The Great American Property Tax Freak Out by David Schleicher.

I am not against property taxes, per se, but it does feel very odd that we have to “rent” our own house from the government for ~$800 per month.

There is no way in hell that we are getting $800 in services in return for that. The roads here are terrible. Homeless people wander all over. The government is generally atrocious. I don’t know about the school quality, and I don’t begrudge funding schools at all.

But we get maybe $100 worth of benefit each month and pay eight times that. Sure, we have money, we can pay it. Whatever.

And yes, I understand all the arguments for property taxes, Georgism, etc. The problem is not lack of understanding; it is realizing that you pay vast amounts to a government that seems to do very little. And that’s the same government that could and would kick you out of your home if you stopped forking over.

But in human society those with the most guns make the rules. We can pretty it up but that’s basically how it works.

Like I talked about below, a burger, fries and a slice of pie costing $30 is completely shocking. I remember when fast food used to be cheap.

I just ran some rough numbers and at home I could make four burgers (including all components, condiments, toppings, buns, etc), fries and an entire chocolate creme pie (again, including all ingredients) for about that same price. That is fucking insane.

What kind of world is it when a freakin’ chicken salad sandwich is $20?

It’s California so it’s gonna be expensive, but damn. I can make that at home for what, $2 total? That’s a 10x markup.

All the clown-ass economists are like “vibecession” and “everyone is doing amazing, they are just lying and deluded about economic problems!” Meanwhile, a hamburger at a counter-serve restaurant that cost $8 before the pandemic is now $17.

And I’m fucking rich! So if it bothers me, it’s got to be absolutely brutal on those who are barely making it. Because even if they aren’t buying hamburgers in restaurants, they still are getting hit with those high grocery prices.

And that’s why people report bad economic sentiments.

Eh, that is only really true for mature companies. For start-ups and companies without a large revenue base stock sales absolutely do finance investment and capex. In fact, that’s the whole fucking purpose of them in the first place! Why would you write something this transparently wrong and stupid?

I hate this kind of smug but incorrect (but correct in some situations) clowninshness. We’ve allowed nitwits and pseudointellectuals to dominate all.

I can’t speak for all of Europe, but certainly I feel very rich in the UK in a way I do not feel in the US. A lot of the sceptred isle is obviously shabby and declining. Even London has gone downhill a lot. It felt wealthy indeed (mutatis mutandis my own relative wealth) when I visited in 1989 or 1990. Now it has the atmosphere and sense of disarray befitting a third-tier American city in a lot of ways.

Europe is getting relatively poorer, and in many cases, absolutely poorer. Not all of it, but a whole lot of it. Krugman et al. are just wrong. They want to hold on to the fantasy.