New York City (and maybe the state as well) are generating outrage by proposing to tax residential real estate that isn’t a primary residence at a higher rate than the same property would pay if occupied by somewho who was a full-time NYC resident.
What other city or state indulges in this outrageous abuse of society’s successful? Florida! Let’s look at starter homes in Palm Beach. Here’s one that was purchased for $4.45 million in 2011 and is today worth $14.3 million (Zillow).
The tax assessment is still less than the purchase price, presumably due to the fact that the assessed value for a “homestead” (primary residence) can’t go up more than 3 percent or the increase in CPI, whichever is lower:
If there were an identical house next door and it sold for $14 million to someone who used it only 4 months per year, the town/county could collect property tax on the full value, i.e., 3X the tax rate paid by the primary resident.
A surcharge for part-time residents generates outrage. A discount for full-time residents doesn’t upset anyone. NYC could have doubled property tax rates, with state permission, and then offered a steep discount for anyone who pays resident NYC income tax.
I wonder if a Seminole owns the starter home in Palm Beach? I’m thinking no. Give it back, unless they are a Republican.
By the way, Phil have you heard of “rail voltage” in amplifier design? I’m not sure “New York City (and maybe the state as well) are generating outrage” is correct. All I hear anymore is constant, nasty transistor square-wave clipping from politics thanks to the social media micro bully pulpits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio)
With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
— Nirvana, Smells Like Teen Spirit
I’m not sure Cobain would feel any less “stupid and contagious” on social media. Manufactured outrage, yawn. I wonder if the kids wearing Nirvana T-shirts even know what it means. I think Cobain was one of us GenX neo hippies. We won’t be fooled again. Hit over the head and our futures taken away, maybe, but not fooled.
What are they going to do with the extra tax money anyway, spend it on millionaire public university presidents like Michigan? ($2+ million per annum for UM and MSU presidents.) The weed money tax windfall (even more this year, a 25% tax on wholesale) sure as hell isn’t spent on continuous road paving.
One is tempted to say “follow the money and power” in the unasked question/unstated thesis here, however running rich people off seems to be a hobby in some states these days. Did Florida do it inadvertently, or are the rich just universally undesirable? Hmm…no questions, and no answers — so outraging.
> A surcharge for part-time residents generates outrage. A discount for full-time residents doesn’t upset anyone.
We can apply Dr. Greenspun’s logic, that exploits cognitive bias, here as well:
1. If everyone is taxed a lot but rich are taxed more. Happens in welfare states. Thus many rich people run away to more capitalistic countries.
2. Don’t make rich people go but instead accept more poor people. Thus many rich people would run away because they don’t want to be around poor people.
So, the problem of making rich people move solves itself, LOL! I call it the feminine way of solving the problem, i.e. by slowly setting the context. In this way, you don’t shoot and kill a person in a fraction of a second, but poison them over years.
If we replace poison with Natural laws, this is how Nature makes us go as well.
> I call it the feminine way of solving the problem
feminine -> hetero feminist
We’d probably have to ask an evolutionary biologist if there is enough authentic feminine instinct (i.e. nurturing) left in the human genome to re-establish tradwifes sustainably.
It’s weird to this old man that modernists solve their problems with outrage and displacement. Why can’t we encourage regrowth of the middle-class? Make public policy like taxes based on that. People that are constructive and supportive, rather than parasites. Oh, that would require nurturing, rather than PhilG Fan’s observed phenomenon of “slow poisoning”. (Sheesh that’s grim.) Although my wife was a unicorn, most of the women I found to date weren’t feminine. It’s so 1984 to call them feminists, when they really want “Feminine Out”.
> We’d probably have to ask an […]
Serious question: Are these kinds of things reflected in any hard-science artifact like the genome?
> […] PhilG Fan’s observed phenomenon of “slow poisoning” […]
Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to incite any emotions, it was totally analytical. Although, as a hippie, one could have a more colorful interpretation, “la petite mort” can also be a result of a kind of slow poisoning, right?
> It’s weird to this old man that modernists solve their problems with outrage and displacement.
Well, in short, this, in my opinion, is a result of “Amusing ourselves to death”. If all people intake is how to make quick money, the lives of the rich and powerful, digital media showcasing ways to make money that have a lot of emotional impact on the audience, etc., this is what we get.
The fact that all over the country property tax rate inequities do not generate outrage the way supposed income tax inequities do never ceases to surprise me. All over the country as a consequence of all different types of property tax schemes you end up with two properties that can be side-by-side and equivalent in every discernable way but which pay radically different tax rates. …and it just doesn’t bother most people.
I agree with this. And this is even worse from an economics point of view due to the distortion it causes
Oh, it bothers many people — especially the recent buyers who have a shockingly big property tax bill, a hard reset after years of Biden-flation protection for the previous infestation, er owner.
If that $14 MM Palm Beach home were a disabled veteran her property tax would be $0.
Over the past few years, nearly every new hire at my workplace has been a “disabled” veteran.
PTSD from working the laundry? It’s a problem.
Mamdani copied Netanyahu’s tax policy. I recall that about a decade ago Netanyahu promised to tax non-resident buyers of real estate to control Israeli real estate prices for young families because advance of mamdani – like politicians in the west caused foreign purchasers of Israeli real estate. After reading this post I checked with AI and it tells me that Israel has extra 8 to 10 % real estate tax for non-residents and also extra capital gain tax in case the property is sold. So Mamdani is following in Bibi’s footsteps.