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0 pointscolinmhayes4y ago0 comments

The upper middle class is largely defined by having a large amount of their wealth in their single family home. They would absolutely be crushed by a LVT, since discouraging single family homes on expensive land is pretty much the whole point. Hurting the people with the most political power is not a successful political strategy.

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5 comments · 2 top-level

onlyrealcuzzo4y ago· 3 in thread

Sure - if that's how you define upper middle class - then by definition, it is true.

I'm not sure that's actually what the upper middle class is.

The US is >50% urban. Wealth MASSIVELY skews urban. Home values massively skew urban.

I would not be surprised if >50% of the "upper middle class" does not own an expensive SFH in the suburbs.

And, again, this is beside the point.

If income tax is reduced by 50% for the average upper middle class family, and then a LVT makes up the difference - there is no change. You're just incentivizing different behaviors.

It comes down to implementation.

colinmhayesOP4y ago

> US is >50% urban

Source? My understanding is that most Americans live in suburban areas. I live in Chicago, where the suburbs have 3x as many people as the city. The city population is largely split between the poorest in the region and richest, most white collar workers live in the suburbs. Seems to be true to a lesser extent in NYC, and it's hard to say there's any urban area in LA, the whole place is suburban.

jjav4y ago

> > US is >50% urban

> Source? My understanding is that most Americans live in suburban areas.

One variable is that it really depends on the definition of "suburb" each person is using.

Take the greater Silicon Valley area. There's only three small urban cores, San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. Even within those, a lot of the area is suburbs and even semi-rural and agricultural. So by that viewpoint, most of Silicon Valley is suburbs.

onlyrealcuzzo4y ago

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/07/29/prior-t...

If you count places like Evanston, Yonkers, and Pasadena as Urban - then you get ~56% urban. If you pretty much only count places where the vast majority of buildings are multifamily - then you only get ~30%.

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yellowapple4y ago

The upper middle class is also tiny compared to the rest of the middle class (let alone the lower) who are decreasingly able to afford a home at all and would only benefit from LVT, especially if paired with UBI.

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