hadrian82

Because then the government doesn't own your land and can't take it from you when you don't pay them off. Property "tax" is their way of forcing you into agreeing that they own your land and they sell it as giving you better schools in the area or some crap. And if people feel they REALLY own something and it can't be taken away from them then they will fight for it. We can't have people fighting for their land when the government comes to auction their house off to the highest bidder.

We have been moving more and more toward a Capitalist Communism where the government owns everything and you are merely renting from them (this is just straight up how it is in China, they don't even pretend), but we still sell it as Capitalism because businesses aren't owned by the government.

This is not the way life should be and all property taxes (i.e. government owned property rentals) should be outlawed.

Yeah because who wants to keep the equity they build up while building the house and making it nice. As soon as it's paid off, let's take out a loan against it! That's the answer! "Tap" into the equity my ass, that line of thinking is the problem and why we are constantly over-spending as a civilization.

Property taxes means the government owns both your land and anything you have on it and you are merely renting from them. This is not OK in my opinion, and I believe all property taxes should be abolished as it requires people to continue paying rent to the government forever. My dad had to step in to prevent my 85 year old grandmother from being evicted and having her house auctioned off due to years of overdue property tax because (shocker) she didn't have any money. So let's evict this little old woman we should be taking care of and make them burdens on their families because her breadwinner spouse died years earlier and she couldn't afford to continue paying rent to the government who did nothing but bleed money from her and her husband their whole lives. Really considerate of us as a society. Luckily she had family to pick her up. What if she didn't.

I'm sorry but the government has done fuck all to make my land better other than be a pain in my ass when I want to make it better and force me to pay them in order to do any construction ON MY OWN.

I am not sure I agree it is a symptom of something wrong. Merit has been the major factor in these decisions which is why Jews and Asians have been so overly represented with respect to their population size. This is how things should be in terms of who to let in, and there is significant evidence that these immutable characteristics DO have a bearing on the quality of the candidate.

However, we should NEVER consider these characteristics. Instead we should considered the merit of the candidate. I don't care if my surgeon is an African refugee who escaped a crazed warlord and has an incredible story. I care that they are one of the best possible people in the world to be performing this surgery because not everyone is equipped to perform it and I don't want to die because they aren't able to handle this position.

My bias is towards letting the cream rise. I don't care what color my surgeon is or what is/isn't between their legs. I want the surgeon who got in based on merit alone and is one of the best people in the world for this job. I don't want a diversity candidate who barely got by and got passed along by people who were afraid to be labeled racist because of PC culture.

Immutable traits should never be considered, only merit.

They lead off saying all of the buzz words about diversity which always rings hollow with me personally, and this decision is based on increasing diversity according to them.

Honest question: why should diversity (as they use it) ever be a goal? Immutable characteristics of a person should not be a consideration in any application to life unless the application is explicitly for that (tall people in basketball for instance). Meritocracy should be the paramount consideration in all things, and possibly a small consideration of diversity of ideas and beliefs, but not diversity of skin color or genitalia.

If all of the most brilliant astrophysicist minds in the world happen to be Japanese women, why shouldn't they be preferred over all others in getting into prestigious colleges to study astrophysics? Why do we care if we have a certain number of European males in that situation? The right answer is that we don't care how many European males enter that field (which is true today but for different reasons that I am not trying to get into).