As many already know, huge numbers of people have been moving to Texas over the last few decades. This has been pushing up the real estate costs. The biggest cities in Texas, Houston, Dallas and Austin, have now become expensive, and even many other medium-sized cities in the state have seen price increases, as people who came from the bigger cities found themselves priced out. (related thread: California's population has spilled over into Texas ) Since property taxes are based off a percentage of the home's current assessed value, this has been automatically pushing up taxes. For some people, this property tax increase is a big burden and they are not happy about it. In some cases the property tax increases are even pushing people to sell their homes and move somewhere cheaper. Or at least it is becoming a factor in the decision of some people to move. Most all of the people moving are still staying in Texas; they are just moving to smaller towns further away where land costs are cheaper. It can be hard to have a home with a big property and lots of acreage in an area where population numbers and real estate prices have rapidly increased, resulting in a big property tax burden. Unfortunately, a lot of the areas where these people are moving to are not as nice as what the places they lived in used to be like. People are being pushed further away from downtown areas and old city amenities, and the job opportunities in these cheaper areas are not as good either. As the country is finding out, simply adding more people does not automatically create city amenities and good job opportunities. They will never build new towns the same as how the older city areas were built. Right now there's a huge pushback from conservatives against the rising property taxes in Texas. But in my opinion, part of this is just inevitable. The structure and society of Texas is permanently changing. I'd say, as of 2023, Texas is sort of in the same place where California was in 1999. It's going to be increasingly difficult for people to own large properties with spacious yards and acreage anywhere close to big city areas. I think most of the future generation is never going to know what it's like to live on an acre of property. (one acre is about equal to a square with a side length of 208 feet) This used to not be uncommon in Texas, in the 1960s. Plenty of land for everyone. More people means there is less availability of land near the places people want to live. Texas does have a special law that allows people older than 65 in financial difficulty to defer payment of their property taxes, but those property taxes will still have to be paid after the homeowner dies, coming out of the equity of the home, or when property is sold. This means older people in many cases will not be able to leave their home to their children.
Being a high property-tax-rate state is what has kept Texas housing relatively affordable. Look at what happened when CA reduced property tax rates with Proposition 13 in 1978: housing became astronomically unaffordable. Professional real estate lobbyist and liar Howard Jarvis, the main campaigner for Prop 13, swore on a stack of Bibles that if CA tenants voted for Prop 13, their rents would go down. They believed him, passed Prop 13, and their rents increased faster than ever. Right: landowners prefer to be legally entitled to steal as much as they want from the community and not repay any of it. Enabling them to pocket massive capital gains courtesy of the community... Oh, the humanity! I.e., it can be hard to steal as much as you want when you have to repay some of what you steal. Yes, conservatives love what Proposition 13 has done to CA because it has been astronomically profitable for landowners and makes Democrats look bad because they are powerless to reduce the subsidy to landowners. It's the people who live in CA that are paying the price of the exorbitant, increasing, and unsustainable subsidy to idle landowning. No, 1978. And look what reducing property tax rates has done to CA since then. I first visited CA in 1969, and it was like paradise: housing was affordable, public schools, services and infrastructure were among the best in the country. Now they are all among the worst. Proposition 13 was the greatest public policy blunder committed by any US state since the Civil War. I.e., it will be hard for them to steal as much as they want. Oh, the humanity!
It is economically true that higher property tax rates will tend to have an effect on making property prices go down. However, I believe that is unlikely the reason why property prices have gone up. Consider that between 1993 and 2018 -- 25 years -- the state's total population increased by 26.6 percent (in California). In areas surrounding big cities, the population went up by an even greater percentage. For example the population in Contra Costa County increased 37 percent over that same period of time. (I picked that particular county completely at random, knowing it was on the outlying edge of the San Franciso Bay Area, before looking up the statistics and doing the calculation) And many of these city areas are reaching near their limits and there is not much more available new space to build. Especially not big lot sizes. (as two examples: San Jose has a population of 983,500 ; Irvine 309,000. These are considered "medium sized" cities in high population areas) It's basic economics that when population numbers increase, housing prices go up. This is especially the case when there is limited open land in the immediate area to build new housing on. I don't wish to have that debate with you in this thread, but if you wish to discuss it, you can do so here: How much rising population has raised rents
He was correct though. Property taxes can be viewed as being comprised of two elements: a tax on land values, and a tax on improvements on the land, namely the value of the building. According to the economic theory that you are attempting to invoke, tax on the value of the land has no effect on rent prices. However, tax on the value of the building can increase rent prices (especially for buildings constructed after the tax increase). Just because we have reason to believe that A causes a decrease in B but we do not observe that decrease happening does not mean the effect of a decrease is not being caused. If I can use an example, you might add a small amount of money into your bank account each week, but at the end of the month observe that there is less money in your account than when you started. You would be in error to believe that adding money to your bank account does not increase the amount of money in your account. Perhaps your wife took money out of the account, for example. (To phrase it one way, adding money creates an increasing effect, but will not necessarily result in an overall increase) This is true in many areas of economics. If you do not observe the expected effect, it could be because there was a bigger economic effect overshadowing it during that time period.
In this case, that "community" did not exist in Texas when those landowners made their home there. What you seem to be saying amounts to Californians having the right to property in Texas. Which seems rather Left-leaning to me. That's okay if that's what you are saying, but I just want to clarify it.
No; like everyone who has ever supported landowner thieving or ever will, he was a lying liar and he lied. You mean the indisputable facts of objective physical reality that I have identified? No, that's just the first-order effect. The secondary effect is that landholders have to use the land productively in order to avoid losing money to the tax. As it is no longer financially feasible to hold land off the market for speculative gain, more land is available for use, reducing rent prices. It's true that some portion of the tax on improvements is passed on to tenants through elasticity of supply, and shifting the property tax entirely onto land value would certainly encourage increased supply of improvements and reduce rent prices. But CA property tax rates were already low enough in 1978 that the effect of reducing them was to make land unaffordable without making improvements noticeably more affordable. That is certainly true. But in the case of Prop 13, the effect that its opponents predicted -- soaring property prices and rents -- happened just as they predicted.
Yes, of course it did. Who else conferred upon them the privilege of owning the land? Everyone has a right to property in the fruits of their labor no matter where they live; and everyone has a right to liberty, so no one has any right to property in others' rights to liberty, whether it takes the form of a land deed or a slave deed, in Texas, California, or anywhere else. The center seems left-leaning to those on the right. Oh, I'm all about clarity -- which is the very last thing you want, as it makes the evil nature of your beliefs so evident.
Because you believe false things that support your incorrect opinions. In TX, it increased at more than double that rate, from 18M to 28.6M, or 59%: https://www.macrotrends.net/states/texas/population But because TX kept its property tax rate up, housing remained affordable. Garbage. Every major city in the USA has thousands of vacant lots in desirable locations. In most cases, they have been vacant for years; in many cases, for decades. Nope. Not if the newly arrived people can get permission to build housing for themselves. You might as well claim that when population numbers increase, food prices go up. Fly over CA some time and notice how empty it is. But its landowners' pockets are not empty. Far from it. Can you find a willingness to know such facts?
On Earth would you keep referring to property ownership as "stealing" ? Heaven forbid someone should want to enjoy the fruits of their own labor and not be taxed to death just to live. Oh the humanity !!!!
Owning other people's rights to liberty is legalized stealing whether it takes the form of a land deed, a slave deed, a royal patent monopoly on the cinnamon trade, or a patent monopoly on an invention, drug, or life form. Land is not the fruit of anyone's labor, and it is the private landowner who demands the fruits of others' labor in return for his permission to use what nature provided for all to labor upon. It is landowners who demand "tax" payments from the landless just for their permission to live, and I will thank you to remember it. A society that truly secured the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor would ensure that all citizens had free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity, and would require those who wanted to exclude others from more land than that to make just compensation to the community of those thus excluded. That is self-evident justice. You merely hate justice. Simple. Indeed.
I concede that is technically true, but what that would look like in this case is an old person who has lived on a large acreage of property right outside Dallas being pressured to sell that property to developers who will tear down that house and build high-density apartments, so now 50 people can live there instead of 2. Viewed that way, what you say may not necessarily be viewed as a good thing.
related thread: Biden administration trying to eliminate existence of middle class suburbs (posted in Race Relations section, June 3, 2021 )
You mean he would choose to pocket a huge, community-created capital gain in return for no contribution, rather than continue to deprive others of their liberty rights without making just compensation for what he is taking from them? Oh, the humanity! What do you claim is wrong with resources being applied to their most economically productive and socially appropriate uses? Are you saying that landowner greed, privilege, and parasitism must always be given unconditional priority over all other considerations, that everyone and everything must be sacrificed on the altar of society's servitude to landowners? Never mind. I know that that is exactly what you are saying.
Those others being "deprived of their liberty rights" (in your view) are people fleeing from California. It's one thing to advocate forced sharing of property, but it's quite another thing to advocated forced sharing when those people are moving in from somewhere else. There are a lot of Texans who are not the happiest about all the Californians and illegal aliens who are moving to their state. And if it weren't for that, this wouldn't even be an issue. There wouldn't have been overcrowding, property values and property taxes would not be increasing so much.
No, that's just another bald falsehood from you. Private ownership of land forcibly deprives everyone of their liberty rights, and forces them to subsidize landowners. "Forced" "sharing" of "property"? That's three falsehoods, and you haven't even got to the end of the sentence: It is the landowner who uses force to deprive everyone else of their natural individual liberty right to use the land without making just compensation for what he is forcibly taking from them, and I will thank you to remember it. Strike One. Making just compensation to others for what you take from them by force is not "sharing" it, and I will thank you to remember that, too. Secure, exclusive tenure is necessary in a modern economy, and a free and just community would provide it -- in return for just compensation to the community of those thus forcibly excluded. Strike Two. Only the fruits of private labor can rightly be private property, and land is not the fruit of anyone's private labor. That's Strike Three, Casey. You're out. That's a fabrication on your part, as proved above. A community has the right to exclude others it considers invaders. But once admitted to the community, every member has the same individual human rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. Where did they or their forebears come from? Did they somehow have a right to move to Texas despite the opposition of those who were already there, but now no one else has that right? On what basis? It definitely would. Landowners never object to the community increasing the value of their land for them. They only object when the community asks them to repay some of what it is giving them. They want to be legally entitled to steal from everyone else, and they want the community to forcibly prevent their victims from defending themselves. Simple.
Lot of instant slums going up. High densities of apt. complexes usually become ghettoes in a decade or two as maintenance gets more expensive due to the cheap construction and crappy appliances and the property developers unload them on shadier and shadier operators.
