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Comment by ak217 | Hacker News Reader

That sounds histrionic because real property is already taxed in many states, and short of taxing wealth, the government can do many things to devalue your assets.

Putting aside the issue of the current trajectory of increasing inequality and its destabilizing effects on national security, the obsession Americans have with owning things "free and clear" is a reflection of a kind of privilege. The US is blessed with an expansionary economy, stable financial system, strong rule of law, military power, and respect for individual rights. These all form the basis of this belief that private property rights are absolute. They are never absolute, always subject to the goodwill of the social contract and the laws of physics. What good is owning things free and clear when there is a marauding militia outside your Capitol, or your land lost all value because of the environmental damage externalities of the economy?

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> the obsession Americans have with owning things "free and clear" is a reflection of a kind of privilege.

Sure, let's go back to feudalism !! Yeah!!

With the escalating wealth inequality and an inability for young people to afford homes is that now what IS happening?

There is plenty of affordable homes, especially with the rise of remote work.

Moreover, because some people choose not to own doesn't mean it shall be imposed by force to a whole population.

There's currently a vast number of people renting who are not "choosing" not to own. Many of them want to own, but lament that no matter how hard they work, prices are out of reach and rising faster than they can ever hope to save.

Some pray for a price crash, after they saved for a mortgage deposit but prices went up so it's not enough any more. Meanwhile rent is a substantial part of their income, and often costs more than a mortgage for the same property would, so they would choose a mortgage if they could, but can't get one.

Many of them live in poor quality conditions too, unable to improve or repair the property they are in, and at constant threat of eviction on the landlord's whim, and face difficulties finding a similar place to rent when it happens.

For most of them, the work they are skilled in either cannot be done remotely, or is low paid work (eg remote call centre worker).

There is also the not entirely trivial problem that moving to a completely different location with low prices and higher supply typically means low wages and fewer jobs, along with losing all your friends and family network, which is crucial if you are already struggling, and doubly so if you have a young family.

This increasingly affects more older people approaching retirement age, who worry about how they are supposed to pay rent when they are too old to work. The pension won't cover it. They are not choosing to not own.

I don't see how feudalism would help there, beside ensuring the people you are talking about are killing themselves in the fields.

I also don't see how more and more regulations ensure this won't happen, as it most likely had the exact opposite effect: prevent new wealth from establishing itself (high regulation preventing blooming wealth from building enough momentum to escape taxes) and enshrines "old" money. Regulations gives a clear advantage to people already established.

I'm arguing against "there are plenty of affordable homes" in a useful sense, and the implication that most people who don't own have chosen not to own.

I'm not arguing that feudalism is part of the solution.

Property taxes are a significant burden on people with fixed incomes. It amounts to a permanent rent, and requires an income. It amounts to a form of servitude to the government I think.

Though it's certainly a privilege to own land.

How do you think local services and improvements that those people rely on should be funded instead?

Sales tax? Income tax? There's a difference between what is ideal and what is practical, but just because the ideal isn't immediately practical isn't an excuse to continue with the unideal indefinitely.

How would you deal with people living in one tax locale and working/shopping in another?

Taxing real property to fund improvements and services adjacent to that property makes the most logical sense. I don't buy the argument that people on fixed income are somehow hurt by this. If someone on a fixed income owns a giant house and can't pay property tax on it, that implies they need to liquidate that property or rent it out to pay for the improvements around that property that support its value. Thanks to federalism, Americans actually have a choice of different places to live that tax property at different rates with correspondingly different levels of local services, so people are free to own in states with very low property tax in places that don't have much in the way of improvements.

Well I guess they could move to the Moon, or Mars perhaps. It's also very American to be cavalier about displacing people.

That's bullshit. Americans provide a huge safety net to seniors. Most states have property tax relief for seniors, HELOCs are available, and there are many other support services and discounts for seniors for other costs of homeownership. American senior homeowners have extraordinary privileges protecting them from displacement and financial distress.

I was not just referring to seniors. But good to have an authority such as yourself to reassure me that there are plenty of hoops for seniors to jump through to get relief from the govt imposed rent you're comfortable with.

Real property is taxed usually 1-2%, but depreciation of around 4% is allowed also, which along with 1031 exchanges makes real property investments fairly tax efficient. If financial instruments had a corresponding wealth tax, it would probably come with corresponding escape valves otherwise their value would quickly collapse. Newton’s 3rd law has a pretty strong analog in how economic behavior responds to taxes.

Would you tax wealth held as cash also? A 1-2 % negative interest rate on cash would decimate banks.

A negative interest rate is the most natural solution.

Money is just a way to reresent a bar tab. You don't own the money because money is a claim to the labor of someone else. It is essentially a debt.

People want that debt to last forever even though that is impossible as people age and die or their productivity is lost through unemploynent.

The truth is that your money is rotting all the time. By cutting spending they run into the illusion that their money can buy more things.

But money only starts rotting when it is actively used. So there is a delay between the current purchasing power and the decline in purchasing power after you have spent it.

Negative interest rates merely eliminate the delay. They aren't taking anything away from you that existed in the first place. They are taking the part that wasn't real to begin with. They are shattering an illusion that many people believe in so they want to shoot the messenger.

There is no store of value. Just 7 billion hard working humans. If they don't work your dollars buy you nothing. Currencies are worthless, it's the people that give them value.

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