this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
674 points (98.3% liked)
Showerthoughts
43640 readers
313 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I agree in principal, but it's impossible to implement it in this manner.
What you can do is establish an "owner-occupant" exemption to future tax hikes, then hike taxes through the fucking roof for everyone else.
Landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert tenants to buyers. They'll be issuing "land contracts" (which strongly favor the tenant/buyer) rather than rental agreements.
You can create a statute to target 85% owner occupancy. Any year the owner occupancy rate is lower than 80%, the property tax rate will be automatically hiked 2% (for non-owner occupied properties only). If the owner-occupancy rate exceeds 90%, the property tax rate is lowered by 1%.
Oh, I like that a lot.
The idea of charging owner-occupants a different tax rate than an investor is fairly common. At least 28 states already have some sort of general "homestead exemption", "second home tax", or similar policy.
The changes that need to happen are 1. the exemption needs to be increased at the same rate that the tax is increased; 2. The exemption and tax rate increases need to be tied to a specifically targeted owner-occupancy rate; 3. Federal and state governments cannot be allowed to overrule local authorities on issues of property tax policies.
It's not a complete cure, but it will convert investors from parasitic landlords to parasitic investors. They're going to keep ripping us off as best they can. But no matter how badly they will be exploiting us, we will be gaining equity in the process. Going from "zero equity" to "any equity whatsoever" is an infinite improvement over the current degree of exploitation in the housing market.