Roody

I bet the moneyfree guy is a hell of a lot healthier than the average American.

patc

Not always. Typical scenario here: retired couple, lived in the same house for decades, limited income. Thanks to new development, the house went from "cheap, ok part of town" to "yowsers, hot market area". Property value doubles... and we get retired home-owners visiting food banks because of their high property tax bills.

Roody

That's a good point. Unfortunately, the areas with high increases in assessed value seem to be the areas that are best for carfree living.

patc

Yup. The downside to "urban renewal". We need a better system for property values than using current estimated market value. The alternative I am aware of all have problems, though.

becnal

The book called "Possum Living" is what first got me interested in this topic. https://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm

iltb-2

What makes you think so?

mike

Sometimes he was healthier and sometimes not. During his strictest no-money years, I think he was not so healthy. He was extremely thin and did not have the strength or stamina of the rest of us fellows.

I was always concerned that he lived on the brink of disaster not having access to medical care or regular medical checks and maintanance. As we all know, diseases like cancer can be overcome easiest when found early. In many ways, he was lucky that nothing went terribly wrong during his money-free days.

I think that his ability to live money-free had a lot to do with the generosity of the community. He was not a moocher, but he lived rent free by helping out at the local shelter. I would buy him boots when he needed them. Other things were given to him also. He never asked, but people liked him so they would volunteer things to him. He rode a bicycle year round, but when the snow or rain was flying, he never turned down a ride in a car.

Living truly money-free is a really tough gig. The only way you can pull it off successfully is to have a good amount of luck to keep you from the perils of ill-health or some other disaster - same as it ever was for the poor.

mike

You said it, patc. This is a trajic truth in America today. We see retired people here losing their homes all the time due to increased property taxes. A couple works hard their whole lives to pay for their home and save for retirement. They plan for expenses through their retirement years, but have no way of predicting the pace of inflation or the hyper-pace of taxation.

My property taxes quadrupled in ten years for the same property. That is an increase of thousands of dollars in less time than most people keep an automobile. I don't know how someone living off of savings or a fixed income could ever keep up with that kind of tax-flation.

roseskunk

interesting read, interesting comments not only here but in the original article. it's surprising how many people get really upset reading about someone who follows a different path. i wonder if henry thoreau would be lynched if he tried his little experiment today. kind of sad really.

DynamicD74

I'm so jealous of you living in Lawrence! Lawrence is a great town! I'm originally from KC, and used to love to drive to Lawrence and walk down Mass Street. Teller's restaurant was fun, as well. I loved the novelty of it being one of the old banks downtown.

Curious LeTour

Thank you for posting this thread.

I must admit that I'm very interested in living a lifestyle similiar to Tim's way of life. Yes, I am a liberal that is concerned about environmental issues, and some social issues. Yet, my strongest motive is to be self employed and working with nature. So, I'm interested in subsistence living to some extent. I can't help but wonder if Tim read The One Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka.

Currently, I'm saving the money to purchase the land. I'm going to either pay cash for it, or pay it off within a year. I'm very fortunate to be able to save quite of extra money at this time in my life due to my income, being single, and having no children. I'm paying the price for this income by working away from home, and working many hours. This is a decision that I made specifically to reach my goals. It is only for a season in my life.

While thinking about my future financial situation I grapple with whether or not to purchase a "major medical" type health insurance policy. I don't like pharma drugs for longterm care. For that I prefer other alternatives, but for emergency healthcare I'll take a drug if necessary. I also grapple with whether or not to have a cell phone, as I currently do. I've pretty much decided that I'd like to have a small amount of solar panels for charging items (beard trimmer/laptop/electric assist bike maybe), but probably not for lighting.

As for property Taxes, in the state of Texas, where I'll likely purchase the land, over 10 acres can be claimed as Ag use if it is used as such. This lowers the amount of money due. The lot which the house is built on will have to be taxed at residential rates, but being made out of dirt (cob) and having no plumbing or electricity will hopefully keep the appraisals down drastically.

I believe that I will have to have an annual income that is higher than Tim's, specifically for Taxes, Major Medical insurance (possibly), travels to my hometown, and miscelaneous expenses, but I believe that I can make it on just a few thousand a year. I will have to sell more from my farm. I'm confident that peppers and a couple of cullinary herbs will do well. Goats milk would also be a big seller. Becoming Organically certified would also pe a possitive benefit for income.

I'm also in favor of the national sales tax type system. Yes, I do identify with anarcho primitivist ideals, but truthfully I believe that some compromise with technology would be best (specifically in healthcare, and maybe communications, otherwise I can do without).

FXjohn

not to mentionb the fawning dolts who DRIVE to his farm to harvest.

Hocam

So how do you value land?

Doug5150

Well, the way I would do it is this: for whatever level of government you're talking about (city/county/state/federal) divide the total current government budget by total sq-ft land area under that government's domain, and then that's the tax-per-square-foot.

The more exceptions you allow, the more the exceptions get abused until you need a ******** CPA to do your taxes who "knows all the tricks"--so, keep it simple and fair, give no exceptions to the tax rate--either upwards or downwards.

You'd still have to pay multiple taxes, because the city you live in would have their tax rate, the county you're in would have theirs, the state would have theirs and the fed gov would have one too. Even with four different taxes, this would still be far more simpler than what the US has now. 95% of the IRS would soon be in the unemployment line.

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Ultimately I'd like to see all land required to be sold at public auction, and then have voting privileges linked to land ownership. I feel that people who have not made a personal investment in a tax district should not get to vote on how to spend tax money. ....A big problem the US has now is politicians buying votes by promising financial handouts. When the only people allowed to vote are the people PAYING for those handouts, I think we'd get a lot more constructive political system than we have now.
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JeffS

I'm not sure you've really though this through. At least I hope not...

Doug5150

I don't see anything wrong with it. What would be your complaints?

A lot of people react when it's suggested to restrict voting rights, because in the past that was always based on racism or sexism, but that's not the point of what I propose. If private sales of land are prohibited and all land is required to be sold at public auction, then it would not be possible to exclude people on any arbitrary reason. Everyone's money is the same color, so to speak.

Anyone who bought the land would automatically have the tax responsibility, and so this would discourage accumulating large amounts of land for non-productive purposes. And as some old guy once said, it also heavily discourages the people "voting themselves dollars".

Another aspect of this would be that even if a person wanted to hold a lot of land and didn't care about the amount of tax liability because they were rich enough to pay it,,,, -there is still another discouraging effect: the more land a person accumulated, the less voting-control over their tax burden they would have. For example with a town of 100 houses, each with a 1-acre yard, and each house owner is paying 1/100th of the town's taxes. And then this town annexes another 100 acres of land, and a rich guy comes and bids highest for the entire 100 acres and then decides to hold it himself, because he wants a huge yard. What happens is, he is going to be paying 50% of the tax burden of that town--but he still only gets one vote on how that money gets spent, which is less than 1% of the total votes.
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