Comment by potato3732842 4 days ago
When everyone gets sick of it and votes for punitive taxes on residential property that is not owner occupied.
I would prefer they deregulate the living shit out of constructing additional housing so all the small money can get into that (i.e. something productive instead of literal rent seeking) instead but I am not hopeful.
I am not nearly as hopeful as you.
First, states like RI are already making incremental steps toward it (they have started taxing non owner occupied non rented properties above a threshold, mainly to get the billionares with fancy waterfront vacation real estate to either live in the places or rent them out). It's only a matter of moving that stuff down the economic ladder.
Second, all the "people oughta hang for this" quality legal precedent that enables. If you own a parcel and the government passes a bunch of laws saying you can't do things to the parcel going forward without jumping through economic non-starter sized hoops is that not a taking? They're basically forcing you to sell out to a developer big enough to jump through the hoops like in that supreme court case, only instead of a named developer it's basically a class of developers. And that's considered "not a taking". Straight up taxation is even less of a taking by comparison.
I'd be much more in favor of the taxation if it weren't for all the laws preventing small time land owners and speculators from developing on a scale and budget that befits them but if new punitive taxes get passed without rolling back all sorts of other regulation it's probably very bad for them.
This has happened in places like Scotland but I doubt it'll happen in the US. And if it did, courts would strike the law on the grounds "can't take property".