@newt @kaia @eal Yeah, slightly higher than even Germany. However they actually seem to do shit with it mostly properly (not talking about current right-wingers), the infrastructure is good etc.
That's better than, for example, in countries with lower taxes but absolute garbage living conditions like the US. Or, well, Germany with high taxes and 20th-century infrastructure rotting away.
@newt @kaia @eal I have a strong suspicion that's not the sole reason for expensive property, given it's that way almost anywhere including countries with little to no regulation or taxes.
Also please, I'm from Germany, sharing a too-tiny apartment with a friend so she ain't on the street, living off of too little money that's doomed to be reduced or cut in the future because fuck the poor I guess, with rotting public transport. Tell me more about how awful your country is. 🍿
Currently I live in a much better place, having an almost 80sqm place to myself and myself only while paying a lot less taxes than I would in the Netherlands.
The principle of supply and demand in the presence of taxes and government regulation (which is effectively another form of tax) is very simple: if you tax something, you get less of it. The reason you get so little money is because most of it is taken away by your government in the form of taxes, either direct (income taxes, VAT) or indirect (fuel tariffs, import tariffs, various licences and certifications, etc). If you want to have more money, tax evasion is a skill that can be learned.
@newt @kaia @eal Again, taxes ain't the main problem at play with the borked housing market. You can have no taxes and regulations and the people are still fucked (indeed they get exceptionally well fucked in that case).
I don't want to pretend to understand economics like an expert, but given the situation in different countries it's pretty clear we have a more deeply rooted structural problem. Reducing taxes would be like increasing fuel flow to a broken engine.
@newt @kaia @eal Oh god, are you talking about anarcho-capitalism? In that case I've no interest in this discussion. We see what happens both in libertarian hellscapes like the US as well as authoritarian trashterrain like China or Russia. Poor people and communities get fucked over in both of these extremes.
I won't entertain the dead-end argument that, as long as there hasn't been a "true" free market or "true" communism or whatever, one couldn't argue against it. That's just stupid.
>We see what happens both in libertarian hellscapes like the US as well as authoritarian trashterrain like China or Russia. Poor people and communities get fucked over in both of these extremes.
All three of those countries have heavily regulated housing markets. The US is no more libertarian than Germany, for that matter.
@newt @kaia @Natanox @eal
Russia is particularly fucked in this regard, it has both: high tax rates and government sponsored mortgage (again at taxpayers' expense) that only prevents the market balancing keeps the prices high.
I expect this pyramid scheme that they've conceived only to rescue the property developers and pretent that the economy is still going strong, to be one of the main reasons for the economy to crash in the near future, but we'll see…
