<story><title>SF’s Housing Crisis Explained</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>selmnoo</author><text>Very interesting, that Piketty&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Capital in the 21st Century&amp;quot; is introduced in this article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;A lot of other VCs and founders are also digesting Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the 21st Century.” With more than 200 years of data, it chronicles an inexorable rise in inequality that was punctuated in the middle of the 20th century by the Great Depression and World War II followed by 30 years of evenly-spread prosperity. Ultimately, it advocates a globally-coordinated tax on wealth.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know that it&amp;#x27;s taboo on HN to get overly political, but I think because of Piketty&amp;#x27;s work we should talk about it (particularly, &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; Piketty&amp;#x27;s new piece is so groundbreaking [1] and incredibly well-backed with data). What do you guys think of his &amp;quot;global wealth tax&amp;quot; -- tax on capital (including real property), in the context of the new SV riches?&lt;p&gt;[1]: The book is being received as &amp;quot;the most important economiscs text of the decade&amp;quot; by a lot of high-placed economists, etc.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century#Reception&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Cen...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>apsec112</author><text>&amp;quot;&amp;quot;How can you dismiss socialism so casually?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ve thought a lot about this, actually; it was not a casual remark. I think the fundamental question is not whether the government pays for schools or medicine, but whether you allow people to get rich.&lt;p&gt;In England in the 1970s, the top income tax rate was 98%. That&amp;#x27;s what the Beatles&amp;#x27; song &amp;quot;Tax Man&amp;quot; is referring to when they say &amp;quot;one for you, nineteen for me.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Any country that makes this choice ends up losing net, because new technology tends to be developed by people trying to make their fortunes. It&amp;#x27;s too much work for anyone to do for ordinary wages. Smart people might work on sexy projects like fighter planes and space rockets for ordinary wages, but semiconductors or light bulbs or the plumbing of e-commerce probably have to be developed by entrepreneurs. Life in the Soviet Union would have been even poorer if they hadn&amp;#x27;t had American technologies to copy.&lt;p&gt;Finland is sometimes given as an example of a prosperous socialist country, but apparently the combined top tax rate is 55%, only 5% higher than in California. So if they seem that much more socialist than the US, it is probably simply because they don&amp;#x27;t spend so much on their military.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://paulgraham.com/resay.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;paulgraham.com&amp;#x2F;resay.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;(I know that in the US anything even vaguely leftist gets called &amp;quot;socialism&amp;quot;, but Thomas Piketty, the author, is a genuine strong supporter of the French Socialist Party, and the focus of the book is explicitly on government action to prevent anyone from getting &amp;#x27;too&amp;#x27; rich. I think it&amp;#x27;s a fair criticism.)&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To those not familiar with British history, things got &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; bad during the 1970s. Inflation peaked at 27%. The government went bankrupt and had to go &amp;quot;cap-in-hand&amp;quot; to the IMF for a bailout. Garbage piled up in the streets because the sanitation workers were on strike. &lt;i&gt;Bodies&lt;/i&gt; piled up because the &lt;i&gt;gravediggers&lt;/i&gt; were on strike... (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Winter_of_Discontent&lt;/a&gt;). I don&amp;#x27;t want to get into an argument about Thatcher, but everyone at all familiar with the history agrees that the country was in a mess.</text></comment>
<story><title>SF’s Housing Crisis Explained</title><url>http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>selmnoo</author><text>Very interesting, that Piketty&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;Capital in the 21st Century&amp;quot; is introduced in this article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;A lot of other VCs and founders are also digesting Thomas Piketty’s new book, “Capital in the 21st Century.” With more than 200 years of data, it chronicles an inexorable rise in inequality that was punctuated in the middle of the 20th century by the Great Depression and World War II followed by 30 years of evenly-spread prosperity. Ultimately, it advocates a globally-coordinated tax on wealth.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know that it&amp;#x27;s taboo on HN to get overly political, but I think because of Piketty&amp;#x27;s work we should talk about it (particularly, &lt;i&gt;because&lt;/i&gt; Piketty&amp;#x27;s new piece is so groundbreaking [1] and incredibly well-backed with data). What do you guys think of his &amp;quot;global wealth tax&amp;quot; -- tax on capital (including real property), in the context of the new SV riches?&lt;p&gt;[1]: The book is being received as &amp;quot;the most important economiscs text of the decade&amp;quot; by a lot of high-placed economists, etc.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century#Reception&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Cen...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ericd</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t like the idea of a tax on wealth - it seems like it would discourage savings, as you have to use it or lose it. If I save up a nest egg, my tax bill shouldn&amp;#x27;t increase as my nest egg increases, eventually reaching an equilibrium where I have to keep working just to keep my savings constant. Much better would be a much higher top marginal tax rate like the one we had pre-Reagan, and including investment gains in that.</text></comment>