(Note: the Video Weekends are currently stalled because of my relocation — in the worst case this blog may pause for some weeks while I lack both time and Internet access)
Have you been mulling over a wealth tax? Are you aware of the wrong kind of wealth tax that has long been in place, not to take back from the thieving rich but to ravage people’s shelter from the elements? Listen to this report video and read my comments below:
$600M Property Tax Overcharge Is Eroding Detroit’s Black Homeownership ~ The Real News Network (Jan 16, 2020)
Comments:
While Detroit hit municipal bankruptcy (as other cities will), it is not the only place where property taxes strangle people who oh-so-facetiously claim to need a roof over their heads. It is really terrible how we American people get gouged and mauled from the top (the rich in cahoots with their political puppets). We try hard to escape some of the rentier gouging by getting to own our homes, but the money lords’ banks often demand about twice the homes’ alleged prices in pay when we take a mortgage (because the interests and compound interests can double the price of the loan the banks make possible with money made by them out of thin air). In addition, the banks play games like stock-market-gambling subprime mortgages and also illegitimate foreclosings on people who did make their mortgage payments on time. And communal governments also ravage us even when we finally DO own our homes. Even then we can get evicted and foreclosed, having our home and entire life’s savings taken away in one big swoop “justified” with property taxes that should not be imposed on people’s homes any more than on the air we breathe.
Imagine toiling all your life to own a home so that when you become too old and sick to pay rent you think you will be safe from having paid off your mortgage and escaped bank foreclosure. But then the local town government forecloses on you because you can’t pay its willy-nilly-rated and even inflated property taxes when you cannot earn an income anymore. Honest property tax should be imposed on luxury property only, such as huge private lands, private jets, fleets of giant luxury yachts, and excessive Wall Street stocks. We should get excessive wealth taxed, not people’s shelters from the elements.
And regard the amazing 18% interest rate a town government imposes on tax payment lag at an age where we working people are lucky if we get a mere 1.2% interests on savings (while paying a cash advance interest rate of 36% to a credit card baron). Holy moly! Maybe we need a new inequality term called “money market inequality”, where the money-gambling banksters and other rich creeps and their political puppets can gouge people at 18% interest rates or 36% (or even a lot more*) while people who have to toil for their living can’t even get 2% on any penny-pinching savings if they manage to scrape away some savings at all in this institutionalized inequality system.
* What’s a lot more? Full payment on payday loans is due on the borrower’s next payday, which typically is around two weeks. Payday lenders usually charge interest of $15-$20 for every $100 borrowed (within those 2 weeks!!!). Calculated on an annual percentage rate basis (APR) – the same as is used for credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, etc. – that APR based on late repays then ranges from 391% to more than 521% for payday loans, making desperate poor working people pay the highest loan interests of all — insanely high rates of having to pay back more than five times what you borrowed in some cases! (one info source: https://www.thebalance.com/average-credit-card-interest-rate-4772408 )
We definitely need a proper wealth tax that recovers the accumulated loot of the rich thieves in human society, not home property taxes that steal even more from common people into the pockets of the super rich. Huge systemic inequality is like cancer in human societies. We should all be opposed to it and get rid of it. If any rich person read this, I ask you to look in the mirror while you mull over it.
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