Travis Pahl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in part: >I am actually >baffled that you and Robert are having trouble agreeing that SS is an >income tax regardless of the government classifies it. Or that >government controlling rent is is rent control.
You're baffled because you've forgotten the context. Of course the SS tax falls on a type of income, and rent stabilization is among legal controls on rent amounts. You had asked for evidence about attempts to change policies incrementally vs. suddenly, so we had to give particular examples. The examples being particular, they must reference particular laws. FICA is not the same law as other income tax statutes (although one can pay it via the same set of forms), and rent stabilization is not the same ordinance as rent control, so our answers had to specify. You want specific answers, don't complain about the specificity of the words required. >Or are you proposing that you could have 50% sales tax on apples and >you would call the apple market a free market? Are you saying that the existence of taxation precludes all free markets? Does the existence of any theft preclude the existence of any free market? >Okay. If you want to beleive there is a free market for housing in >NYC, go right ahead. Just expect people to laugh when you mention it >to them in NY. Nobody prevented my landlord & me from negotiating a rental fee. Does that not mean there's a free market for that unit? >I had originally made a comment something along the lines of >'other cities abolished rent control quickly and have enjoyed decades >of free market housing. NYC has tried the incremental approach and is >still stuck with rent control, [which Robert than tried to sidetrack >by saying that there is less rent control and more rent stabilized >apartments now No, I said there were fewer units subject to rent control AND FEWER subject to rent stabiliz'n TOO. > as if it really matters since they are still forms of >government controlling rent. See? You're not paying att'n. You made up in your head this idea that I was drawing a distinction between the two for the purpose above, and I wasn't! However, it is true that rent stabiliz'n is less severe than rent control, so if all that happened were a transition from one to the other, that too would be an advance. > Also up to this point it is all in the >past and is all true] and eventually NYC will never allow rent control >to go away with this half ass incremental plan because it has kept >prices high through rent control and people think it is due to the >free market and are thus scared to let go of rent control." the last >part is the prediction on the future that I have made from my nearly 4 >years living there (which ended less than a year ago). Then you're basing your analysis on too short an observation. The incremental strategy of divide & conquer has worked. At one time rent control was the norm, and tenants were in solidarity against landlords. But now, unregulated tenants see regulated tenants as having an undeserved privilege, so unregulated tenants have joined the landlords' side. >it is similar to the 'deregulation' of the power industry in >California. people there are now opposed to deregulation so much more >than they were a decade ago because of what happened a few years ago. >What happened a few years ago was the result primarily of government >regulations but people associate it with DEregulation. That's not a failure of incrementalism per se, but of the wrong KIND of deregul'n. It could've been done incrementally and right. Telephone deregul'n, while not perfect (and initiated judicially rather than statutorily), shows a better incremental approach. In Your Sly Tribe, Robert _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
