Want to see how America is changing? Property taxes hold the answer
- Thread starter dealmaker
- Start date
Perhaps, although most people who are starving are in conflict zones so it's a logistics and safety problem, not a supply problem. Since Still Hungry in America was published in the 60s and a number of programs set up in response, any starvation in the U.S. is a failure of our programs, not the result of dystopian policy like our friend here advocates. But you're right, people in town hall meetings against healthcare did yell "yes" when asked if sick people should just be left to die if they don't have insurance, so there are at least a few who meet the ultimate in selfishness that they feel death is the appropriate punishment for a combination of poor decisions and poor luck. Luckily they're in still in a very small minority. Sadly most of them are also benefiting from some form of govt outlay that exceeds what they paid in, Medicare fits that bill for most, and are blind to their own hypocrisy.
Expectation can be formulated from studying actual results. Tens of millions do not save up enough for retirement or the health care they need in old age. Sometimes, it's not their fault, their career path got disrupted as the economy changed. Sometimes they get disabled or sick, or family members the same. Young idealistic single people with no kids and no disruptions ( yet ) in their job(s) may not relate to any of this. They think they have the world figured out and have no idea the real cost of raising kids. It is easy to cover your own expenses and services when you only answer to yourself and your parents already paid for your grade school education.
Without enough families with kids, a nation depends on significant immigration or it ages. When it ages, the base of people paying for everything through their taxes shrinks but the expenses of the older generation grows. If people are not well educated, it gets worse. Too many people unemployed or in poor quality jobs that result in very little income tax paid and no chance at all to save for anything, never mind retirement.
I've periodically heard some single guys who put off marriage or kids voice similar ideas before, that you should be ready for the expense and it's your deal. Not really how life works. Having kids has benefits to the entire society, especially in aging populations like the US and Canada. Just because it's not an immediate easily seen benefit to you doesn't negate it.
Even if your own "utopian" type of system existed, it would be a logistical nightmare trying to get the money collected to pay for services and no doubt there would be huge debt collection issues. People could just use the services ( like educating their kids ), then declare bankruptcy and start again ( like Trump did with his businesses numerous times ). Look at what happened to mortgages and health care in the US when politicians tried to let "the market" and citizens look after their own interests.
I'd be all for means testing social security as long as I can opt out of it completely (as in not put anything in to it because I won't be getting anything from it anyway)
. I agree with Java. Means testing social security makes no sense because it's supposed to be YOUR money. If you never worked, I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to get any social security...might be wrong on that, but I thought the payout is proportional to wages earned and number of years worked...at least for now, surely they will have to change it sometime in the not to distant future. So to means test it would be no different than government deciding to means test public employee pensions.I never accused you of claiming that no one should save for retirement. I suspect that you do and probably think others should save as well. But I questioned why you think that most people won't be able to save for retirement. The second case is where people fail to do what they know that they should do. Most smokers know that they are harming themselves by their habit. But many are addicted and have difficult stopping. The first thing that I said or implied on this thread is that an uneducated society is doomed (where I quoted US being 29th in math / science). It's a cultural problem. It's not that I think that everyone who can't afford an education should remain uneducated.
The fact is you still have not answered my original question. Why can't people (or most people, allowing a buffer for a very small minority of the population that is born handicapped or became handicapped through accident or severe illness) pay for the own education and retirement? I'll start off by admitting that it's a lot harder to make a living in America today vs. in the 50s (when America was the world's leading exporter). But still, say I'm born to a poor family. I got some issues and I drop out of school. I spend the first 30 years of my life messing around (perhaps I smoke, drink, do soft drugs, but don't kill or stab anyone) and finally get my act together at 30. But I'm still uneducated as I dropped out of school. Well, I can take a few months, get a CDL and become a long-haul truck driver (or UPS or Fedex driver if I need to stay local). The truck drivers are in high demand. It's not an easy life, but some people really enjoy it (you get to see the country) and make around $50k per year (which I think is more than the median income...check it). The taxation on that income over the next 30 years would cover my public education expenses. My federal income taxes on that income would also fund social security and I'd have some left over for retirement. There are plenty of other jobs in the oil fields (even now) which pay more than $50k per year, but require one to work for weeks or months at a time. There's even jobs that could be fun such as being a tour guide in Hawaii. Point is, one can still pay back all debts to society even without the advantage of being born to a good family in America. It doesn't take a high IQ, ambition, or connections. I have not even mentioned any government-funded social programs such as Goodwill and other resources available to help people find jobs. So your argument that a significant population of America is just dead weight and can never repay their debt to society doesn't make sense to me. There are still enough opportunities out there even for the uneducated who drop out of school and never earn a GED. How many Syrian refugees are able to come into this country over the past year and earn a living? Certainly they did not have access to the free public resources that Americans have enjoyed for many years.
The dark ages were dark for many reasons, but I'd argue mostly due to a lack of sanitation, medicine, and very poor nutrition. There were plagues, childbirth deaths, lots of bad stuff. Even the wealthy back then were lucky to live past 25.
Regarding Chad, there are parts of America that are dangerous even where the people have access to free healthcare and medicine. I suspect it's a cultural problem.
Regarding the attribution bias, I don't deny that I'm very lucky to have come from a good family from parents who were not wealthy, but taught me the important of hard work and the value of delayed gratification. But I do know for a fact that I could have taken a much easier path. I can tell you that society has benefited greatly by my choice. How many extra students have I funded the education of over the past year because I decided to go into engineering instead of some major that ends in studies which would have allowed me to enjoy many more frat parties, but led to a job serving coffee at Starbucks? A better example would be my brother who decided to go into medicine. Realize that a lot of students who apply to med school don't get in. It's a huge risk to go down that path. The disqualifying Elizabeth Warren message of "you didn't build that" ignores all those instances in one's life where one could have taken the easier and less risky path. So I think you're right that we all have some degree of attribution bias, but I know of concrete instances where have I made the choice that benefits myself and the rest of society to a greater degree than the alternative.
I don't understand. What would be the problem with having a system where everyone can have all the education they want or need, according to their ability and interests, and they would pay for it if they could, or it would be paid for by the government with the stipulation that it would be paid back at a fair but low interest rate starting, say, at 30 years of age and at a minimum of only 10 or 15 percent of their annual income?
You started off by saying you shouldn't have to pay property tax to send other people's kids to school. Since property taxes pay for K-12 education, you were saying we should abolish K-12 public education. Kindergarten, 6 year old's. Focus, we're not talking about choosing easy college majors or getting your GED and becoming a truck driver. We're talking about if a 6 year old whose parents can't afford to send them to school, even if they had the audacity to be born to fat, drug using welfare moms. According to you they should either skip school and eventually get a GED, or we should loan them the money so that by age 7 they're thousands of dollars in debt. That's absurd, no matter how much you try to dance around it with a bunch of irrelevant drivel about truck drivers and which college major you choose.I'd be all for means testing social security as long as I can opt out of it completely (as in not put anything in to it because I won't be getting anything from it anyway)
I never accused you of claiming that no one should save for retirement. I suspect that you do and probably think others should save as well. But I questioned why you think that most people won't be able to save for retirement. The second case is where people fail to do what they know that they should do. Most smokers know that they are harming themselves by their habit. But many are addicted and have difficult stopping. The first thing that I said or implied on this thread is that an uneducated society is doomed (where I quoted US being 29th in math / science). It's a cultural problem. It's not that I think that everyone who can't afford an education should remain uneducated.
The fact is you still have not answered my original question. Why can't people (or most people, allowing a buffer for a very small minority of the population that is born handicapped or became handicapped through accident or severe illness) pay for the own education and retirement? I'll start off by admitting that it's a lot harder to make a living in America today vs. in the 50s (when America was the world's leading exporter). But still, say I'm born to a poor family. I got some issues and I drop out of school. I spend the first 30 years of my life messing around (perhaps I smoke, drink, do soft drugs, but don't kill or stab anyone) and finally get my act together at 30. But I'm still uneducated as I dropped out of school. Well, I can take a few months, get a CDL and become a long-haul truck driver (or UPS or Fedex driver if I need to stay local). The truck drivers are in high demand. It's not an easy life, but some people really enjoy it (you get to see the country) and make around $50k per year (which I think is more than the median income...check it). The taxation on that income over the next 30 years would cover my public education expenses. My federal income taxes on that income would also fund social security and I'd have some left over for retirement. There are plenty of other jobs in the oil fields (even now) which pay more than $50k per year, but require one to work for weeks or months at a time. There's even jobs that could be fun such as being a tour guide in Hawaii. Point is, one can still pay back all debts to society even without the advantage of being born to a good family in America. It doesn't take a high IQ, ambition, or connections. I have not even mentioned any government-funded social programs such as Goodwill and other resources available to help people find jobs. So your argument that a significant population of America is just dead weight and can never repay their debt to society doesn't make sense to me. There are still enough opportunities out there even for the uneducated who drop out of school and never earn a GED. How many Syrian refugees are able to come into this country over the past year and earn a living? Certainly they did not have access to the free public resources that Americans have enjoyed for many years.
The dark ages were dark for many reasons, but I'd argue mostly due to a lack of sanitation, medicine, and very poor nutrition. There were plagues, childbirth deaths, lots of bad stuff. Even the wealthy back then were lucky to live past 25.
Regarding Chad, there are parts of America that are dangerous even where the people have access to free healthcare and medicine. I suspect it's a cultural problem.
Regarding the attribution bias, I don't deny that I'm very lucky to have come from a good family from parents who were not wealthy, but taught me the important of hard work and the value of delayed gratification. But I do know for a fact that I could have taken a much easier path. I can tell you that society has benefited greatly by my choice. How many extra students have I funded the education of over the past year because I decided to go into engineering instead of some major that ends in studies which would have allowed me to enjoy many more frat parties, but led to a job serving coffee at Starbucks? A better example would be my brother who decided to go into medicine. Realize that a lot of students who apply to med school don't get in. It's a huge risk to go down that path. The disqualifying Elizabeth Warren message of "you didn't build that" ignores all those instances in one's life where one could have taken the easier and less risky path. So I think you're right that we all have some degree of attribution bias, but I know of concrete instances where have I made the choice that benefits myself and the rest of society to a greater degree than the alternative.
Should I have to send my kids to private school? Perhaps you could make an argument for that, although there are strong arguments against as well. But effectively eliminating education for 6 year old's who were born poor is unarguable, as you've demonstrated by calling for it but arguing for everything but what you called for.
And you really should read up on the fundamental attribution bias, because you don't get it at all or your purposely ignoring my points. While some of your success can be attributed to your choices, the vast majority of it is due to pure chance. You would not be where you are today if you had been born in Chad instead of where you were born, true or false? When you respond to that with "there are parts of America that are dangerous even where the people have access to free healthcare and medicine.", you express first your profound ignorance of what it's like in a place like Chad since that statement is absurd. But more than that you clearly show your suffering from the fundamental attribution bias because if there were parts of American even approaching Chad it would only reinforce the fact that you could only have gotten where you are because of the random good chance that you weren't born to a poor family in one of those places. I'll give you a further challenge, even after all the benefits you've experienced to get you to the engineering degree you have, you couldn't succeed NOW if I sent you into Chad even if I made you fluent in French before hand. You wouldn't have the infrastructure that we have in the U.S., paid for with taxes. You wouldn't have an educated population, paid for by taxes. You wouldn't have a safe environment, paid for by taxes. You wouldn't be free from foreign attack, paid for by taxes. Among other things. Unless you worked for a multinational, paid money that came from the same place you came from, you wouldn't be as successful as you are today, because you don't have the benefit of everything we collectively built in the U.S. that enables your success (and mine), something you appear to be entirely blind to.
You have a very black and white, binary mind which isn't uncommon among us engineering types (I'm an EE). To you taxes are mostly wasted on the lazy, you got where you are entirely through your own effort, and anyone else can and should be able to achieve the same and if they don't it's because of their own poor life choices. That's a very naive and childish view of the world that I too had as a young engineer. Hopefully like me it will change a bit as you mature and have kids of your own so you understand what a 6 year old truly is and isn't able to be responsible for, as well as how lucky you were to have been born in the place you were with the mind you have to the parents you have.
Last edited:
%%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
Good word;
that explains adios amigos from CA +move to FLA,TX, Nev, growth.LOL. Live in TN[ number 47], good + we have low taxes, NO state income tax; green belt ag tax beak for ag land .......... Thanks
Tuition is $10,000 a year at the least expensive parochial schools in my area, up to $30,000 a year for a good private school. So in K-12 you're going to rack up $130,000 in debt at the age of 18, if you're unfortunate enough to be born to the wrong family. Then you've got that whole time value of money concept, either we subsidize it collectively (in which case why not just pay for the school initially), or we charge it to the individual. That's 12 years of compounding interest on $130,000 which at current treasury rates of 2.75% leaves our kid with $180,000 in debt at age 30. You seriously think incurring debt starting at age 6 for everyone who started out with the misfortune of not being born with rich parents is good for any part of our society? Wow. You have a lot to learn my friend.
Such a well reasoned and intelligent reply.
Listen, it's great to throw out ideas and think through the actual implications of those ideas. You asked a specific question and I provided a specific, quantitative answer. Sorry if you didn't like the reality of that answer, but as I guess your response indicates, it's hard to argue with basic math.