This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Notes -
Non-residents can't vote in municipal elections; native residents have, in essence, already paid the tax by virtue of having a house, since the cost of new construction being artificially raised by that tax in turn raises the value of your home. Which also effectively raises property tax revenue without having to suffer the optics of having to raise the rate (and might even allow the city to lower it, which residents will remember for a long time).
Of course, that's also a massive tax increase against the children of Boomers, since especially with life extension that generation won't be able to inherit the house until they're in their 50s or 60s (women have hit menopause by that point). Obviously the solution is to raise taxes on existing residents, but a democracy that does this won't survive past the next election even if a significant minority agree that fixing the taxes is badly needed.
(Honestly, COVID responses were this dynamic compressed into the span of 2 weeks: people over 60 are scared of the flu, so they impose a 20% inflation to have a 0.001% less chance of dying of it that affects liquid assets, but not solid ones, like land. So prices jump up yet again.)
But why fix the problem for the people living in the country already (who aren't getting rich) if we can just import people who are already OK with living in conditions/environments far better than their home country? It's all in service of this fucking bubble; I wonder if we've passed the South Sea Company in its scope yet?
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