Ask Lemmy

Ass is better then tits unless the tits are great then I can handle a Hank Hill ass.

The Snyder Superman movies were good, actually.

I don't think pineapple belongs on hamburgers either. It tastes okay, but there's so much extra liquid that it's like holding a bun full of soup.

The mass noun 'e-mail', like 'mail', does not get an 's' when speaking about more volume.

It's as gauche as "y'all" in wedding vows, and leaves a similar impression.

Stay tuned, and we can talk about used-car lot jargon like "the ask" and "the spend" next!

My hot take of the month:

Nobody should own land but the government. You should lease it directly from the government. In order to lease land, you should bid for it in an auction based on the monthly amount you will pay the government for it, plus a fixed cost for any buildings already on the property that is set by a government assessor.

The monthly amount should then be regularly updated (probably yearly) based on the value of the property (using effectively the same method for valuation we have for doing property tax assessments already)

If you build a building on land you are leasing, the building is effectively owned by you for the duration you continue to lease it. When you decide not to live there anymore, you don't sell the land or the buildings to anyone though, the government just takes control of them. The government can then assess and auction that property off to a new leaser and then transfers the fixed building assessed amount to the previous owner. The government makes no money off the building components transaction, and therefore has no reason to under or overvalue the amount.

The total amount the government leases ALL land should replace all current Property taxes, Income Taxes, and Sales taxes (remove those three taxes entirely) currently being collected, and then on top of that fund a universal basic income (including a partial amount for kids). This factors into the yearly updates to the pricing.

Business taxes should be re-imagined around this new paradigm, but would require some more thought in order to handle businesses that use zero land (foreign entities) or have a limited footprint in the country.

Renting (from an existing landlord who is leasing the property from the government) still exists, but landlords can no longer make money by just waiting for property values to increase over time. They have to pay the same amount per month as every other land owner based on the same amount of land in the same area. They become essentially just a long-term hotel business where you pay for the convenience of not having to pay upfront for the building or deal with the maintenance.

In terms of a transition over, current owners should be given a monthly number from the government to keep their current property rather than having to go through an auction process. The value of their building can be reimbursed if they move under the new system. Current owners essentially lose the entirety of the value of their land, which for a lot of people would actually be quite significant, especially those who have had the land for a long time, have too much land, or have too much land in a desirable location, or some combination of the above. Condo or other high-density owners, despite "owning" a portion of the land would actually not be impacted very much, since the monthly amounts are scaled on land, not the buildings.

This whole system has some serious benefits for everyone involved (except current owners of signficant land)

First, the removal of private land owners removes the massive drain that real estate is having on our economy. It's mostly non-productive capital sitting there earning money without doing a damn thing, and removing the incentives around investing in it will make it massively property ownership affordable.

Second, the removal of income and sales taxes is a huge economic boost for the population. You work for $20 an hour, you get to keep the vast majority of it (still probably some minor stuff for union dues, employment insurance, etc.) If you choose to spend that renting more housing, great, you're paying into the tax base to make life easier for everyone. If you are happy with a smaller property, then great you are leaving more space for others and get to keep more of your money.

Third, the pricing of land and it's return via a basic income (including kids) will drive people to be more likely to use the correct amount of land. Fuck the Boomers with their 3500 square foot 5-bedroom house on a 10,000 square foot lot in town that they raised 2 kids but that currently only has 2 occupants. Move your ass out to something more reasonable, and make a space available for a family that's raising their kids now.

Tl;dr: Private ownership of land shouldn't exist, burn it to the ground and make things better for everyone by taxing property properly.

Disclosure: I own a home, this would hurt me. I still think it's a good idea because my kids will not be able to afford a home at the current prices, let alone at the prices in 10 years when they start looking, and that's more of a problem than the pain implementing this would cause me.

The Star Wars prequels are still bad movies. The Clone Wars may be good, but it can't fix the problems with those movies.

Also, if those movies can be widely considered rehabilitated when the kids who watched them grow up, then so can the sequels.

My hot take: Thor/PirateSoftware is right about some aspects of Stop Killing Games and the damages it could cause to the games industry. He's wrong about a lot of it because he clearly has still never properly researched SKG and loves to speak before he thinks, but I do tend to agree with his concerns about the business side of things and how studios will be affected.

Hey, yo! I am superior. Against you anyway.