Face it: Property taxes are forcing Illinoisans out of their homes

Discussion in 'Budget & Taxes' started by MolonLabe2009, Oct 14, 2016.

  1. Jack Links

    Jack Links Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2014
    Messages:
    2,354
    Likes Received:
    72
    Trophy Points:
    48
    That's b/c they wasted the tax money they already had. Government is inefficient. They don't care b/c they have the power to steal more. When property taxes were cut, they deliberately wasted what they had so they could say there wasn't enough money. It's a setup. Like extortion.
     
  2. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Messages:
    11,445
    Likes Received:
    3,263
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No. It's because you're position it too stupid to even argue with.

    No, they didn't. First, I've only owned my home for about 8 months. Second, any increase in value that has occurred is because of the massive improvements I've done, and paid for, to the property. The government hasn't done jack(*)(*)(*)(*), and they couldn't even if they wanted to. The area where I live is very mature. There is no land that is being unused, no land that could be used to build a new road (and no need for a new road), no land that could be used for a new school (and no need for a new school), no nothing.

    Your continued use of the government giving me a bag full of valuable diamonds is ridiculous. No person or entity has given me a thing, save my late mother who left me enough money to buy my house.

    As for the chicken in my freezer, no person produced it. Chickens produced it. As for the idea that land can never be property, or that it's original acquisition was by theft, I'm really interested in hearing the tortured logic behind those points.
     
  3. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 5, 2015
    Messages:
    27,360
    Likes Received:
    8,062
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Residential property taxes are the most regressive and oppressive of any form of taxation. It is designed to most target the poor, old and disabled as housing costs as a percentage of income is the highest for such groups. It doesn't matter if the property is rented or owned, since property taxes escalate the rent in the exact amount of the property taxes.
     
  4. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No they didn't, your claims are absurd. If they had wasted it, the land would not be worth anything, as in places like Somalia where there is no government. The value of the land itself is a precise measure of how far the tax money was from being wasted.

    See how easily I always disprove all silly, disingenuous, "Meeza hatesa gubmint" garbage?
    No it's not, as proved by the value of the land it administers. Government is only inefficient in the kinds of activities where competition can stimulate efficiency and excellence. But that doesn't include natural monopoly activities like providing roads, police service, water supplies, sewer systems, etc.
    No, you are just spewing absurd garbage again. Taxes like the land value portion of the property tax, which recover the value of publicly provided services and infrastructure, are not stealing because they are a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction.
    No they didn't, your claims are just false and absurd. If they deliberately wasted money they could be disciplined, fired, prosecuted, even jailed.
    The landowner is the extortionist, demanding payment for what government, the community and nature provide. Read and learn:

    THE BANDIT

    Suppose there is a bandit who lurks in the mountain pass between two countries. He robs the merchant caravans as they pass through, but is careful to take only as much as the merchants can afford to lose, so that they will keep using the pass and he will keep getting the loot.

    A thief, right?

    Now, suppose he has a license to charge tolls of those who use the pass, a license issued by the government of one of the countries -- or even both of them. The tolls are by coincidence equal to what he formerly took by force. How has the nature of his enterprise changed, simply through being made legal? He is still just a thief. He is still just demanding payment and not contributing anything in return. How can the mere existence of that piece of paper entitling him to rob the caravans alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact robbing them?

    But now suppose instead of a license to steal, he has a land title to the pass. He now charges the caravans the exact same amount in "rent" for using the pass, and has become quite a respectable gentleman. But how has the nature of his business really changed? It's all legal now, but he is still just taking money from those who use what nature provided for free, and contributing nothing whatever in return, just as he did when he was a lowly bandit. How is he any different now that he is a landowner?

    Is any other landowner charging rent for what nature provided for free any different?

    Do the merchants, by using the pass when they know the bandit is there, somehow agree to be robbed?

    If there were two, or three, or 300 passes, each with its own bandit, would the merchants' being at liberty to choose which bandit robs them make the bandits' enterprise a competitive industry in a free market?

    So, how's about you answer The Question, hmmm?

    "How, exactly, is production aided by the landowner's demand that the producer pay HIM for what government, the community and nature provide?"
     
  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No. You cannot argue with it because the relevant facts that prove me right and you wrong are self-evident and indisputable.
    Yes, they most certainly did.
    Irrelevant. Your intention is to pocket the future land value increases that government gives you.
    No it's not. By definition, any improvements you have done add to improvement value, not land value. You know this.
    Government has created the entire unimproved value of the land.
    They already did.
    Because of the services and infrastructure government has already provided at taxpayer expense for the unearned profit of landowners. Like the one you bought the land from.
    Irrelevant even if it were not false (which it is). The land's value comes from government and the community whether it is being used or not.
    Then you agree that government provision of roads for the unearned profit of landowners has been so thorough and efficient that no more are needed or even desired. Good. Maybe we are getting somewhere.
    False. There is infrastructure government has provided, and there are services government continues to provide. Both add to land value.
    No, it accurately describes the situation with land value: it is a gift from government to the landowner, no less than if it had given him a bag of diamonds of the same value.
    Your claims are false, absurd, and disingenuous.
    How you came by the money to buy land is as irrelevant to the character of landowning as how a slave owner came by the money to buy his slave was to the character of slavery.
    That is objectively false, as are your other claims.
    Not by themselves, they didn't. You could with equal "logic" claim that trees produced the walls and floors of your house. It's just absurd, disingenuous garbage intended to help you avoid knowing the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
    It's self-evident and indisputable. No land has ever been appropriated as private property except by forcibly abrogating the liberty rights of all who would otherwise have been at liberty to use it. You are used to it because you have grown up with it, but property in land is no more rightful than slavery -- as proved by the fact that all the same "arguments" that are trotted out to justify landowning were also trotted out to justify slavery.
     
  6. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    False. The land value portion of such taxes are a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction, the fairest, most progressive, and most efficient tax we have.
    Garbage. The poor don't own real estate, and the biggest payers by far are those who own the most real estate: i.e., the rich. You are just spewing false, absurd, disingenuous nonsense.
    No they don't. Your claims are false and absurd. If landlords could just raise the rents to cover all property taxes, what is stopping them from raising the rents in the absence of property taxes, hmmmmmmm? Sorry, but you are self-evidently not qualified to have, let alone express, an opinion on economic questions. Google, "tax incidence" and start reading. The land value portion of the property tax cannot, repeat, CANNOT be passed on to tenants AT ALL, because the supply of land is fixed. You just don't know enough economics to understand why, because you do not know any economics. Think about it for a second: if property taxes were being passed on to tenants, why are rents lowest where property tax rates are highest? Why would rents in CA have soared after property taxes were cut in half by Prop 13?
     
  7. Jack Links

    Jack Links Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2014
    Messages:
    2,354
    Likes Received:
    72
    Trophy Points:
    48
    FACT: Government has budgets. They spend all the money they can so they can keep their budgets high. If they don't, their budgets will be cut, and there may be job cuts.
     
  8. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2008
    Messages:
    19,980
    Likes Received:
    1,177
    Trophy Points:
    113
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Only nominally. The rent is just reduced by the amount of the property tax, because it is the total that the tenant considers. In most cases, this is only done because there is an income or profits tax benefit when the tenant pays the property tax.
    No they aren't. You're just objectively wrong. Eliminate the property tax entirely, and the rent would still stay the same, because it is what the market will bear. We saw that in CA when lying sack of $#!+ Howard Jarvis swore on a stack of Bibles that if tenants voted for Proposition 13, their rents would go down. They believed his lie, voted for Prop 13 (the worst public policy blunder committed by any US state since the Civil War), and not only did rents not go down, they increased faster than before, with the results we see today.

    The landowner has no reason to demand less than the market will bear, and no way to force tenants to pay more. Learn it, or continue to talk nonsense on the subject permanently.
    No, you are objectively wrong. Price is determined by supply and demand. Expenses are irrelevant. Do you idiotically imagine that if a landlord decides to put gold plating on all the plumbing, he can then pass that expense on to his tenants? Give your head a shake.
    That is ALL that determines how much the consumer will pay. And as the supply of land is fixed, and the landowner can't affect demand, he can't affect its market price.
    No, such claims are always false and absurd, because they imply that no lessor could ever go bankrupt. And they do. Therefore you are objectively wrong. Try to remember that next time you presume to dispute with me.
    They would do what they could to avoid it, if necessary by selling the property at a loss. But ultimately, they would have to find a way of providing space at a price the market would bear, or go out of business. I suspect that most of the current ones, who are accustomed to getting away with stealing, would go bankrupt trying to defy the laws of economics if they were required to pay for what they take from the community.
    Because the other side always resorts to such tired, ignorant, absurd, and disingenuous fallacies. See above.
     
  10. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No they don't.
    That only describes the perverse incentives inherent in poorly designed budget systems. It does not describe government per se.
     
  11. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Messages:
    11,445
    Likes Received:
    3,263
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Long before i was born. And they have been paid for it many times over. Do you expect to be paid over and over again for past actions that you've already been paid for? Neither do I.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Yes, they do. I used to sell to government. At the end of the year, they would buy things they didn't need, and in fact never used, to make sure their budget didn't shrink.
     
  12. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 5, 2015
    Messages:
    27,360
    Likes Received:
    8,062
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Very simply, in your view it is entirely the right of the government to force a person out of their home to die in the elements.

    Your rational otherwise is absurd since property taxes are not the only cost of property. Under your "reasoning" all food and medical care is free because it isn't taxed.
     
  13. geofree

    geofree Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 16, 2009
    Messages:
    2,735
    Likes Received:
    23
    Trophy Points:
    38
    That all taxes are passed to consumers or tenants is false. Land value tax cannot be passed to consumers or tenants. Let me help you understand this fact with an example of how land taxes affect lands market prices.

    Example of how land taxes affect a specific land parcels price:

    -- annual land tax = $0, and market land price = $100,000
    -- annual land tax = $1,000, and market land price = $90,000
    -- annual land tax = $2,000, and market land price = $80,000
    -- annual land tax = $3,000, and market land price = $70,000
    -- annual land tax = $4,000, and market land price = $60,000
    -- annual land tax = $5,000, and market land price = $50,000
    -- annual land tax = $6,000, and market land price = $40,000
    -- annual land tax = $7,000, and market land price = $30,000
    -- annual land tax = $8,000, and market land price = $20,000
    -- annual land tax = $9,000, and market land price = $10,000
    -- annual land tax = $10,000, and market land price = $0

    As you can see in the table above, the more the land parcel is taxed the lower land prices go. The reason land prices fall is because the potential buyers know that they cannot pass the taxes to consumers or tenants. Those potential buyers discount the land taxes out of the prices they are willing to offer. The land value tax does not effect the buyers capitalized costs. The potential land purchaser doesn't care if the land is taxed at $0 or at $9,000 annually, because he will just discount the tax out of the price he is willing to offer. If, as in the example above, the land taxes are $9,000 annually, the potential buyer just gets to buy the land at a $90,000 discount. As you can see above, land buyers like discounts just as much as they hate taxes. Land value tax does not add anything to the capitalized cost of potential competitors, thus there is no cost to pass to consumers or tenants in the first place.
     
  14. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 5, 2015
    Messages:
    27,360
    Likes Received:
    8,062
    Trophy Points:
    113
    That's just nonsensical - a truly absurd table just made up out of thin air - and it is people with such as your reasoning that ended the last hope for cities such as Detroit and Flint Michigan, for which property owners had no option but to both abandon the property AND force tenants out - unable to afford even letting the tenants live there for free. A person could buy a house - still livable - for a few thousands dollars - but there was a catch - all past taxes and utilities were left as liens on the deeds. Thousands of dollars and they would not turn on utilities until paid.
    So the landlords literally had to allow their property to go fully deteriorates and unliveable to drive down the property value to minimize property taxes, which also meant evicting the tenants so the house could be vandalized and destroyed.

    Again, it is a really absurd scale you made up. If rent does not produce a profit over the overall costs of the property including maintenance and taxes, the property will ultimately have to be abandoned. All business works that way. No profit, no business. Rental property is a business.

    Nor do you have ANY clue about matters such as depreciation aspects in the tax code, other elements of the tax code, maintenance, insurance, and interest rates. Rarely is the cost of the land the greatest costs of residential rental property. People don't live on land, they live in structures.

    In addition to the government stealing away one of the most essential elements of survival - shelter - property taxes also promote downgrading property and deter improving it. Around here, it is common for elderly to literally have their swimming pools filled in to degrade the property value to reduce taxes and, overall, there is reasons to NOT improve or even maintain property.

    Another example is such as in Madison, Wisconsin, with the huge 2 and 3 story wood houses in the old parts of the city - mostly rented out as flats. Except they are not wood houses, they are brick and stone houses. Because a brick or stone house has a higher value - to get money from those rich people so-to-speak in your opinion, property owners literally had their houses covered in wood siding to reduce property taxes. Did this add housing for anyone? No. Did it improve the houses? No. Rather, it was total waste solely due to property taxes.

    NO words you post change the fact that property taxes are the most oppressive and regressive of all, and literally a tax known to kill old and poor people - literally kill them by forcing them out onto the street.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Same for such as military and any other government contract. They do NOT want any surplus $$ at the end of the year and will do make-work to avoid it.
     
  15. JakeJ

    JakeJ Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    May 5, 2015
    Messages:
    27,360
    Likes Received:
    8,062
    Trophy Points:
    113
    The #1 financial advise for retirement USED to be fairly simple. If a person's home was paid for, they had a secure retirement because they could get by on social security only if they had to due to having no rent or mortgage to pay. In addition, inflation worked in their favor. Escalating property taxes changed that aspect.

    Certainly then food and medical care also should be taxed heavily too. To figure the other essential elements of life to throw all taxes on those - so the government has the greatest tax extortion ability of all - pay or die. Pay or freeze to death. Pay or starve. Pay or die of an infection.

    Young bums tend to have crackpot ideas that essentially are trying to figure out ways to steal money from their grandparents for themselves - including having the government do it for them.
    Their grandparents paid off a house. The young leaches want the government to steal that asset being taxes and give it to them in free benefits. That is what is boils down to.
     
  16. Jack Links

    Jack Links Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2014
    Messages:
    2,354
    Likes Received:
    72
    Trophy Points:
    48
    Thank you for proving my point. They get your money, they don't care if they provide decent services or not, do they? All those taxes and you still have gang problems. I'll bet the other city services are no better.
     
  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Your claim is again just objectively false. The public services and infrastructure that make the land valuable require ongoing expenses, and would crumble in a few years if they were not maintained. You know this.
    No, they most certainly have not. Your claims are objectively false.
    It's the present costs that your exclusive tenure on the land impose on everyone else that you owe them for, not some past labor that was paid for by others' taxes.
    Yes you do. You demand to be paid over and over again, into the indefinite future, for the labor you performed to buy the land.
    Only when the budget process is badly designed.
    So did I, and also reviewed their accounts.
    That only happens when lazy managers don't bother to implement sound budgeting procedures, and also happens -- though not as often -- in private business. I've seen it in both places. It's not an inherent or exclusive characteristic of government.
     
  18. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    No, your claims are false because I advocate restoration of the individual right to use land, and private property in improvements thereto. The combination means no one would ever "die in the elements" as a result of losing possession of a house on land they could not afford to pay for.

    However, in YOUR view it really IS entirely right of PRIVATE LANDOWNERS to deprive a person of the opportunity to use a suitable location to house themselves, without making just (or any) compensation, with the result that they die in the elements, or of poverty, disease, starvation or despair.
    How could that be relevant? Wages are not the only cost of labor, either. Does that mean It is OK not to pay a slave any wages, because you are giving him enough food to live, and a place to sleep?
    No, that's just some absurd garbage you have made up, with no relation to anything I have said. Food and medical care have to be provided by labor. Land was already there, ready to use, with no help from its owner or any previous owner.

    You will say, do, and believe ANYTHING WHATEVER in order to avoid knowing that self-evident and indisputable fact of objective physical reality.
     
  19. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Messages:
    11,445
    Likes Received:
    3,263
    Trophy Points:
    113
    More that 60% of my property taxes goes to pay for local "free" education. I have no children. Yet, I am faced with losing my property if I fail to pay for my neighbor's children. You're full of crap, and an idiot. Consider our conversation done. You want my house, come get it. Be very well armed.
     
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 11, 2016
    Messages:
    11,394
    Likes Received:
    3,008
    Trophy Points:
    113
    You seem to have learned to read. It was probably at a public school. You were a child at the time, and couldn't afford to pay for your own education. And your parents may or may not have been willing and able to pay for it. For these reasons, we ask those who benefit from public education (your land value is sensitively dependent on it) to pay for it.
    You are being asked to pay for the additional land value that the public school system gives you. You want to take that land value without paying for it. Simple.
    I have stated the relevant facts and their indisputable logical -- and moral -- implications. Everyone reading this is able to judge which of us has offered the more factual, intelligent, and logically defensible perspective. It's not you.
    "Y'all want mah (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)hs, come git 'em. Be very well armed."

    The truth is, you are taking something for nothing, and you don't want to give it up. You are even eager to resort to violence to keep taking it. Just like slave owners.
     
  21. DentalFloss

    DentalFloss Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 7, 2013
    Messages:
    11,445
    Likes Received:
    3,263
    Trophy Points:
    113
    So let me get this straight. In exchange for 12 years of "free" education (which isn't the case for me or for many others), I become obligated, with no way to opt out, FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, to pay for the education of other people's children??? Damn, that's a really good deal. Not.

    Except for the fact that I DID pay for it. In the form of a very large sum of US currency. In my case, virtually every cent I owned.

    And stop with the slave nonsense, a piece of dirt being owned is not the same as a sentient human being having their freedoms stripped from them through no fault of their own.
     
  22. Jack Links

    Jack Links Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2014
    Messages:
    2,354
    Likes Received:
    72
    Trophy Points:
    48
    The reason it is so high is the fact that they can steal it from you, so they don't care how much 'education' costs.
     
  23. Jack Links

    Jack Links Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 20, 2014
    Messages:
    2,354
    Likes Received:
    72
    Trophy Points:
    48
    Fact is the democrats are still the slave owners. Government housing, government food, etc. A permanent underclass with little opportunity to better themselves.
     
  24. OldManOnFire

    OldManOnFire Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2008
    Messages:
    19,980
    Likes Received:
    1,177
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Just because 'they' get your taxes does not mean it's enough taxes to do everything perfectly? Look around you and in other areas of the US and you will see most things crumbling before our eyes! They can't extract more taxation to do things better because higher taxes are simply not affordable by the bulk of Americans.

    Collecting higher and higher taxation is not an option! There comes a time when there will be diminishing returns...meaning people will find every way imaginable to avoid paying taxes...


     
  25. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jan 20, 2013
    Messages:
    54,812
    Likes Received:
    18,482
    Trophy Points:
    113
    You're 100% correct, of course. I think the problem our friend has is that he's bringing personal feelings into the conversation. Obviously, personal attitudes to said diamonds do not add to nor diminish their value. As you say, irrelevant. They're still a gift, whether he likes them or prefers rubies.

    I really find it strange to see grown people argue that because they have a personal attachment to a thing, it should be 'free'. Of course none can ever explain how legislation for personal attachment to inanimate objects would work. It just should be. So for example, people who like their cars more than others do, should be exempt from car registration fees. Bizarro-land.
     

Share This Page