“The one on the right is better because the thingy is lifting it higher and the arrow is pointing to it!” – idiots, probably

See previous comment.

Why the fuck not?

I really meant it in an antimeme/literal/sincere sort of way, but was too lazy to remove the top and bottom frames.

Virtual Felinity

Why would they need to blackmail ideological fellow travelers?

Le Creuset enameled cast iron isn’t the same kind of thing as the ceramic nonstick the person upthread was talking about.

Putting a second story on likely includes increasing the number of bedrooms, which theoretically increases the number of people who could be living there and thus increase the burden on city services. Renovating for quality and building additions to the square footage aren’t equivalent.

I think lot sizes are still a much bigger factor, though: a house renovated/rebuilt to max out the allowed FAR (floor-area ratio) on a 1/4 acre lot still ought to get taxed less than a modest-sized house on a 2-acre lot.

That’s just scapegoating bullshit temporarily-embarrassed NIMBYs like to tell themselves to avoid the hard truth that we have to fix the zoning code.

The fact is, plenty of houses exist at reasonable prices in rural areas and small towns. But you don’t want to live in those places, do you? You want to live in a big metro area, just like everybody else. Well, when everybody wants to live in the same place you have to build enough housing units for them all to fucking fit in the same place, or you end up playing musical chairs and the ones who aren’t rich lose. That’s just a fact of geometry and basic supply and demand, not the diabolical machinations of some villain.

The fuck-up was by the city, which failed to abolish the single-family zoning in order to allow the land to be developed to its highest and best use.

Well at least for tax purposes and likely insurance, but not necessarily market rate (tax assessments commonly lag the market, so a market downturn could leave them with a multi-million dollar house that no one will pay the stated value for

More like the house is likely worth even more than the $4.4M it was assessed at. But nice try trying to spin your point to fit your narrative.

but if you apply the same rate to the homes that average people have to buy you’re going to end up in a shitty spot

And that’s why you don’t do that and instead make progressive taxation a thing.

If taxing the rich is the goal we shouldn’t be talking about property taxes on single family homes unless it’s specifically related to second and third homes.

Nah. It is good and correct to tax extremely large/valuable single-family homes at high rates even if they’re primary residences.

(Of course, another aspect of the issue is that single-family houses in very high-demand areas should lose their zoning protection so they can be bought out and replaced with multifamily buildings. Reasonably-sized single-family houses should never have gotten to unaffordable valuations in the first place.)

Simply tying property taxes to home value isn’t fair, because the burden a person puts on city services doesn’t increase just because the perceived value of their home rises.

It depends how much home value correlates to house size and lot size. A $1M 1500 sqft bungalow on a 1/4 acre lot in a gentrified neighborhood may not burden city services more than a $100k 1500 sqft bungalow on a 1/4 acre lot in a bad neighborhood, but a $1M McMansion on a 2-acre lot on the edge of the city absolutely will. That’s because the cost of city services scales with things like increasing the length of pavement and sewer pipe across the lot frontage and decreasing the number of homes emergency services can reach within a reasonable distance/time from the station.

More like mid-1900s.

And yes, that’s talking about the the last chattal slave not being freed until 1942, not the same points others are making about prison slavery.

What do you mean, “illegal?” If the phone user consents to turning it on, that makes it legal.

I hate to defend Google, but I will absolutely defend single-party consent for recording. Don’t like it? Don’t fucking call me in the first place. It absolutely grinds my gears when shitty software (including from Google) plays an obnoxious warning message when I want to record a call, even though I have the right to do so without warning.

I’m really not sure what point you think you’re making. Of course they’re all reading from the same script; that’s obvious! In fact, my point was that right-wing propagandists have the power to write the script and force it to be read, while left-wing people don’t because they don’t own a fuckton of TV stations.

I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse. Stop it.

Why did she need money to pay for medical care to begin with? Shouldn’t China, of all countries, have socialized healthcare?

That first one, anyone can do.

Really? Anyone can order local TV news stations across the country to read scripted propaganda of their choosing? You’re just going to straight-up deny Sinclair Broadcast Group’s unbalanced political power exists?

Of course intimidation is the point – psychological/political intimidation, not physical. Context matters. Don’t try to pretend that the other MPs were scared they were gonna charge at them with taiahas or something, because that’s bullshit and you know it.