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If the objective is just to raise more money for subsidized housing, there are more ways to do that than just whining about rich people having underused apartme
by jlgreco 13y ago
If the objective is just to raise more money for subsidized housing, there are more ways to do that than just whining about rich people having underused apartments. Hell, tax caviar; a tax for cheap housing doesn't have to attack rich housing. The only reason to that is pandering to the envious.
And I stand by my car analogy, a car a rich person has is a car that a poor person doesn't have. Artificially high demand for cars ('artificially high' in the sense of people buying more cars than they need) increases their prices. If you want more cheap cars for poor people, then get more cheap cars for poor people. Don't complain about how many cars rich people have.
- busterarm 13y agoThese arguments don't work when you have supply limitations, which with housing and cars we kinda do. It's not about taxing the rich. It's about taxing where appropriate to get the market effects you want. This is the same reason we have such high tax on cigarettes.
- jlgreco 13y agoTaxing rich people more for having multiple homes isn't going to make them give up those homes (we are talking about "1%"ers, right?), all it is going to do is increase your tax revenue. If you plan is to use that additional revenue to provide housing for the poor, the knock yourself out, I think that is a swell plan. However focusing on where that money comes from is a distraction. Rich people having multiple homes is a distraction that is engineered to tug on irrational anti-rich sentiment. Tax them if you want, but don't mistake them for the actual problem.
- so_says 13y agoI don't know if taxing is the right idea. I just know that a city void of actual residents is a city without a soul. NYC is becoming like parts of Florida, except at least in FL, the residency is tied to a season, so you get a critical mass of people together in one place.