AOC Proposes $30B Public Investment in Affordable Housing
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I'm basing this on the assumption that, when given the option of "making ends meet" today and saving for retirement, most people put off retirement savings. If enough people do this, prices will stabilize on a 0% savings rate - basically paycheck-to-paycheck.
This assumption combined with the American mentality of treating homeownership as an investment means that people often take on as much housing costs as they can.
If you want to make a dent in the market you’d need to be investing closer to $300B/yr. I’m all for doing something but may as well go for something big if you’re gonna propose legislation that’ll never go anywhere anyway.
Drink a Busch light, execute next step.
Life is good. This is the way in my county, we found out codes, design review, and most zoning is for corrupt politicians and smug self righteous inspectors. Been that way for decades and none of the apocalyptical predictions happened.
As it turned out, affordable housing means less government and no assistance.
there pushing for whole new cities which i think would work
Now that wouldn’t help you in a city like Boston or New York, but there are plenty of states where the federal government owns the majority of the land.
Whenever I pass reservations near major cities they are chalk full of stuff the city would never approve, that is actually affordable to build.
But give the historical relationship between the government and the Native American organizations, I can’t imagine most tribes would politically get behind using their limited reservation land to house people from outside the tribe.
Feds could ban or reform zoning just as they can ban me from growing and smoking a marijuana plant that never leaves my property nor enters commerce.
I'd prefer something that is somewhat less of a perversion of the Constitution, though. Find some other grounds on which zoning is unconstitutional. (The advantage of that is that governments aren't allowed to do what's unconstitutional, whether or not the federal government has the right to overrule local law.
Like, zoning might be considered a "taking". The government has taken from me the right to build a skyscraper on this piece of land, so they have to make "just compensation" - they have to pay me the difference between what the land is worth now and what it would have been worth if I could build the skyscraper on it. Making zoning that expensive could make it impossible for local governments to do it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/treat-building-housing-like-...
Nobody at the federal level actually wants to fix this housing "problem" that's real issue.
As much as I want USA to invest in affordable housing, I don't want it to come from Mrs. MMT. Raise corporate taxes and reduce income taxes.
I'm not sure you can generate much if any extra money from that.
Total revenue from income tax was $4.47 trillion in 2023, while only 0.42$ came from corporate tax. If you raise corporate taxes significantly revenue won't increase proportionally since companies will just find more efficient ways to spend money (more investment might somewhat offset that, though).
But this is testable in reverse, what happens to tax revenue when corporate taxes are cut? The tax revenue goes down.
Seeing this in action right now, between the supermarket chains in my European town's central square.
Sure? I'm talking specifically about significantly cutting income taxes in combination with raising corporate taxes and expecting to end up with the same tax revenue.
I once read in a book about corporate management by a Japanese CEO (I think it was Matsushita). His philosophy was that paying taxes should be an inescapable duty of a corporation, since their very existence is facilitated by the government providing them a business environment and their unimpaired customers paying them revenues. Interestingly, I also had a related conversation with someone from the Singapore Ministry of Economy who echoed the same principle, but from the government's perspective - it's the duty of the government to provide a facilitatory and unhindered business environment with reasonable taxation so that companies are incentivized to pay taxes. As of now, the US has a similar corporate tax rate to Singapore yet doing business is worlds different between the two (especially if you don't count Delaware).
Replying just because you said since it's still not clear at all:
> but the current definitions of corporate taxation are highly flawed.
I assumed that you meant that the government could significantly cut income taxes, raise corporate taxes and end up with the same or higher amount of money. I just don't see how is that feasible unless US could force most other countries in the world to do the same.
The point is that the US needs to find a balance between taxation and good business, kind of like Switzerland in the EU (although I agree, both are different ballgames altogether). The way I see it, there's a triangle here with three vertices to balance against - business pragmatism, optimal taxation and regulations for private markets.