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[Neonivek]

Lol, if you don't like handouts of property you shouldn't look into how housing programs for the middle class work.

If you read the article they highlight exactly how that came about. It is an old program that is engrained into society and cannot be removed.

[Helgoland]

The issue is that those are tax deductions. People are still paying the taxes. You  don't pay property taxes if you don't own any property. So claiming tax deductions as a wealth transfer is ... questionable logic. The money being saved isn't coming from people who don't own property, it just means the effective tax rate is lower.

Property taxes are hardly the only source of government revenue, Reels... Though if you're talking about net transfers (which is kinda inappropriate, since this is an isolated measure) you might have a point.

[Reelya]

The issue is that those are tax deductions. People are still paying the taxes. You  don't pay property taxes if you don't own any property. So claiming tax deductions as a wealth transfer is ... questionable logic. The money being saved isn't coming from people who don't own property, it just means the effective tax rate is lower.

Property taxes are hardly the only source of government revenue, Reels... Though if you're talking about net transfers (which is kinda inappropriate, since this is an isolated measure) you might have a point.

That's what I meant. The article is implying that tax deductions on property taxes are driving inequality. But ... the logic doesn't stack up. Because you need to be paying massive taxes to get the massive tax deduction. e.g. if everyone paying property taxes get a 10% reduction, someone who owns a 1 million dollar house can claim 10 times the deduction as someone who owns a 100,000 dollar house. And that's perfectly equitable. The guy who owns the million dollar house is still paying 10 times the overall tax amount.

And the article also talks about discounts on downpayments as being middle-class welfare. But ... GW Bush ALSO did downpayment relief which was only avaliable for the poor and minorities when he was in office, and he's been widely slammed for doing so. They've had the exact same types of home ownership policies for both middle class and poor people in America.

American Dream Downpayment Act. It's irresponsible to bring up downpayment relief for white middle class people as racism / middle class welfare without also mentioning that a major program was targeted as downpayment relief expressly for minorities:
https://www.thebalance.com/facts-about-the-american-dream-downpayment-act-1797732

[Neonivek]

Matthew Desmond is an American sociologist who is a professor in the department of sociology at Princeton University

Look give him a break Reelya. It is the Soft Sciences

Though the best clue is the fact that there are several paragraphs of emotion begging before it even gets to the point of the article. One story is a decent anecdote to get the scope of the issue.

[Lord Shonus]

Over here in the Netherlands, we have a middle ground. Well, at least for rental housing. If you earn less than a predetermined yearly minimum, you are entitled to rent social housing. Social housing in this case means, all rental housing under I think it is about 750 euros a month. Depending on how low your income is, government will subsidize part of the rent.

We have that here too. Section 8 housing subsidizes rent for 2.1 million American households. There are a lot of flaws (a biggie is that the program doesn't have enough funding to inspect as thoroughly as it should, meaning that a huge part of the benefits go to slumlord-owned properties; it somewhat disincetivizes homeowning even for people that could afford it (you can get a structurally-sound home for absurdly low prices in a lot of America's inner cities, and a lot of people just below the poverty line would probably be able to make the necessary payments if they could get a mortgage), contributing to neighborhood decay) but the basic concept is there, and it helps a lot of people.

[Neonivek]

Oh yeah I forgot this

BREAKING NEWS! CNN EXCLUSIVE!

Trump has more than one style of speech!

(and people WONDER why I am actually getting annoyed at the news)

-Uhh... I have my own doubts that I can get a source given I saw this on TV...

[alway]

Regardless of how you financialize it, the program still redirects wealth to the wealthy which would otherwise have gone elsewhere. Just the $30 billion a year to those making over $200k could, for example, be redirected to increase Section 8 funding by nearly 200%.

[Lord Shonus]

I think that statement got a little away from you, and I can't quite figure out what you're trying to say.

[Reelya]

Well, alway, that's just saying that taxes on the rich should be higher in general, really. Since removing tax deductions just means raising taxes it's also irrelevant how that's achieved. Just say "raise taxes on those making over 200,000 a year". The people benefiting from MID tax relief are the ones who are the most in debt, so targeting only them to scrape some money back for other programs is in itself regressive, since if you target it based on 200K+ income you're adding more taxes specifically to those 200K earners who in fact have the most debts to pay back.

[martinuzz]

The biggest flaw with subsidized renting is that it drains taxpayer money from the treasury into the pockets of the privatized housing corporations and their (mulit-national) investors and shareholders.
Then again, it's better than suddenly having 1 million Dutch suddenly finding themselves homeless because there is no housing they can afford, but it should not be a permanent solution. At least not without nationalizing all housing corporations, or at least the social rental segment. Which IMO could be one solution. It was never a good idea to sell off city / province and state owned housing to the free market in the first place.

EDIT: ofcourse, it's really hard to compare US housing market to Dutch housing market. It would make more sense to compare Dutch housing market to City of New York housing market or LA housing market. Let's just say, any piece of land that has not had a building built on it is nature preserve or otherwise reserved for non-residential purposes. There's scarcity in all housing segments, from low to high. Now if only the housing corporations would build more affordable housing, but alas, most keep that to the bare minimum they get away with, and focus more on middle class housing and corporate prestige projects.
And then there's the problem that most middle class rental homes are so much more expensive than the social rental ones, that the social rental ones are clogged up with people who started out on low enough income to be allowed to rent there, but now technically earn too much, yet still too little to afford middle class housing.

[RedKing]

Oh yeah I forgot this

BREAKING NEWS! CNN EXCLUSIVE!

Trump has more than one style of speech!

Newsflash: they all suck.

Plus, it puts the lie to all those chuckleheads who said they liked him because "he says what he means", "he isn't a politician", "he doesn't mince words", etc. ad nauseum.

[smjjames]

Oh yeah I forgot this

BREAKING NEWS! CNN EXCLUSIVE!

Trump has more than one style of speech!

Newsflash: they all suck.

Plus, it puts the lie to all those chuckleheads who said they liked him because "he says what he means", "he isn't a politician", "he doesn't mince words", etc. ad nauseum.

They didn't flash it that heavily.

[Neonivek]

Having multiple styles of speaking doesn't really disprove anything. It just means he isn't going to do an impassioned rant at a funeral

[Draignean]

Having multiple styles of speaking doesn't really disprove anything. It just means he isn't going to do an impassioned rant at a funeral

I'll believe that when I see it.

[RedKing]

Having multiple styles of speaking doesn't really disprove anything. It just means he isn't going to do an impassioned rant at a funeral

I'll believe that when I see it.

+1

He spent an hour and a half berating Congress and the media and talking about how big his electoral college margin was, to the fucking Boy Scouts.
I have no difficulty believing he could turn a funeral (perhaps when one or more of the sailors recently killed in the USS McCain accident is buried in Arlington, ferex) into a stump speech. I could even imagine him using the accident to throw shade at the *actual* John McCain.

At this point, there's not really much the asshole could say that would shock me. At one point, I would have said, "Not condemning Nazis", but we've already crossed that bridge and burned it. In the shape of a cross.