Can you explain why this is a good thing? As far as I can tell, NIMBYism is more or less empowered by "ownership of land".
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
America’s Cities Are Unlivable. Blame Wealthy Liberals. (NYT Opinion)
- Thread starter entremet
- Start date
Is CT really that liberal? I thought that's where rich conservatives moved to avoid NYC area taxes.
Wealthy people engage in problematic antics fueled by the power and privilege of their wealth.
This is why I say we need a wealth tax. It's not because I "hate the rich" or anything like that (I do actually but that's besides the point), it's because as a social bloc they generally do bad things to the shape of society that just manifests out of the aggregate of their own individual choices. Individually, they're "blameless", but as a group they're not. How do you tackle an issue if you can't assign blame to any single actor? Systemic processes, like putting a soft/hard cap on wealth.
If they didn't behave like this on average I wouldn't have any issue with them but by and large they do, so they need to go for the good of society (everyone's wellbeing, not just that of the rich).
This is why I say we need a wealth tax. It's not because I "hate the rich" or anything like that (I do actually but that's besides the point), it's because as a social bloc they generally do bad things to the shape of society that just manifests out of the aggregate of their own individual choices. Individually, they're "blameless", but as a group they're not. How do you tackle an issue if you can't assign blame to any single actor? Systemic processes, like putting a soft/hard cap on wealth.
If they didn't behave like this on average I wouldn't have any issue with them but by and large they do, so they need to go for the good of society (everyone's wellbeing, not just that of the rich).
It is a cart and horse problem for me. How do you decommodify housing if it's within the interests of the rich and political elite for housing to continue to be commodities? You need to strike at the source of their power, which is wealth. If a society reaches a point where they can believably "decommodify housing", they must have at some point figured out the power problem. If they have already figured out the power problem, they wouldn't need a measure like "decommodify housing" because they can simply build to fulfill needs regardless of what the NIMBYs desire.
It is questionable if NIMBYs would be a problem at all in a society that has the ability to directly decommodify a commodity. Sure there will always be NIMBYs, just socially speaking, the question is whether they are able to dictate policy.
OP
OP
Your argument doesn't really follow. Wealthy elites can Literally lobby against a meaningful wealth tax like how they lobby for nimbyism. Not to mention with a wealth tax you have to be concerned about capital flight and the like. Any progress on these fronts will have to come from organizing from the ground up to counter act the power of the wealthy
I think it's easier to sneak a wealth tax under the neoliberal radar than decommodification but I admit I'm not 100% on this. People can more or less grok a tax and if you tell them they won't pay for it and someone else will, they'll eat it up. Conveying what decommodification means or what a "commodity" even is, is a huge undertaking just from a semantic perspective.
Well one thing it doesn't have to be sold as "de-commodification" to the American public. I'm pretty sure we can figure out how to sell this like how Bernie is trying to sell democratic socialism as "democratization of the work place" in the senate. Anyways, de-commodification would take a series of laws and measures including things like rent control, right if first refusals to tenants, empowering community land trusts me, robust tenant rights etc to be fully realized. You won't pass one big sweeping De-commodification of Housing Bill and be done with it. It'll resemble something like what the New Deal was, a series of Bills and Laws. Also given the neo-liberal framework you can argue that trying to pass a meaningful wealth tax might be harder as you have to be concerned about capital flight and tax havens. In fact a majority of the worlds capital is in real estate in the first place because it's a pretty good way to park money away from taxes.
CT is more like the centrist liberals. And there definitely are stark contrasts where certain areas are over saturated with apartments, multifamily homes and apartments vs other towns.
To the extent that I recognize this is true, "decommodification of housing" and "attack their wealth" eventually becomes the same problem.
