I would be curious to know what issues they are truly facing and aim to solve here, TFA really only talks about how mad these ultra-rich are about the tax.
Personally, I grew up in a coastal town in the South East that is too expensive to raise my family in. The problems are jointly migrants from HCOL areas with remote jobs, and AirBNB investors. Currently, the housing stock in the area is 1/5th AirBNB.
This particular tax strategy would largely do nothing for locals in a middle or lower income categories and their ability to live in the area. It would simply raise more money for the government.
toomuchtodo · 3h ago
Tax revenue can be used to build affordable housing that is income or means tested and locked out from being acquired by capital (where rent would be raised to “market rate”). You can also issue bonds as a component of raising capital towards this outcome, debt which would be serviced and retired over time with tax revenue.
(Muni bonds typically have favorable tax treatment for investors vs corporate bonds)
Newlaptop · 36m ago
> housing that is income or means tested
Hasn't means tested social welfare basically been proven to be bad in every way, regardless of political or economic belief system used to analyze it?
There are lots of positive things that can be done to improve affordable housing - removing impediments to housing density like allowing multiple units on a lot, increasing building height limits, removing parking spot requirements, removing requirements for extra staircases, lowering property taxes, and removing bureaucratic approvals that are full of secret bribery and favortism.
But just stealing money from one set of people to give someone else below-market rent doesn't fix the systemic issues at all, and creates perverse incentives where people are locked into semi-poverty to keep their means tested housing.
Society is not made better by someone refusing a higher-paying job because it would mean they no longer qualified for their apartment.
toomuchtodo · 18m ago
If you think taxes are stealing, versus financial contribution for being allowed to capture value or maintain ownership of wealth (whether inherited or aggregated), middle ground is unlikely to be found. I like taxes, with them I buy civilization. Vienna is a public housing model shown to work [1].
I think we all know this additional revenue is not going to be used to build more apartment buildings.
toomuchtodo · 3h ago
This is not known, it’s a cynical observation. Should we do nothing because sometimes things are not done? Along the same lines, why should we protect the wealth of wealthy people? They were just lucky after all (most wealth is inherited), lottery ticket winners with more steps, and will always be a minority by definition.
BugsJustFindMe · 3h ago
> It would simply raise more money for the government.
"money for the government" is a very weird way of saying "funding for public services".
> This particular tax strategy would largely do nothing for locals in a middle or lower income categories
There is no basis for saying this. Who it helps and how is a spending consideration, not a taxing consideration. Where the budget goes has exactly nothing to do with how the budget is gathered.
From the article: "Brokers say some second-home owners are considering selling". At the very least this plausibly means per-capita resupply of available housing and consequently lower overall market prices. It benefits everyone in lower wealth classes all the way down the chain when wealthy individuals are disincentivized from collecting more properties than they can personally occupy at a time.
Personally, I grew up in a coastal town in the South East that is too expensive to raise my family in. The problems are jointly migrants from HCOL areas with remote jobs, and AirBNB investors. Currently, the housing stock in the area is 1/5th AirBNB.
This particular tax strategy would largely do nothing for locals in a middle or lower income categories and their ability to live in the area. It would simply raise more money for the government.
(Muni bonds typically have favorable tax treatment for investors vs corporate bonds)
Hasn't means tested social welfare basically been proven to be bad in every way, regardless of political or economic belief system used to analyze it?
There are lots of positive things that can be done to improve affordable housing - removing impediments to housing density like allowing multiple units on a lot, increasing building height limits, removing parking spot requirements, removing requirements for extra staircases, lowering property taxes, and removing bureaucratic approvals that are full of secret bribery and favortism.
But just stealing money from one set of people to give someone else below-market rent doesn't fix the systemic issues at all, and creates perverse incentives where people are locked into semi-poverty to keep their means tested housing.
Society is not made better by someone refusing a higher-paying job because it would mean they no longer qualified for their apartment.
[1] HN Search: vienna housing - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
"money for the government" is a very weird way of saying "funding for public services".
> This particular tax strategy would largely do nothing for locals in a middle or lower income categories
There is no basis for saying this. Who it helps and how is a spending consideration, not a taxing consideration. Where the budget goes has exactly nothing to do with how the budget is gathered.
From the article: "Brokers say some second-home owners are considering selling". At the very least this plausibly means per-capita resupply of available housing and consequently lower overall market prices. It benefits everyone in lower wealth classes all the way down the chain when wealthy individuals are disincentivized from collecting more properties than they can personally occupy at a time.