Yes but it assumes the whole thing. Just because someone is willing to buy a chunk for X doesn't mean there are enough buyers for all chunks at this price.

> You made money before taking the loan, as your property increased in value. Taking a loan is a way of realizing the profit, but you can of course also sell your real estate.

That's incorrect on both counts. You did not make money and the loan is not a way to realize the profit since you have to pay it back, as explained before.

I think this illustrates that finance and accounting are very poorly understood topic and are easily used for sensationalism.

If your mortgaged house depreciates while you are still paying off the mortgage, you still need to pay the original, un-depreciated amount. You'll also probably need to pay interest accumulated during the time the property was mortgaged, which means you can't use it to avoid inflation.

What lender do you know of who will voluntarily reduce your mortgage obligation if the property depreciates?

The problem is that the government is financed by a ponzi scheme based on selling very steep GDP growth, very steep increases in the labor force. In other words, the German government as it functions today is financed by having sold the increased income in labor taxation of the next 10 to 30 years to the banks so they could spend it already. Only ... that income doesn't exist.

The labor force is shrinking (especially if you look at it in terms of how many hours of labor are performed, irrespective of who does it, or when). In other words, the German government has sold the labors of Germans for about the next 15-25 years ... and Germans aren't able to actually do the work that has already been sold. Someone is about to get very badly burnt, and so there is a big fight who takes the loss. The government has the guns, doesn't want to pay, in fact they want big companies to keep delivering their goods. So those government guns will be aimed ... at workers. The only ones they can be aimed at without BIG consequences for the people with the guns.

So, now, under current taxation, the government has to more than triple any increases in taxation, which they need to just maintain current services. Once to pay for what the government needs. Once to pay back the principle of the loans they already made. Once to cover the interest on those loans (because 20 years loans on average at about 3%, let's say total interest coast over the length of the loan is about 100%). And on top of that they have to add what they need to pay extra due to labor force shrinking. In other words, elected representatives are going to find that they both have to do A LOT extra in new taxes for any initiatives and even if they raise taxes the effect of that will not nearly be what they expect.

And taxation on labor is already essentially 50%, so obviously percentage increases are going to be incredibly unpopular. Plus there's the additional difficulty that the problem is not money. It is that the very real assets behind money (ie. work, performed by a human) are becoming scarcer, while the drain on those resources (the welfare state, ie. old people) is increasing.

For the next 20 years, minimum (the time it takes to go from newborn to productive citizen), the government has to shrink the services they provide, at least in terms of labor. And since people aren't about to have another baby boom, it's going to be longer. Oh, and I would much appreciate if the German government managed to do this without putting the Nazis back in power.

And this is a worldwide phenomenon, modified by immigration and modified by a few years depending on the exact country, so you can bet your firstborn quite a few parties are going to get elected on the message "we'll just steal it from our neighbors militarily", like the Palestinians are doing. But this approach is on the cusp of becoming really, really popular worldwide. So it's not really that Trump is causing 100 wars worldwide, it's having a totally unsustainable system: either people need to be accept a lot less than they currently have, or they can go to war and make it FAR worse. Needless to say, it is a certainty they'll want to go to war.

And btw, as I pointed out, this is not a money problem. It is a problem of labor resources. It is about the amount of labor, not the division. So every system has the same problem: nothing can be solved by switching from/to capitalism, socialism, fascism, communism, ... as no system is able to create labor, only redivide who labors and who gets the rewards. None of these systems increase the amount of labor and so the welfare state is doomed under every system.

TLDR: the government has to spend about 50% less per 20 years. Not in terms of money, but in terms of actual people working for government (including hospitals, schools, eldery homes, ...). 50% of government jobs have to disappear for every 20 years this lasts, and at least once.

You would think this would make the government invest a massive amount in AI and robotics, anything required, in the last years they can maintain spending without extreme pain. But, of course, nothing remotely like that is happening.

I find this softer position much more amenable than your GP comment.

However, you conflate "businesses" with "entities that pay only some minimal poll tax". It turns out that progressive tax does not preclude complex society. Corporate tax does not kill business on touch. All you've argued for is the existence of the Laffer Curve.

Commercial activity predates currency, and is omnipresent across every tax system that has ever been tried. Where money, there trade. Where trade, there value-add. Or at the very least, combing the beach for pretty shells.

There are tribes without the concept of personal property or money, that make things and build value. No tax can extinguish human creativity.

I'm cagey about secondary effects, but I'm cautiously optimistic about debasing the trait of self-enrichment. I see no reason to take on faith that people acting out of self-actualisation would build a lesser technology. You know you're on a site full of nerds, right?

The existence of the internet protocols is a case in point.

Conversely, I prefer a world without facebook and robocalls.