Younger people are flocking to cities in the Northeast - but it’s not enough to offset retirees and those in search of lower taxes. By ANDREARIQUIER Americans paid nearly $300 billion in property taxes in 2016 - but as with everything in real estate, it’s all about location. Yet property taxes don’t just tell a story about local and regional housing markets - they also show how the country is changing. Americans are fleeing areas with higher property taxes, making housing markets and local finances more stagnant in those areas. And even an influx of younger people into the urban areas that anchor those areas, like the Northeast and Midwest, isn’t enough to offset the exodus to low-tax areas like the Southeast and West. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wa...ing-property-taxes-hold-the-answer-2017-04-07
Property taxes are sometimes in lieu of sales or income tax. Total tax burden tells a more complete story. I like property taxes over sales tax because you are taxing the guy that actually has something as opposed to the guy that just needs something. Probably prefer income to property because you can avoid income tax in a losing year.
I agee. From an economics perspective the only tax we should have is property tax. Since everyone needs to live somewhere, the demand curve for property is extremely inelastic, which means taxing property creates far less dead weight loss than taxing something like consumption, if you remember back to that tax section in micro. Obviously can't do it in reality, but interesting thought experiment.
Some states such as Washington don't tax food bought at grocery stores. Other states with no sales tax such as Oregon still tax heavily water and electricity. So it's not really a matter of need as most sales taxes are on non-essentials and the essentials are still taxed. Also, in a really bad year, you can avoid the property tax too though bankruptcy. I hate property tax, it's a straight wealth tax. Why should someone with no kids who never went to a public school have to pay excessively to send his neighbor's kids to school? Tax the parents. Most of those people who pay high property tax don't actually consume more local government services. It's just a matter of some people being voted to subsidize others. Only good thing about property tax it is that it's easy to lower it by living in a ghetto, trailer park, or away from the city. Has anyone ever been able to lower their property tax without setting their house on fire?
Money is the answer. There is a new wave of the super rich flexing their muscles as they now have one of their own in The White House. The rich used to buy politicians but now some are also politicians. Their greed is inexhaustible. The 19th century robber barons had their day and were then rejected, now they are having another go. Everything will be for sale including allies.
I'm continually amazed by these people who take full advantage of a well educated population but complain about paying for school for "other people's kids". They're the one paying for your social security, your Medicare, dying in the military to protect your ungrateful ass, changing your bedpan....We could go on and on. There are plenty of places where they don't socialize costs that benefit the entire society, we generally call those places third world for a reason. Living is a 100% fair society, where you pay for only exactly what you consume, would not only be suboptimal even for you, but a complete unmanageable dystopian nightmare as well.
A straight wealth tax would be the best of all. Nobody can ever tell me what the rate would be though and pretty gritty when you get down to the details. 1% of total net worth? 10%? 18.9%? per year, maybe 10 years to pay, so in 2026 you would finally pay off 2016 liability. Because some of that net worth is very difficult to liquidate.
this type of tax has no chance of making it...think about all the trust fund kiddies that will lobby congress crying over their inheritances
I know, It's the oldest form of tax talked about in the Bible. I think it's more of a guiding principle rather than a literal law. Notice that it is flat. Giving to God/government could be interpreted as giving use of. If you're going to go income tax make it as progressive as possible with rates all the way from .01% to 99.99%. Who would work and pay 99.99% tax rate? Only one person would pay that rate, and it would only be on everything over $100 billion per year or something like that. Progressive rates are misunderstood by otherwise deeper than average money thinkers.
Wait, "well educated population"? What country are you talking about? The US spends more money on education than any other country and we're ranked somewhere around 29 for math and science. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...school-students-slide-in-math-reading-science I never said anything about social security, veterans, medicare, or bedpans. Those are not funded by property taxes. But since you brought it up, I'm putting more money into social security than the average American and since it's bankrupt I'd be lucky to get a dime out of it 30 years from now when I supposedly qualify. Although I've thought about trying to self-identify as a 70 year old American in an attempt to collect social security early, but our culture isn't quite there yet. Maybe in 5 years. What I don't understand is why you set such low expectations for people that they have to depend on others for retirement. Why do we assume that people can't be expected to save up enough money for retirement? I can understand and support supporting those who are mentally or physically unable to care for themselves (especially veterans) as long as it wasn't a consequence of poor life choices (smoking, obesity, drug use, alcoholism, etc.). But where does the extremely low expectation that most people will need to depend on others to change bedpans and will not have saved up enough to pay for it come from? Why assume that everyone is dependent on a small minority of people? In any case, nothing that we say here matters. People can vote for as much entitlements (from other people) as they want and anyone can leave whenever they want (although may have to pay an exit tax for the next 10 years). The fact is we're headed towards a sovereign debt crisis and we're losing the competitive culture that made America the only world superpower (hence, why we're ranked around 29th in math and science). It's a cultural and demographic problem. The symptoms are rising debt and eventually a lower standard of living (which hopefully will be somewhat offset by technological advancements especially in medicine...hopefully).