First I would like to provide some context for my question. I live in a suburb in a “flyover state” and also see wealth inequality as the problem to solve for. For more information on why I feel this way, see just about any video by Gary Stevenson: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXuOBKrmFYbKytq9mkcd62sJPb6w12vpU.
I think it is safe to assume that in the next 4 years, wealth inequality will not be addressed even verbally at the national level. I suspect most states will not attempt to address this issue either. I think suburban city councils are absolutely an option for near term changes and could even be a perfect place to start. I think the odds of a major company or billionaire showing up to protest any local changes in a smaller town are relatively small.
I propose that we as a society should be able to attend a city council meeting and suggest legislation similar to the following:
Any single family home owned by either a company or an individual who does not live in the same state should have a large property tax applied to it.
My thinking is that no company should ever own a single family home (if you’re a builder making a new home give them a window of like 1 year to sell it or something similar). If there are companies owning homes, they would be incentivized to sell the property. Large numbers of properties being dumped by businesses would lower housing costs locally. This would in turn lead to more locals having money to spend (hopefully locally, but you never know). I think the locality of their spending should probably be emphasized in a sales pitch to a city council. Businesses who refuse to sell will be paying large local taxes that the city could spend on the countless things that a city needs to operate but is currently underfunded. I guarantee you the local government has projects they want to do but can’t afford. Here is their solution. I do think that if businesses are refusing to sell, that means they are charging tenants the increased tax, and the property tax was set too low. The tax has to be high enough that businesses sell the property or else I don’t think this works.
The number of businesses or individuals affected by this new tax is probably really low for any given city. If you imagine a small town there are only going to be so many companies owning single property homes (less than 10?) same story with wealthy out of state home owners (less than 20?) The total number of homes in the area is going to be much larger though so there should be a sizeable and noticable impact. I use out of state as the qualifier for individuals as it is pretty easy to ask for a local driver’s license as proof you live in the state, and to my knowledge states don’t let you carry IDs from multiple states. You only live in 1, you only have 1 ID, and you always have it with you so it should be easy enough to enforce.
People/businesses who don’t comply could have their property foreclosed on, then auctioned off to a state resident with proceeds again going to the city. I think the pushback would be that this is anti business. To which I would agree and say yes, businesses have no business owning single family homes, that is what citizens do. These citizens will have more money to spend locally which will attract more businesses and pay more local taxes. Money from local citizens going to major businesses who pass earnings on to investors is how local money gets exported out of the community and is not business we want owning our homes. It also diminishes the ability of locals to spend at local businesses.
My hopes is that Lemmy can help poke holes in this plan and provide solutions to the holes. Perhaps you see a better way to present this idea. Perhaps better ideas are proposed. Perhaps you see a smarter solution. Something needs to change, and I want the best odds of successfully bringing about change for the better. I want my kids to be able to buy a house some day. At this rate, that won’t happen. We need a solution, and maybe this is a start.
I think anyone should only be allowed to own, say, $10 million in assets. Not just money in the bank, but items too. Need to prevent them from keeping $10 mil in pocket and buying art and jewelry and real estate worth a total of $6 billion.
Firstly, I think your focus on housing is too narrow to solve wealth inequality.
Second, if landlords are handed a $100 monthly tax bill they tend to increase their tenants rent by $100 a month.
Third, you ignore the effects this will have on new home construction, which will be SEVERE.
Fourth, and this is a minor thing, I think when discussing housing policy we should always be trying to disincentivize suburban sprawl snd incentivize density. Having more people own single family homes is not necessarily a great thing, maybe better than having corporations rent them out but not as good as having more dense walkable transit filled urban cores. I’d even go so far as to say that while having people own condos is best, having people rent apartments is still better (on a large scale) than having people own single family houses.
nothing will work, The wealthy will just raise prices of their products and services to cover any expenses, tax and etc. it is the consumers that will pay indirectly.
Unless there is a cap on how much wealth, property, income or salary anyone can have. People will probably find loopholes.
Income tax, capital gains tax, wealth tax, VAT on purchases over the median value increasing with price, property tax, inheritance tax, corporate taxes, etc
Mostly remove tax cuts of the last several decades. They mostly cut taxes on the highest owners: let’s not. Imagine if wealthy people had to pay at least the same tax rates as everyone else!
I think severe rent control would go a long way to solving the problem here in the UK.
Make it unprofitable to exploit the fundamental need for shelter. It would allow people to build up savings and have more disposable income, so they can compete properly in the market.
It would lift up the people at the bottom at the same time as curtailing those at the top = less inequality.
It’s not like millionaires can take all the houses with them if decide to leave the country.
Rent control tends to decrease the supply of housing by making it unprofitable to build more. It turns into a lottery, massively helping the few who can find a good place but massively hurting those who can’t.
Order them to pay. Incarcerate them if they don’t.
It works for poor people.
*incinerate
Interfering with the housing market in that way will make companies build and sell less houses, because the business becomes more risky, so by keeping the supply low and demand high, they can make sure they will always be able to both sell the home in the required time frame, and with the profits they want. Or in the end, higher prices for consumers. Good luck with that.
As for rich people in general, most of them, AFAIK, actually built their wealth from ground up. Ofc their kids will inherit it without absolutely doing nothing, but that is nobodys fault, the parents want the best for their kids, and the kids would be stupid to go work some shitty job if they can afford a jump-start by for ex. buying and renting properties with parent’s money. In the end, someone did work hard to make it happen, over multiple generations sometimes.
Also, most people are simply financially not literate. They have no idea how the financial system works. If I buy a stock today, and its value increases by $10 in a day, and I sell it, I made $10 out of thin air. Try to explain to people how money gets created “seemingly out of thin air”. Most people will simply ignore it even though stocks are the one and only thing that rich people have that makes them rich. Everything else they own, like houses, yachts, cars etc… they are running costs that actually make you poorer. People who understand money make money. People who can pay people who understand money to manage their money make money.
As for rich people in general, most of them, AFAIK, actually built their wealth from ground up.
Why in the world would you think that’s the case? We could look up stats but we shouldn’t have to. You already realize that the children of self-made rich people will themselves become rich without any effort. Logically, it would follow that over generations there would end up being a much higher proportion of “descendants of self-made rich people” than “self-made rich people”.
So, how does you comment address wealth inequality? You mostly just defend landlords?
See how they did it in the 1950s. There’s your blueprint.
But also with better building regulations. Some of those houses were flimsy, asbestos filled pieces of crap.
Another discussion point that always comes up is “Jeff Bezos can’t pay that tax rate, it’s all tied up in shares of Amazon. He would have to sell huge portions of Amazon to keep up with the taxes.”
And yes. That is the intent.
But I’m not upset if folks would rather just eat him than deal with the logistics of it.
The one related semi reasonable complaint I’ve heard is if Bezos has say $20 billion in wealth, mostly stocks and other non-monetary assets, and gets assessed a wealth tax based on it, and then Amazon stock craters and he’s only worth $10 billion, he still has to pay tax as if his wealth is still $20 billion. Assessing taxes on assets is just tricky that way.
To which I counter: we already have a similar solution to a similar problem. Payroll tax withholding (or quarterly estimated taxes for the self-employed). Require Bezos to make deposits throughout the year based on his projected wealth, and then if his wealth drops and he over-contributed, he gets a refund.
Hold a silent reverse auction. Whichever billionaires agree to the highest tax rate don’t get eaten. The new billionaire tax rate is whatever the uneaten billionaires agreed to. If it’s a tie, then default to 100% after 100,000,000.00, for any future new billionaires.
Wealth Inequality on it’s own, is a problem almost nobody but the middle, lower-middle and the poor will address. It has to start here. Nobody should amass the amount of money we see individuals possess. If someone understands how far a single million could stretch for someone (provided they’re responsible that is), they would understand how pointless it’d be for someone to have even 10 million or 100 million or even a single billion.
And if anyone gave two shits about the seven deadly sins, the idea of accumulating more money should be a more frowned-upon thing. But instead, gaining more money equals to you being more powerful than most. That’s not how things should ever be. There should be a cap of how much money you should realistically earn up to. We’ve already seen the damage and continuing to see the damage afflicted, by incredibly rich people. They’re too dangerous to be wielding that much.
Tax the practices, not the existence.
My personal thoughts are:
- Close carried interest loop holes
- Tax loans against unrealized gains on securities and physical property (excluding ones primary residence). You should not be able to take a billion dollar loan out to avoid capital gains taxes. I’m fine that this raises the basis for when the asset is sold. Well, someone do the math if there’s a loophole this creates? But hopefully my intent is clear.
- Social security and Medicare tax applies to all income. Shares granted as part of compensation should also have social taxes payable on grant.
- Increase the tax brackets above the current max of 37% for income above $609k… Every 250kish above should increase by 2% until you reach 50% (about 2.5m)
That money should then be used for:
- Increasing social security payouts
- Expanding medicare access
- Increasing the limits for the tax brackets on the progressive scale for incomes below 250k
To boost the bottom:
- Stock buybacks are illegal except for the purposes of distributing stock to employees. This counts for executives but cannot exceed some multiple of their cash salary
- 20% of money flagged as dividend payments to shareholders should be distributed to employees as profit sharing into their retirement account. There needs to be rules around the max differential between the highest and lowest disbursement.
