6 ms·

Or just increase property tax across the board. An increase in property tax will drive housing prices downwards.

djohnston 4y ago
I don't want it to be harder for someone to buy their first house (I also want to buy my first house haha). I want it to be harder for some thing to buy it's 10,001st house.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Homestead exemptions can keep property taxes low on one house per person, allowing property taxes on investment properties to skyrocket without any effect on first-time buyers, or really any homeowners. In theory.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  Not sure this is feasible. A) People can hide how many houses they "own" rather easily. B) People with 10,000 houses have 10,000 times the economic incentive to run for office and/or press elected officials to make things easier on them. The best approach is to press for over-development of housing. It doesn't matter if someone owns 1 house, or 1000 houses, so long as there is more than enough homes for everyone. Idea: have a property tax line item that's based on the ratio of population / housing units. The higher that ratio, the higher the tax. The tax revenue is used to cover the costs of constructing more housing units, which lowers the tax.
al_mandi 4y ago
So you're basically now paying rent to the government. Want to really address the problem (and many other problem with today's economic system)? Prohibit interest bearing loans.
- analognoise 4y ago
  How do you handle the risk of defaults? If you never charged interest wouldn't anyone who offered loans just go out of business? I do think credit scores are a scam (as are overdraft fees) and that rates should be reasonable, but no interest would make nobody lend money. I like having a car loan - I was able to buy a car with current safety features. Without it I'd have to buy some unsafe (or unreliable) clunker in cash.
  - al_mandi 4y ago
    By prohibiting interest bearing loans, loans become relegated to purely an act of charity, and as you point out, there will no longer be businesses that are built only or mostly to lend money and profit off of usury. And that's a good thing. There's no reason why the car manufacturers won't be able to offer 0% interest on moderate term loans (a few years long). They already do today when they want to sell cars. This will drive prices down actually. You can also have longer term leases without interest, effectively paying for depreciation and the company can profit from leasing the car.

I don't want it to be harder for someone to buy their first house (I also want to buy my first house haha). I want it to be harder for some thing to buy it's 10,001st house.

pwinnski 4y ago
Homestead exemptions can keep property taxes low on one house per person, allowing property taxes on investment properties to skyrocket without any effect on first-time buyers, or really any homeowners. In theory.
mywittyname 4y ago
Not sure this is feasible. A) People can hide how many houses they "own" rather easily. B) People with 10,000 houses have 10,000 times the economic incentive to run for office and/or press elected officials to make things easier on them. The best approach is to press for over-development of housing. It doesn't matter if someone owns 1 house, or 1000 houses, so long as there is more than enough homes for everyone. Idea: have a property tax line item that's based on the ratio of population / housing units. The higher that ratio, the higher the tax. The tax revenue is used to cover the costs of constructing more housing units, which lowers the tax.

al_mandi 4y ago

So you're basically now paying rent to the government. Want to really address the problem (and many other problem with today's economic system)? Prohibit interest bearing loans.

analognoise 4y ago
How do you handle the risk of defaults? If you never charged interest wouldn't anyone who offered loans just go out of business? I do think credit scores are a scam (as are overdraft fees) and that rates should be reasonable, but no interest would make nobody lend money. I like having a car loan - I was able to buy a car with current safety features. Without it I'd have to buy some unsafe (or unreliable) clunker in cash.
- al_mandi 4y ago
  By prohibiting interest bearing loans, loans become relegated to purely an act of charity, and as you point out, there will no longer be businesses that are built only or mostly to lend money and profit off of usury. And that's a good thing. There's no reason why the car manufacturers won't be able to offer 0% interest on moderate term loans (a few years long). They already do today when they want to sell cars. This will drive prices down actually. You can also have longer term leases without interest, effectively paying for depreciation and the company can profit from leasing the car.