Current Events > good article about upper middle class entitlement in 'murica

(+) Yeah! (+)

Darkman124 posted...

my calculations showed it being slightly above itemizing mark, so net loss of a couple hundred dollars to taxes

Did I read that right?
Deduct your interest and pay $200 more in taxes?

Darkman124 posted...

it'd be more than that i think. use provident.com to calculate and refer to the amort table. good to assume around 1.5% property tax on top of the interest tab in that table

https://www.provident.com/QuickRatesCalculator

you also have to add in state tax, thats where itemizing becomes a good deal. i think avg state tax is like 4%?

yeah I didn't include the property tax deduction, which I think should never be touched. It's a great way to subsidize local economies and school districts.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Did I read that right?
Deduct your interest and pay $200 more in taxes?

you are misunderstanding me

i meant that not being able to itemize anymore would mean paying more in taxes

but the exact amount was not right so i edited

Drpooplol posted...

yeah I didn't include the property tax deduction, which I think should never be touched. It's a great way to subsidize local economies and school districts.

idk. if we killed the mortgage deduction it'd take homes like mine with a $7000 property tax bill to even qualify for itemizing
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Darkman124 posted...

my calculations showed it being slightly above itemizing mark, so net loss of a couple hundred dollars to taxes

Did I read that right?
Deduct your interest and pay $200 more in taxes?

No, if you take away the itemized deduction and force standard instead, you'd be paying a couple hundred more in taxes.
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Darkman124 posted...

i think avg state tax is like 4%?

If anything, the tax burdens should be flipped.
State taxes should be 30-something percent, with Federal around 4%.

Darkman124 posted...

idk. if we killed the mortgage deduction it'd take homes like mine with a $7000 property tax bill to even qualify for itemizing

do what (I think) Balrog suggested in being able to take that deduction in addition to the standard deduction.
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tag
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Drpooplol posted...

Darkman124 posted...

idk. if we killed the mortgage deduction it'd take homes like mine with a $7000 property tax bill to even qualify for itemizing

do what (I think) Balrog suggested in being able to take that deduction in addition to the standard deduction.

yeah that'd be necessary to preserve it
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that wasn't me, but I think that would be an improvement
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Darkman124 posted...

idk. if we killed the mortgage deduction it'd take homes like mine with a $7000 property tax bill to even qualify for itemizing

there are homes much smaller than yours with $7000 property tax or more. come to illinois sometime and see.

removing the tax deduction here would destroy this state.

and in my example it's "only" a few hundred dollars, but there are examples where tax deductions are going to be thousands of dollars. couple that with all the other increases that leftist policies result in (increased energy bills, transportation costs, food costs, etc) and you're basically demolishing the middle class more and more each year

you keep calling this a leftist policy but its basically cribbed from the market urbanism website and supported by the GMU crowd which is funded by the Koch bros
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Balrog0 posted...

you keep calling this a leftist policy but its basically cribbed from the market urbanism website and supported by the GMU crowd which is funded by the Koch bros

surprise surprise - you don't have to be a democrat to support leftist policies. whatever it is, it's not good

QuantumScript posted...

Balrog0 posted...

you keep calling this a leftist policy but its basically cribbed from the market urbanism website and supported by the GMU crowd which is funded by the Koch bros

surprise surprise - you don't have to be a democrat to support leftist policies. whatever it is, it's not good

Quite interesting that you seem to consider those terms interchangeable. Is it bad because it's "leftist" or is it leftist because it's "bad"?

QuantumScript posted...

Darkman124 posted...

idk. if we killed the mortgage deduction it'd take homes like mine with a $7000 property tax bill to even qualify for itemizing

there are homes much smaller than yours with $7000 property tax or more. come to illinois sometime and see.

removing the tax deduction here would destroy this state.

Not really relevant to the conversation, but Illinois is a terribly-run state and we should just kill it once and for all.
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I honestly didn't know that states could get by without passing a budget until I had to contact Illinois' Department of Education for funding data

what a clusterfuck
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https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/6/9/learning-from-a-non-conforming-neighborhood

“Many of our best neighborhoods would be illegal to build today.” This single sentence offers powerful insight into the challenge facing American cities, exposing, in one breath, the perverse restrictions involved in conventional zoning and subdivision regulation. In many old neighborhoods, built form, lot dimensions, and land uses are "non-conforming", meaning that they are non-compliant with land use regulation. One sees this line frequently across the urbanism blogosphere, usually coupled with an explanation of how outstanding neighborhoods like the French Quarter or Beacon Hill fly in the face of conventional urban planning.

But the problem is worse. Forget about the superstar neighborhoods—even most run-of-the-mill inner suburban neighborhoods would be next to impossible to build today. You probably have a few such neighborhoods in your city—neighborhoods just outside of downtown where structures cover most of the lot, where lots are perhaps slightly narrower and smaller, and where single-family homes casually mix with other uses. Understanding this variation is key to freeing up developers to replicate what works in new neighborhoods and to unlocking the potential of some of our best existing neighborhoods.
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Apparently something about this style of development interferes with public safety and "intrinsic beauty" even though some of the most desirable neighborhoods in the country are like this
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It's easier out in flyover country. The zones are "agricultural", "commercial", and "residential". That's about it, give or take "interstate highway".

Questionmarktarius posted...

It's easier out in flyover country. The zones are "agricultural", "commercial", and "residential". That's about it, give or take "interstate highway".

I live in Little Rock, Arkansas and I wish it were that simple. (like, there's at least 9 "levels" of residential zones, plenty of variation in industrial and commercial)
It may be outside the "cities," but zoning is a lot more complicated than that even in smaller places like North Little Rock and Springdale (sub-100k pop)
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The unincorporated areas aren't so bad, but that's because there's really no zones at all
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Did any of these city planners ever play Sim City?
http://www.pnaw10.com/graphics/simcity/donutblock.jpg

I actually did play simcity in a community development class lol
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coolboy11 posted...

Perascamin posted...

Why are people mad that rich people don't want to bring poor people who typically have a lot of baggage into their neighborhood or local schools? As someone who has lived lower-middle class my whole life even I realize that people in my situation tend to have a lot of:

Alcoholics, Domestic Violence, Drug Addiction, And Broken Families--more so than our richer counterparts. If you were well off and kept a neat yard, would you want someone to live near you that has a yard littered with kids toys or trash?

sucking off the rich won't make them like you any more, have some respect for yourself goodness.

I'm not, it's just obvious why well off people do everything they can to distance themselves from poor people.

If poor people were really some kind of community of virtue the way that movies like to depict it, then there wouldn't really be any poor people. The fact of the matter is that the lower class citizens of America have problems with violence and drugs.

Take me out to the country bumpkin middle of nowhere and tell me the poor people in that area are poor because of some upper-middle class bullshit and not because they're spending at least 28$ a week on cigarettes.
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Perascamin posted...

I'm not, it's just obvious why well off people do everything they can to distance themselves from poor people.

If poor people were really some kind of community of virtue the way that movies like to depict it, then there wouldn't really be any poor people. The fact of the matter is that the lower class citizens of America have problems with violence and drugs.

Take me out to the country bumpkin middle of nowhere and tell me the poor people in that area are poor because of some upper-middle class bullshit and not because they're spending at least 28$ a week on cigarettes.

I don't think anyone said it wasn't obvious. I think the point of the article is just that the economic inequality we see is a result of not just business being self-serving, but because upper-middle class people are too. No one is confused about why that is, though.

I dunno that I've seen the poor depicted as a "community of virtue" any where, but I would argue that the tactics the relatively affluent use to keep away the undesirables directly produce a lot of the social ills in poor communities
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Darkman124 posted...

also remember that the 'median' household is a married couple making 50k, not one person making 50k

Thought the average adult made somewhere in the mid to low 30's
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Depending on the source, I'm seeing any where from 26k to 31k or so in median per person income
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/daily-southtown/opinion/ct-sta-berg-property-taxes-st-0401-20160331-story.html

QuantumScript posted...

we already talked about how shit your state is broseph

on a serious note, pension reform is necessary for city and state governments
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frankly I don't understand how it's legal for public unions to negotiate pensions at all, since IIRC they can't negotiate wages on the basis that their salaries are paid by the public, not the government

I could be misremembering that though
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apparently that mainly applies to federal workers

most states don't have rules against it

http://cepr.net/documents/state-public-cb-2014-03.pdf
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Balrog0 posted...

we already talked about how s*** your state is broseph

let's help the lower and middle class in Illinois by getting rid of tax deductions, Balrog!!!

QuantumScript posted...

let's help the lower and middle class in Illinois by getting rid of tax deductions, Balrog!!!

have you ever read any bastiat?
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Balrog0 posted...

QuantumScript posted...

let's help the lower and middle class in Illinois by getting rid of tax deductions, Balrog!!!

have you ever read any bastiat?

fuck yeah fam

"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."

"Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone."

I was more going for a broken windows thing. It's easy to see how a tax break helps people burdened by high taxes, but it's not easy to see how what seems like a fix can be the problem.

The mortgage interest deduction may be a small part of any one person's purchasing decision, but it can drastically alter the structure of housing production. The government under FDR is what made single family, persinally owned housing as we know it prominent. 5 year mortgages used to be standard, and lots more prior defaulted, reflecting the actual risks before government intervention.

I'm not suggesting the one deduction is what caused all of it, it's much more complex than that, but it's one viable mechanism we can change.

Illinois is a special case, but I'm not saying property taxes are perfect either. They're regressive too - but we can make them better by reforming how we assess property values too. See: http://apps.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/cook-county-property-tax-divide/index.html

I'll say more later when I'm not on mobile
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Balrog0 posted...

Or look at 529 college savings plans, another boondoggle. These are tax-exempt vehicles for putting money aside for educational expenses. Thanks to legislation signed by George W. Bush in 2001, any capital gains in these plans are free of all federal taxes. Most states also allow savings up to a certain level to be deducted from state income tax. Almost all the benefits of 529 plans go to upper-middle-class families.

I'm glad the government isn't getting their paws on people's college education funds that have been set aside. They are already profiting off the student loan system to begin with.
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Interesting stuff Balrog
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Sativa_Rose posted...

Balrog0 posted...

Or look at 529 college savings plans, another boondoggle. These are tax-exempt vehicles for putting money aside for educational expenses. Thanks to legislation signed by George W. Bush in 2001, any capital gains in these plans are free of all federal taxes. Most states also allow savings up to a certain level to be deducted from state income tax. Almost all the benefits of 529 plans go to upper-middle-class families.

I'm glad the government isn't getting their paws on people's college education funds that have been set aside. They are already profiting off the student loan system to begin with.

Yeah wtf, tc.
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One way to think about it is we could not charge poor people for college if we didn't help richer people afford college

Actually I have a more complicated view than that, but it isn't a ridiculous notion
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Balrog0 posted...

One way to think about it is we could not charge poor people for college if we didn't help richer people afford college

Actually I have a more complicated view than that, but it isn't a ridiculous notion

Means testing perpetuates welfare traps and class warfare.