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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."
"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:57AM (4 children)
And a 1% tax on your total assets, with maybe an exemption for your primary residence.
1% is a reasonable fee to pay to society for respecting and protecting your assets, and is neither debilitating nor onerous. It is not difficult to invest your hoarded capital to produce a return exceeding 1%.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:32PM (2 children)
Sounds okay to me. Although I think if your primary residence has a high value, say in the top 40% of value range for all of the homes in your state, it shouldn't be exempt. Clearly you're stashing value there (or in the land itself) instead of in the rest of your net worth, considerably more so than the average person has the ability to do so. If your land is used otherwise, such as a farm, then it should be taxed that way except the part your home is actually sitting on up to perhaps 100x100 feet (just handwaving there.) When municipalities allow land values to get so far out of hand (like some Cali cities, and others similar), it's probably time to live somewhere else anyway. Unless you like paying absurd amounts for the same land and structure you could have much less expensively somewhere else, of course. The view, the stores, the job, whatever. Me, I won't play that. I think it's outright dumb.
Loopholes for big spenders are bad, IMHO. They always turn into escape hatches.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)
There are two main reasons for the home exemption;
1/ old people on low incomes. If you've lived in your little house in the same area for the past 40 years, paid off your house and then retired, it is not fair to suddenly hit you with a huge tax bill just because the area got popular.
2/ increase the rate of home ownership. Exempting the home would tend to decrease the cost of owning relative to renting. Higher rates of home ownership come with many societal benefits.
Also, I'm not sure about the US, but in AU we have 'Council Rates' which are basically a local government tax on real estate. It's usually between 0.1% and 1% and is the main source of income for local councils. Hitting the home again would be double-dipping. However, you could always put a limit on it. Maybe the first million dollars of home value is untaxed.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday November 02 2018, @01:59AM
1/ Keeping in mind we're speaking of proposed mechanisms: a home's taxes should only change via external evaluation with actual improvements, and/or the cost of related infrastructure. New city water pipes, repair of your particular street, that sort of thing. So then it's fair to make changes, as long as they're proportional. The current system (in the USA, don't know about your country) is ridiculous; first they pretend the home has a totally fictional new value they invent that has nothing to do with its actual value, though you're neither selling it or taking out a loan on it; then they assess taxes on this utterly imaginary value they cooked up. They keep upping this imaginary value, when in actuality, the home is aging, costing more to maintain, and is decreasing in value precisely as a car does as it is used and it ages. The root of the problem, of course, is the ridiculous inflation behind the whole mess. I don't think it should be legal. You pay X for a house and property, it should never be assessed for more than you paid unless you actually improve the house and/or the property. Which, frankly, most people do not manage to do. You sell it for more to someone, fine, tax that transaction, and then tax THEM at that rate, because that's the value of the home (again, keeping in mind that the actual value will decrease after that, again.)
2/ You mean bank ownership. How many people can actually afford to buy a home? What they actually do is have the bank buy the home, able to take it at any violation of the loan terms (and sometimes, just "because") and then, if they're really, really diligent, 30 years later they can actually own the home. Except the tax people and the courts can still take it. That's how it works in the USA. "Ownership" of a home is about 99% illusory here. In any case, if home values weren't so ridiculously inflated, this would not be a problem in the first place.
Here in the US, if the tax authorities were only double-dipping, it would be a huge relief to the taxpayers. :/
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:36PM
Asset tax is unlikely to be looked upon favorably. Nor would it be an appropriate use of government power.
The Government is a Bird