DC Council votes to raise taxes on the “rich”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Charles Allen makes it sound like this proposal will end homelessness. Please every ward 6 voter remember to check in next year and see how that worked out. I guarantee this will have almost no impact on homelessness.

As every liberal big city reveals, the more money they shovel and homelessness, the more homeless people there are. Maybe cities should stop making it so easy for homelesss people to live in the city without a home?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charles Allen makes it sound like this proposal will end homelessness. Please every ward 6 voter remember to check in next year and see how that worked out. I guarantee this will have almost no impact on homelessness.

As every liberal big city reveals, the more money they shovel and homelessness, the more homeless people there are. Maybe cities should stop making it so easy for homelesss people to live in the city without a home?

This is true. Any genuinely effective approach at tackling the homelessness problem would have to happen at a national level. If a city offers more benefits to homeless people, all that will do is attract more homeless people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charles Allen makes it sound like this proposal will end homelessness. Please every ward 6 voter remember to check in next year and see how that worked out. I guarantee this will have almost no impact on homelessness.

As every liberal big city reveals, the more money they shovel and homelessness, the more homeless people there are. Maybe cities should stop making it so easy for homelesss people to live in the city without a home?

Absolutely right. It's like Charles Allen and everyone else on the city council has learned nothing from San Francisco. Do they think hmm maybe lets check in on the results for other cities implementing similar policies (easy on crime, lots of incentives) and of course not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charles Allen makes it sound like this proposal will end homelessness. Please every ward 6 voter remember to check in next year and see how that worked out. I guarantee this will have almost no impact on homelessness.

As every liberal big city reveals, the more money they shovel and homelessness, the more homeless people there are. Maybe cities should stop making it so easy for homelesss people to live in the city without a home?

It would be helpful if social services were restored to pre-Reagan levels.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there really no tuition exhange/in state agreement for DC residents with any schools in MD or VA? I grew up in NY, which has a good state system, and there were certain schools near the border in NY and PA where students could apply from the other state and pay in state rates. Hard to imagine that DC has nothing with any of the schools right outside.

You don’t even have to imagine it because it’s true.

[Anonymous]

Doesn’t go nearly far enough. The income threshold is far too low, and the increase is pathetically inadequate.

It should kick in at $150k for singles, and $225k for couples filing jointly. And it should be a minimum of $6k/yr to start, and scale up rapidly from there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t go nearly far enough. The income threshold is far too low, and the increase is pathetically inadequate.

It should kick in at $150k for singles, and $225k for couples filing jointly. And it should be a minimum of $6k/yr to start, and scale up rapidly from there.

This. OP is just like everyone else who pretends to be a liberal until it affects them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That’s how the WaPo headline writer phrased it.

I’m a DC resident, so obviously I’m not a “low tax” anti-public service zealot, or we’d live elsewhere. I like cities. I like public services. I support taxes and redistribution.

However, with the Trump tax change having eliminated deductibility of SALT, I do believe this is terrible policy.

For my family, we love DC and have many reasons to be here. But with each passing year of paying among the nation’s highest SALTs and not getting a deduction on our fed taxes, we will find it harder and harder to justify living in the District, vs. following the trend of NY’ers who have moved in shocking numbers to FL (sorry, but yuck) or NH… or Austin(?).

This is a major topic of (hard) conversations, among friends, and among the senior mgt of some of the professional service firm employers in the city (where employees/partners are agitating to move to lower tax jurisdictions). We want to stay, but will the city leaders understand that, depending on your fed tax bracket, we’ve all already experienced what is effectively a 50-67% increase in the true cost of our DC income taxes at the current tax rates?

All this by way of saying, the DC Council has their head in the sand about this issue impacting the relative attractiveness and competitiveness of DC in a new era of non-deductibility of SALT. Will be interesting to see if the Mayor does as well.

I suspect this post will get some pushback, but if we want our city to be attractive and competitive vs alternatives, we’d be better off having a city government that was a bit wiser to “state” of things.

It did not "eliminate it" It set a maximum of $10,000 per year which it is an issue for high tax states like NY and NJ.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/28/state-and-local-tax-cap-may-be-here-to-stay-for-the-highest-earners.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Charles Allen makes it sound like this proposal will end homelessness. Please every ward 6 voter remember to check in next year and see how that worked out. I guarantee this will have almost no impact on homelessness.

As every liberal big city reveals, the more money they shovel and homelessness, the more homeless people there are. Maybe cities should stop making it so easy for homelesss people to live in the city without a home?

Maybe the small town America should be dealing with their own homeless rather than shipping them off to the "liberal cities" and then disingenuously talking about those cities' homelessness problems. Many of DC's homeless aren't originally from DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there really no tuition exhange/in state agreement for DC residents with any schools in MD or VA? I grew up in NY, which has a good state system, and there were certain schools near the border in NY and PA where students could apply from the other state and pay in state rates. Hard to imagine that DC has nothing with any of the schools right outside.

You don’t even have to imagine it because it’s true.

College education is not a priority for DC Mayor & Council. Graffiti on a major downtown street is. I am sure that will have as much of a positive impact on DC kids as a college education.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the small town America should be dealing with their own homeless rather than shipping them off to the "liberal cities" and then disingenuously talking about those cities' homelessness problems. Many of DC's homeless aren't originally from DC.

This is a myth.

In general, <10% of the homeless in the major cities in America are from out of the metro area. An even smaller percentage is from out of state.

The majority of homeless are “temporarily” homeless — albeit temporary can be a long time, and I can only imagine how long it feels to the family.

Most homeless are families, with a working mom (sometimes dad) and school aged children.

The “Reagan cut funding to mental health” is mostly a red herring these days, so that liberals in the cities (I’m a liberal, in a city) can justify their NIMBY opposition to housing but still live with themselves.

The solution to homelessness is dramatically more housing in our cities. Not “affordable” housing, just dramatically more supply of housing. If we doubled the supply of housing in DC, the demand would be there to soak it up. Sure, my house value in my leafy Ward 3 neighborhood *might* go down. The horror. But there’s also a chance my children might be able to afford to live in the city. I’ll take that.

Whatever you think of his politics, if you are interested in this topic, Mathew Yglesias is a very thoughtful and grounded-in-the-data writer on this topic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We moved to VA. It wasn’t just the taxes. It was also no school and no good system of public colleges.

This was a missed opportunity on your part. $10,000 discount off of out-of-state tuition at any public college in the entire country? That is a much better option than public school tuition in a single state

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn’t go nearly far enough. The income threshold is far too low, and the increase is pathetically inadequate.

It should kick in at $150k for singles, and $225k for couples filing jointly. And it should be a minimum of $6k/yr to start, and scale up rapidly from there.

This. OP is just like everyone else who pretends to be a liberal until it affects them.

If your HHI is over $225,000, you ARE “the rich”.

Start paying your fair share, greedy bastards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is there really no tuition exhange/in state agreement for DC residents with any schools in MD or VA? I grew up in NY, which has a good state system, and there were certain schools near the border in NY and PA where students could apply from the other state and pay in state rates. Hard to imagine that DC has nothing with any of the schools right outside.

You don’t even have to imagine it because it’s true.

College education is not a priority for DC Mayor & Council. Graffiti on a major downtown street is. I am sure that will have as much of a positive impact on DC kids as a college education.

You are all showing off your ignorance. Students who graduate from a DC high school - any school, public or private - qualify for the DC Tuition Assistance Grant (TAG), which provides $10,000 towards tuition at any public college in the country. This is a great deal for DC students and families.

[Anonymous]

OP is just like everyone else who pretends to be a liberal until it affects them.

This is such a garbage way of interacting. I’m pretending at something? How about we talk about the quality of ideas and thinking and leave the ad hominem attacks out of it. Or is it more important to you that you identify who is properly in your tribe or not?

I want this city to be attractive to top talent and top companies and to be high growth city. I also want the city to massively increase its housing stock and public transit, and not require parking spaces for new construction.

I want these things because there is competition among cities to attract the highest earners, who disproportionately fund public services. I want these things because homelessness is largely solvable.

I don’t really care about whether I satisfy your tribal labeling.

As others have noted, the claims this will do a damn thing for homelessness is contra to all the evidence all across the country. It will have a marginal impact on making the city even less attractive for high growth employers. That, in my view, is bad.

What is it that you are after? How do you want the city to become (even) better?