Max-Granted I pretty much make this stuff up off the top of my head, but I don't get your point. Take my case. I move to an area of town not many people want to live in for some reason(can you say black majority). My house costs $50,000. Then a bunch of folks decide they do want to live there after all. I could sell my house for$125,000. But, in the plan I'm proposing, if this is my primary residence, my taxes are based on original purchase price, maybe adjusted for inflation or something.(BTW I stole this idea from Nancy Molton, but she won't mind) I don't see how this would keep people from moving up. Well maybe it would prevent people from buying houses by the skin of their teeth. But if you can afford $125,000 home, you can afford the taxes. You want to take your now repeatedly tax-exempt capital-gain and move to a better neighborhood, you move up to higher taxes. So? Like long-term capital-gains tax advantages, you get a break for truly long-term investment in your community.
"the replacement of the property tax with one on the site value of land." What is that?
As for the SS cap. I hear those who deny there's a real crisis propose
raising the cap. So in that context I say forget the cap. You make $127mil
you pay SS and Medicare taxes on $127mil. If you get stock options as
compensation, somehow when you exercise those options, you pay FICA.
I read an interesting paper at the Cato site about how SS privatization
empowers woman. It was a good sounding story and it hit all the right hot
buttons. The Cato's of this world don't waste time on the finer points.
They put out the stories.
"If I were permitted to write all the ballads, I need not care who makes
the laws of the nation."
>From the introduction to an interveiw with George Gerbner of the Cultural
Indicators Project in this months*The Sun*
The biggest problem the Left has is that it is almost completely invisible.
I know. I couldn't find it for years and I seriously suspected their was some thing out their that validated my suspicions that things were not as they seemed. But I didn't live in Austin or SF. I remember looking at newsstands in various places. I knew Time and Newsweek often sounded "to stupid to be true", but what else was there? Then I ended up in Flamingo Park as the renomination of Nixon was taking place. The people their seemed very cool to me. But when I joined in a march through some elderly nieghborhood and they were doing things I knew would get that crook votes, I went home. If we don't start generateing the stories, the revolution will be televised and the people will get screwed. I'm firmly convinced that the initial increase in tolerance for homosexuality owes a great deal to the afternoon talk shows. That's really where the American people got their exposure to gay people. And the feminism and environmental awareness that has become part of mainstream culture owes a great deal to the tv and movies of the seventies, when an effort at diversity was expected. Heck, it's the success of these cultural nudges that probably stirred up the counter-assault. Still, have you watched cartoons lately. Cartoons may save the planet. The most radical thing I ever heard growing up still has great resonance for me, don't laugh. Remember "Truth, justice and the American Way!" I'm still waiting.
Hey Max. If you know Lester Thurow, ask him if he remembers some waitress calling EPI to ask him a question and he sent her the State of Working America. That was me and I loved the book. This was many years ago and I had no idea LT was sort of a big-shot. He'd been quoted in ITT, one of the mags I eventually found, and I was confused. I figure he's left, I'm left, were pals, right? So I called to ask a question. Naive? Solidarity? The way I see it, "WE'RE ALL BOZOS ON THIS BUS"
Sweet dreams-paula