glockenspiel

This doesn't fit the narrative, but a lot of American states have lower effective property tax rates than European nations. There exceptions on both ends of this of course (like TX which is making up for a lack of income taxes).

People should look them up and compare European nations to major us cities and states. Europe ends up with not only higher income taxes, but also higher property taxes overall. And a completely insane financing method like having adjustable rate mortgages being normal, locked only for a period of 3 to 5 years before basically being forced to refinance. Little wonder that property ownership rates are generally so far below american ownership rates.

No system is perfect and people with means tend to find every flaw in them (and plant those flaws if they are wealthy enough). But people really need to remember that the grass is always greener because of all the manure.

Either way for California he wouldn't be affected because Californiamnproperty taxes are effectively snapshotted at time of purchase and grandfathered for people like him. If he truly bought or built 50 years ago and ows it outright then prop 13 has long capped what he pays decades ago.

People like him, in California, are subsidized by the modern generation who don't get capped by prop 13. And when he sells that house it's value gets assessed at current market value and full taxes are due from the buyer.

Put shortly, his story is likely bullshit if he's from California. And people without houses and salty about it need to do some research.

The wealthy often have near zero or net negative income. It's one reason why income taxes are optional for them but property taxes ultimately aren't.

No. Capital gains taxes are not taken from your residence.

...does anyone in this thread actually own a residence or at least conduct a basic level of research before forming strong opinions?

No, $40k/yr in property taxes is insane unless your parents own several mansions, even for Texas where the highest property tax rates are around 2.5%. Even if you tack on millages and bonds and other things there's no way it gets near that.

There's a lot of bad takes and clear misinformation from disaffected people in this thread. Stuff like this should be obvious.

That is extremely condescending toward H1B holders. And I'm not a proponent of the program.

Id challenge you to say that statement to an HB colleague and see how they take it.

Are you aware of the history of the state of Israel beyond what affirms a bias? The modern state of Israel was formed after Jews around the world started purchasing land in modern day Israel. 28% of Israel was purchased this way, and that's most of the land the original waves moved to. Arab states surrounding that 28% had a huge issue with Jews existing in that space considering every one of those nations had genocide the Jews from their borders and even aligned with Hitler during WW2 (including the Palestinians, who allied with Hitler and whose leaders were eventually sent into exile by the British for doing so).

So, because the Arab states already had designs on the area of Palestine (they were going to annex once the British left), and they couldn't tolerate Jews existing in the area... The Arab nations attacked. And lost, soundly. And Israel grew much, much larger. Israel seized more land by fighting off a war than anywhere else. That's what happens when countries lose wars of aggression which they start; they lose territory. That's what Ukraine is doing to Russia right now and they'd be foolish to ever give it back.

But sometimes they do give some or all land back. Which Israel did. They gave a lot of the land back in exchange for peace.

There's no perfect entity in the world, and definitely not one in the Middle East. But please, spare us the Boogeyman one sided tales. The Jews fought for Israel so adamantly because they were exterminated from the region long before any fascist rose to power in Germany. They were forced out into diaspora several times, too. It's all complicated and unfair and it isn't as simple as Jews = European and don't belong there.

Palestinians need to bite the bullet. There are generations of people born there now and Arab states are not going to exterminate them again. So a two state solution is what they better seek unless they want to lose it all with their constant aggression. Is it ideal? No. Would it secure an actual state and begin the process of normalization? Maybe. But first they need to purge terrorists from their leadership. And that's the real stickler considering that shit runs deep in many Arab Nation governments. The two are intertwined just like emergency companies are in the west.

Yeah people don't really understand that HOAs are a two way street in most states. Bad HOAs exist because of bad neighbors, neglectful neighbors, or both. All it takes to right a ship is to show up and vote (or fill out the paper absentee ballot...) when the yearly elections happen. And then show up to some meetings so quorum can be met.

My HOA has to reschedule important meetings several times a year because nobody can be bothered to show up for a 30 minute meeting every quarter so quorum is met. Bad HOAs are like bad local unions. They only have power because you let them have power. Lobby your neighbors to do something about it. Unfortunately my experience is such that the typical homeowner who chooses to live in an HOA does so because they want to be rorLly hands off as much as possible. Kind of the opposite of the default pictures people have of obsessive neighbors in HOAs.

Kind of funny. The same folks saying Smith’s prior involvement in uncharged murders shouldn’t be considered in his sentencing are also making summary judgments against commenters based on comment history.

Some folks just really embrace contrarianism as a personality trait I suppose.

I'll take one of each, please.

I don't care what you say, the Apple store circa 2001 is iconic and definitely has that "lickability" factor that Jobs loved so much about the original OS X's Aqua UI.

When did code reviews become this weird?