I’m not mocking, she was cool as hell.

It’s just…fuckin weird.

Remember when that dude blew up his cybertruck in front of Trump tower and everyone was like “oh it probably just did that” rofl

Duuuude why is the air force full of weebs

One of my coworkers was a female former air force mechanic and even SHE was a fuckin weeb

Right, and I assume that’s the vast majority of whatever women these guys are satisfying their fetishes with (aside from women paid for it).

But it’s still odd the fetish itself is so overwhelmingly male.

Has anyone ever met a woman who was really into having her toes sucked? It’s always dudes with this fetish

Turns out in zero g people fart a lot. Not very sexy.

Are there any places in Thailand that aren’t hot and humid? It’s a decent retirement option but I can’t stand that kind of weather.

Before the reddit exodus, that was probably true. Now it is very obviously full of people with edgy takes and no life experience.

This is lemmy. All these people are like 14. They have no idea who Dawkins is.

Removed by mod

You’re overthinking it.

I like the cold❄️❤️

I have no patience for people who self-victimize.

That shit makes no goddamn sense and you should feel bad for ever considering it.

Handy flowchart for determining if you’re a pedophile

Are you attracted to children?

• yes: pedophile

• no: not pedophile

I like the cromch

That’s just capitalism plus a strong regulatory government, which is how all Western governments are supposed to work too. It’s fairly easy to imagine a future PRC where greedy capitalist interests have infiltrated the government over the years and crippled it like many Western ones. It’s just instead of manipulating people via democracy, they work backroom deals within the CCP to get people amenable to their interests into positions of power.

Essentially, the only successful checks we’ve found to capitalism is either a strong State or a strong Church, or both. I think we can all agree that organized religious rule is even less preferable than a capitalist oligopoly, which leaves having a strong government to balance capitalist tendencies.

Because no one has really come up with such a system that’s workable, I guess.

Interesting theory but not particularly relevant to capitalism here and now?

Capitalist markets are built off of the idea that people are inherently self serving

You think they’re not?

Ok fine I’ll address some of the things I’ve been ignoring.

Extra emphasis on “of reasonable value”, because you seem to need a little assistance with your reading comprehension since you’ve ignored it literally every single time I’ve said it,

Because the entire housing market is unreasonable in almost every city in the Western world. It’s not just a few outliers here and there that can be compared to some average. The average itself is completely out of whack. We can’t just rein in the crazy part of the market; the whole market is crazy. Either we pick a semi-arbitrary value and tax above that (your plan) or we introduce a graduated, progressive tax on all homes (my plan). Introducing exemptions and especially benefit cliffs has historically always had crazy unforeseen negative consequences. A tax on all homes will by itself automatically bring the market closer to equilibrium.

The average home price in San Jose, CA is $1.4 million. That is crazytown. We can’t look at that as a benchmark to try and bring prices in line with.

Moreover, I would argue that anyone who owns a home at all is already of enough means that they don’t need tax breaks. Proportional to your equity obviously, someone who just closed on a house shouldn’t be slapped with a tax bill based on the whole value of that house. But we have a 0% income tax rate on the lowest incomes because that income is essential to living. Home ownership is not essential. Having shelter is essential, which is why I support taxpayer funded grants to homeless people etc, but home ownership is not and should not be a fundamental right. If you can afford to buy a house, you can afford to pay taxes.

I might see your point if Social Security payouts were substantially increased, but they aren’t, and you aren’t proposing that we change that, either.

Housing policy is already a big enough conversation. Incidentally, I actually support universal basic income, which you could look at as substantially higher social security payments.

But relevant to this conversation, social security in its current form is not a pension. If all you’re living on is social security, you probably can’t afford to retire. If you’re physically unable to work, then that’s disability. If you don’t have enough money saved up to pay for the life you want, but happen to be age 65, you’re not retired. You have to keep working.

I haven’t mentioned Prop 13 once

Mathematically, it’s close enough to what you’re advocating for: a tax carve-out for homeowners, incidentally with the same tear-jerking “old people forced out of their homes by evil taxes” argument. It has the same supply-demand effects as well.

So, to summarize:

• I’m ignoring your “reasonable price” point because it’s either arbitrary or unworkable

• I’m ignoring social security because it’s not a retirement plan

• I’m equating you with prop 13 because the socioeconomic effects are essentially the same

Instead I’m addressing the core of your point, which is that homeowners should not pay taxes on their home (within reason, mansions etc excluded). To which I say, “yes they should, all of em”. Again, if you have enough money to buy a house, you have enough money to pay taxes. If your house increases in value such that you can’t afford the taxes anymore, fucking congratulations, you just made a bunch of money. Now you get to experience the pain of renters being priced out of their own neighborhoods, but also with a small golden parachute to take with you. And it makes things less bad in general for everyone by helping to bring housing costs down across the board.

Also, just to keep this conversation in perspective, I don’t think this is the MAIN reason why housing is crazy in places that have similar tax carve-outs for homeowners. I actually think that’s zoning and local NIMBYism. But this definitely contributes a fair amount.