increase as wealth increases. Taxes don’t always go up with your income either. The fact that these variations and exclusions and deductions exist show intent to tax fairly and a desire to not double tax if not a reality. Yet the clear evidence that in real world examples, very high net worth individuals pay less than those in the upper middle class. Taxing proportional ability to pay seems fairer than the current system. That this is not the natural order of the tax system is itself curious. The governments of the world already deficit spend in excess of tax revenues. The tax system isn’t any more about fairness than it is about the money. If the government was able to choose to forgive your tax liability due to an exclusion or deduction, it could choose to do so for the entire tax base. It is not necessary to tax system to exist in its current state. It is the way it is because it benefits those who have money and power for it to be this way. Maybe this is why Fukuyama foresaw the end of history. We just ran out of ideas so this is the closest thing we got to a steady state society.

If real estate were a depreciating asset rather than an appreciating one, this would not be a problem. Imagine if we had a surplus of housing in major cities (certainly possible with modern technology if you put politics aside) and homes had to compete in the manner of consumer goods such as automobiles.

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