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Comment by mrDmrTmrJ | Hacker News Reader

Do you think town services are immoral? If police, fire-dept., water, roads, and schools are not immoral - how do you propose to pay for them? Or do you wish to experience a "true property value" without those services?

What's more immoral: Property taxes or zoning that prevents other people from building what they want on their own property? It's not the increased demand for homes that drives increases in prices, and hence property taxes, it's the prohibitions on new construction. Surely those are immoral too!

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I think you are mixing 2 different concepts: 1. type of taxes 2. public services While public services you listed are not immoral, the way how the taxes collected to pay for these services can be immoral.

> how do you propose to pay for them?

You need to answer this question.

The cost of these services hasn’t increased by $2k/year to serve my home just because home prices have increased.

You yourself alluded to people moving in, so I don't see why the cost of those services (and many more) isn't justified.

>because a bunch of very wealthy out-of-state home owners have decided they want to live here

There it is.

We wonder why people aren't bootstrapping their way up from nothing anymore. The truth is that we made it illegal to help ourselves.

> how do you propose to pay for them?

Assess the actual cost, adjusted according to actual income — not the estimated value someone’s home.

Homeowners have access to the value in their home, despite the fact that it’s relatively illiquid, and their political actions often are oriented towards jealously guarding and boosting that value.

It’s disingenuous to act like taxing that value is unfair, so much of local politics is related to property values.

The myth that home owners are focused on jealously boosting property values is just that — a myth, and a pernicious and ridiculous one promulgated by people who simply don’t understand home ownership.

The political priority of a home owner is the community in which they’ve made a literal lifetime investment in.

How is it a pernicious myth, considering the fact that people will show up to city council meetings, and state it as a fact explicitly.

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