Sunday, February 04, 2007

Finance 101

When your property appreciates in value, its a good thing. You are better off than before. Sure, you will have to pay taxes on your gain, but you end up better off than before.

On the other hand, when property values go up, those people who don't own property are left behind, they didn't make any money off of the price increase and will have to pay more to buy property or for rent.

Why is it that so many many people in HoCo think the winners need help the most, rather than those who were less fortunate?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The winners are only those who sell and move somewhere else, to a location where property values are much lower.

My property has appreciated tremendously, but I don't benefit until it's sold. I get nothing now, except the same thing I had prior to the escalation.

However, my cash-flow-out is higher because the taxes are much higher.

Seems to me that people who are here, with increasing property values are loosers as well (unless they sell and move to a cheaper location)

Anonymous said...

No one is arguing that increased property values affect people of all incomes, with those best off able to weather the storm with nary a thought and those least well off yet again subjected to crises.

If many many people here believe the winnners need help the most, I believe there are far more people who think anyone put in a true crisis should have a benevolent community's help.

My impression is you keep painting this issue as the law, instead of being reformed, should be repealed outright, throwing the baby (the good it does for those really put in a pickle) out with the bathwater (the giveaway the law also errantly gives to those who have ample means to incur increased taxes).

Taking such a tack to an extreme, should only people of the least means have access to other facets of our community's largess, such as police and fire protection? Certainly rich folk can afford their own.

Are you amenable to reforming this law to still provide a safety net to those who members of our community truly pushed beyond their means by these dramatically increased taxes or are you ok with some people being pushed out of their homes?

I still wish the overall discussion took a far wider view, that being does the County really need such a windfall in tax revenue? Where is all this money being shaked out of all of our pockets going? Paying attention to that more could benefit everyone.

Anonymous said...

I agree.

Can we talk about why all this additional money is required?

The knee-jerk answer is that increasing population requires increased services. However, I'd argue that there is a fixed component as well as variable, based on population.