europoorean

If you want to have an honest conversation, I'm here. Meanwhile, I will assume you didn't respond to anything I said because you were up at 3-4am California time.

Instead of being snarky at random people online, I would suggest reading about land value tax. No worries if not, of course, but it's usually something that conservatives brand as 'communism' and progressives brand as 'capitalism' as an easy way out of any discussion.

Anyone supporting it will most likely support removing other taxes, such as stamp duty or council tax, or lowering income taxes to compensate. A net zero change would be massively positive.

You don't need to tax the house value, only the land.

You don't get rid of the 'poor'/less wealthy if you allow building higher and thus have a more efficient use of land as land values increase. All owners would share the cost of their land value tax.

The problem is not building higher in areas with very high demand. Of course they become 'rich only neighbourhoods' or whatever.

If a house is worth £1M, a flat in a 5-story building should be less than 200k in the same location. We can't have houses in city centres! We can't have houses 5 min from the city centre! We could definitely have houses 1h from the city centre in a small town. In London or NY we shouldn't, though!

I always tell my internet friends that they should think hard about second order effects. Stamo duty has very negative second order effects. Land value tax has very positive second order effects. Property taxes sit somewhere in the middle.

The issue with that is the disincentive to sell (or buy), which leads a lot of people to stay put in their oversized home during retirement, for example.

In the UK, 'stamp duty' is something that buyers pay (as opposed to sellers), but sellers also have to buy, so everyone pays to move and everyone stays put to avoid paying.

(And of course no one builds, which is the biggest issue).

I'd say it's OK to defer your property taxes until you sell (or die), but it shouldn't be the default, only something you apply for if you're in a vulnerable position.

I think it's a great idea to let land taxes create the incentives to build efficiently.

Pinky + index for control C etc

Also Pinky finger to crouch in Medal of Honor, etc :-)

Control has always been in the bottom left corner (until certain laptops started putting Fn there)

Yes. I use Firefox in Linux, with or without private window. Switch to Chrome to test and voilà, all good.

> a wealth transfer to support poor rural American communities

My immediate reaction to this is: it's probably a wewlth transfer to the few landlords owning the land and probably charging higher rent, not to the communities.

Of course I haven't analysed the data. If I am wrong, hopefully someone will feel compelled to correct me.

As a physicist, I always shed a tear when looking at data without error bars.

As a data scientist/generic programmer now, I don't really see them anywhere. I remember a colleague during my postdoc saying 'don't worry, no error bars in industry' when I asked about regression with ML lol

The wealthiest Americans have a life expectancy similar to that of the poorest Europeans in western European countries

https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap

Heat related deaths affect the oldest more than the young. The old Europeans dying during a heatwave do so because they are alive. The old Americans that would have died in a heatwave were already dead.

I hope the USA can fix its healthcare system.

Heat affects the old disproportionately. Europeans have years of extra life expectancy (look at the Mediterranean countries, affected by the heat). It is not unexpected that more, older Europeans die during a heatwave. The Americans that would have died during a heatwave are already dead due to other causes.

The AC debate is not an honest one (or just an ignorant take). I really hope Americans can.fix their healthcare system.

A quick google shows Greece has a life expectancy ~83 years, while Nevada's is at ~76. A 7 year difference.

Heat death affects disproportionately those of old age. Everyone dying at 76 for other reasons is not going to die at 83 due to heat.

While it is true that Europeans don't have air conditioning at home for the most part, it's also true that those old Europeans that die during heatwaves would already have been dead in the USA. I am 99% confident that 98% of the difference in heat deaths can be explained in this way at the 95% CL (!)

Gun related deaths are simply a way for Americans to cope, I suppose! A bit of ragebait. I honestly hope you fix your health system.