This is one of the most hated taxes because it is based on a hypothetical. If you bought your house in 1970 for $25,000, and you are living on Social Security and a small amount of savings, you may be doubly screwed. On your savings, you get almost zero. But the county thinks you are rich because you could now get half a mil for your barely adequate house and go live under a bridge. So we paid off our mortgage and now we are renting our house from the county. It makes sense.
Frank T.

And this despite a devalued dollar - can you say currency peg!

RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.

The only reason I left that comment through was because you were going to the top of reddit.

If you see those "share" buttons, you can submit posts to other sites and reddit is a good one. Somebody submitted your post to reddit and it is getting a lot of reads.

but I can try to find something more appropriate for anonymous comments.

said.

Property taxes have a place, but I think that the greatest problem now is that they are used to fund K-12 education. I think that funding should be transferred to the state, and that the economies of scale that come from centralized purchasing and the like should be taken advantage of.

By removing the cost of K-12 education from property tax rolls, you could cut the amount of revenue that must be raised substantially.

The second item would be to make any and all specific tax abatements (like for Walmart, or other big box stores) subject to popular approval in the taxing district. That is if it's a county tax, make the people seeking an abatement collect signed statements agreeing to the abatement from 75% of registered voters in the district.

Third, we need to expand homestead and "shelter" credits that exempt a portion of the value of a home from taxation.
Set it at 50% of the median value of home in the metro area (or county, whichever is larger), and voila the tax burden for people living in modest homes drops like a stone.

Finally, perhaps rental property owners should be given a choice. Have the value of property taxed as usual, or have rent subject to a profit tax, and comply with voluntary standards designed to make sure that rental properties are energy efficient and sanitary. That would eliminate alot of the blowback of property taxes on renters.

Sorry not to respond to your sooner, but I was busy.

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I did not say I was against reserve currency status.

I said that it is not obvious that if the US lost reserve status that it would, in the long run, necessarily constitute any profound negative economic consequences. It is a fact that we see countries like China, India, Brazil, etc. that are vigorously growing without having a reserve currency status.

You say that there is a problem with China ‘pegging’ its currency and having negative consequences for the US. So there you have it. Evidence that whatever advantage reserve status has can be circumvented by an economy without reserve status, and that reserve status is not a necessary condition for a robust growing economy.

Also, the US economy is virtually on Federal gov’t life supports – it’s falling apart. So again more evidence that reserves status is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for a growing economy.

So again, the question is:

Why would it not be possible the US to be a vigorous growing economy if it lost its reserve currency status – in the long run?

Might put in there % of GDP and I believe Ralph Gomory, if I can dig that out, it might be in one of his talks, or someone has shown that manufacturing also spawns quite a bit of advanced R&D, so it has affects in other sectors not quite counted as manufacturing.

The problem with China is Chinese currency, not U.S. currency. They peg, that means they do not let it change, to the dollar, all for the purposes of having an unfair trade advantage.

Think of Argentina, Thailand, S. Korea and think about a currency collapse and then the U.S. not being a reserve currency.

We'd be in a much worse mess today.

I suggest reading about reserve currency and what kind of global advantages it gives.

I have no idea why you would be against it...

after all, China is trying to get the U.S. dollar removed as the world's currency at which point we're in huge trouble.

The graphs minimizes the damage done by property taxes to the working poor.

Many working poor rent and at least a third of their rent can go to pay the landlord's property taxes. Probably more working poor rent than "own" their homes. This property tax burden is not shown in your stats.

Plus, property taxes are taxes on a basic right of life, a place to live. A home can be bought and paid for with a lifetime of work except for the ever increasing property taxes which must be payed to the state,year after year, over and over again.

Property taxes are the most regressive of all taxes for they totally ignore the income or the inability of the taxpayer to pay. Sales taxes which are also regressive have exemptions for food and prescription meds in most places, yet your home is held hostage with a yearly payment of property taxes to the state, regardless if you are sick, unemployed, or disabled.

In todays economy, many of the working poor are no longer working. When they cant pay their property taxes, greedy vultures will descend on the tax auctions and buy their life's work for pennies on the dollar.

Any true progressive who is concerned with economic justice and affordable housing should work to reform the property tax system so at least there is an income standard or a means test for homestead property taxes.

This injustice has become especially acute with the real estate bubble running up property values and taxes and those taxes not falling back with the following crash in market values. Combine that with high unemployment and you have abusive property taxes that are grinding people down.

debt would cost way more to service, the U.S. for oil, commodities a host of international purchases, esp. raw materials, commodities would pay much more, due to needing to exchange to a new reserve currency, we could not obtain as much in loans, set prices....

Suddenly all of the other nations holding dollars...as a reserve currency might flood the market with them, for they no longer need them for international finance...

I've written on this many times but there are huge financial advantages to being a reserve currency.

It would possibly spiral the U.S. straight into the 3rd world economically.