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Where is renting cheaper than owning? Seriously, citation please.

Any major city. Well, at least the ones with stupidly bad zoning laws like New York, SF, Seattle (the more expensive parts, at least), etc. In those places, buying property is a game for the rich. The upper-middle class and below either move to the suburbs or rent.

Here's some hard numbers on the price-to-rent ratio of US cities. Another site suggests any ratio over 16 means "it is typically better to rent than buy".

https://smartasset.com/taxes/c...

Slide it up until your take-home is $9000.

Quoting the Slashdot story summary: "The US imprisons more people than any other country in the world."

It is more correct to say, "The US imprisons a higher percentage of its people than any other country in the world."

Prison is a big, profitable business in the United States. The companies that manage prisons are paid up to $70,000 per prisoner, per year.

Articles:

The Economics of the American Prison System (May 21, 2018)

The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery? (Nov. 7, 2018)

This is an inversion of unemployment rate, not an inversion of average income.

I doubt this is caused by an excess of demand for unskilled workers (waiters, dish washers, burger flippers, etc). It's probably caused by a shortage of unskilled workers. If housing prices have risen so much that it's impossible for unskilled workers to afford to live in those areas, then there won't be enough of them to fill all the jobs requiring little or no skills. The solution is either to build more housing to lower home prices, or offer higher wages for unskilled jobs (which would seem like it could cause an income inversion, but it can't really since it's the skilled workers paying for the goods and services the unskilled workers are providing which creates those unskilled jobs - skilled workers cannot pay more than they make).

In the US, we do not tax wealth; we tax income. If you look at the actual data you will see the top 1% make about 20% of all the income, but pay 40% of all income taxes. Wealth isn't taxed; income is. If you want to argue for a wealth tax, then do that - otherwise you're just trying to stir up some class-envy to bolster your incorrect argument.

Capital gains taxes for short-term (less than 1 year) gains are the same as ordinary income. Long term capital gains (more than 1 year held) can be lower, but still is not tax-free. It's there to encourage long-term investments and savings - which I would think would be beneficial to society? Or should we encourage all investors to only see short-term gains, in-and-out, churn the funds and eschew long-term stability?

Social Security is capped in terms of benefits, which is why contributions are also capped. You are really mistaken here, stating there is no cap on social security contributions.

For protection, we already tax property on its assessed value. The person with the $500,000 home pays, on average, twice the property tax as the person with a $250,000 home. The more expensive car has higher tabs/registration rates. And those tax payments are what covers things like police, fire, roads, schools, and so on. Federal taxes you on how much you make, so if you make more you pay more (and it's progressive - your payment rate goes from essentially zero income tax to quite high). If anything, it appears the original GP was correct - the more you make, the more you pay, and disproportionately so. Even taxes on Social Security benefits are also progressive and tax the higher income earner at an even higher rate.

So let's cut to the chase - what should the tax rate be? Should it be on income? Should it be on wealth? Who gets away with paying zero, who gets to pay more?

150 thousand a year (from a no risk investment of 5 million) is a modest retirement?

Wow! I sometimes wonder if I live on the same planet as some of the posters here. :-/

It's all relative. In 2038 150k/year is the equivalent of a 90k/year salary today (using 2.5% inflation. I used this site: here) Which for Podunk may be a good number, Minneapolis I would barely call that a modest income, if you are looking at New York City that's pretty much barely scraping by.

I have 800K+ saved. 60K in rent is no joke. And while you think you smart, RSUs are "income" if you dont hold them for an extra year. So ~200K base + 100K stock is 300K income + wife 100K, joint, using a quickie calculation here:

https://smartasset.com/taxes/c...

Comes out to ~43% or so.

Of course there are SEP IRA, ROTH IRA, 401K etc being used as well.

I drive shit cars, rent submarket, and I cant really afford a house here - I could certainly buy one, but would be house poor.

Avg house price here is 1.2-1.5M for shitboxes.

So im not poor by any stretch, but for someone being close to a M in the clear I dont feel rich or safe or prepared to pay for higher education for kids. Its wage slavery central.

So spare the " manage your finances " crap.

Your argument appears to be that the state would not otherwise collect property tax from the employee houses.

Those houses may not exist yet. Even if you assume Apple hires 50 people from Iowa, it isn't as though the companies at which those employees used to work suddenly have no need of their labor, which means you're pulling in some number of new people to the state. Assuming 20 new homes are built in the area, that's another $2,756 per home (based on info from this website). Those employees are also going to spend money in the state which results in sales tax being collected. At some point if you bring in enough people other new industry is going to spring up to support the demands of those consumers. I don't know how much new industry 50 people produces, but it's not zero.

seems odd to assume that 100% of the employees will only own properly if Apple hires them. It also assumes that 100% of the employees would otherwise spend no money and generate no sales tax. Interesting math.

How about we instead assume most of these people would have other jobs and are just switching to work for Apple and thus would have very little impact on the state and local economy.

Again, these employees have to come from somewhere and even if they're already in Iowa, the companies they are leaving are going to need to replace them. Either that means drawing in existing laborers from out of state or retaining recent graduates just entering the workforce who would have gone elsewhere for employment. I suspect there's going to be a mix of those things happening.

You also ignore the possibility that the state is actually getting more money in property taxes after Apple starts using the land. It's also possible they're getting less and they're spending more than just $19.6 million because they would be losing property tax revenue. That needs to be accounted for as well, so it's quite difficult to determine how the state shakes out on the deal until you know exactly what terms were agreed to there.

You're making about twice as much as the average millennial. However, you didn't mention how much student debt you were carrying, which is a major factor.

Any other questions?

Nebraska income tax does not have a cap; Buffet is in the top category, and will pay the most of probably anyone in Nebraska. So it's not State income tax. Perhaps it's State sales tax and property tax? I guess we can consider those who rent and buy little other than food and medicine (both of which are exempt from sales tax in Nebraska) as gaming the system and not paying their fair share?

About 80 years ago, sure, but that's still a pretty big gift, and one that would let them spend more a) initially on setting up the grid and b) spend more on upgrades over time, as they don't have to pay loans back. The original money isn't relevant to rates now, but it may be relevant in how it shaped the grid's formation.

Those are all pretty good points. I do think CA's infrastructure would be harder to maintain still - they certainly don't have ice storms, but as you said, there are earthquakes. It may also be more expensive to get permission to run lines in CA (whether that's through buying rights to put lines up or lobbying politicians to use eminent domain).

I think property taxes are more important than you're giving them credit for - they're often the largest tax people pay, as CA's rates (and property) are much higher than TN's - TN also only applies their tax rate to 25% of the property's assessed value.

There's also state regulatory costs to take into account - I don't know how I'd go about finding those, but I would have a hard time believing CA has less stringent regulations. How much that affects the price of electricity, I don't know.

Ultimately, I think the TVA does good work, but I'm not sure a TN/CA comparison is the best, since there are a lot of other differences between the two states. I'm certainly willing to admit that in some cases, non-profit power companies are better, but at this point I'm not going to say they're inherently better.

I spent some time in San Francisco in the late 90's, I assume it hasn't changed.

Rent and real estate were so ridiculous, that it's almost impossible. In part because, at the time at least, .com people were driving up the prices because they had to compete with other people who wanted the space -- which led to bidding wars which raised the prices.

I think at the time a 400 sq foot studio apartment was almost $2k monthly or something stupid.

I knew people who had two hour commutes because they could live close to work, or live in a place which had as many bedrooms as they needed. Nobody could afford to do both.

I assume that due to the cost of real estate/rental housing, this has less to do with a living wage as it does if you've been able to amass the capital needed to get into the market.

San Francisco is an incredibly expensive place to live:

According to rental listing site Zumper.com, which tracks average market rents on a monthly basis, rental rates in San Francisco are the highest in the country. Average rent on a two bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $4,650, $1,000+ more than the number two city (New York) and $2,000 more than the rest of the biggest cities in the country.

That's almost sixty grand to rent a two bedroom apartment.

Considering the deal is available only to AirBnB locations where they rent out the entire house, and considering the installation cost is under $1000... ...and considering renting out a house can pull in north of $20K per year...

I'd say they could probably recover the costs in a few months. Basically one month's worth of rental would cover it any anything beyond that is gravy. There is essentially no recurring cost but it's a capital asset and a selling point.

Fuck, they can probably write the whole thing off as a business expense, too.
=Smidge=