Only now are we starting to see actual democratic referendums on these topics. For a long time everybody was brainwashed into thinking more construction = “greedy developers”, so nobody treated adding to supply as a possible solution.
But the tide is starting to turn, and in a lot of state/provinces you are starting to see real change it last. British Columbia will soon up zone province-wide for example. And slowly you are starting to see some good initiatives passing in California.
In the context of Australia, voting is mandatory if you're >=18yo.
We also have very unusual tax laws around owning a rental called negative gearing- if you're a landlord and your rental property earns less than it costs to run it, you can subtract the difference from your taxable income and pay less tax, as if having a tenant pay off most of your mortgage wasn't enough of a free lunch.
A political contest vowing to get rid of this nonsense was annihilated when we tried it one election cycle around a decade ago.
That's not unusual at all, and calling it "negative gearing" is just a way to target it as if it's some evil concept.
Afaik, everywhere in the world taxes on businesses are applied to profits not revenue. Subtracting your loss is completely normal. It's personal taxes that applies to your salary aka revenue that is weird and modern day serfdom.
> aka revenue that is weird and modern day serfdom.
Not really, though. Businesses have inherent incentives to minimize their costs. Individuals don’t, in fact it’s closer to being the opposite.
So the “revenue” tax approach is perfectly rational and reasonable (relatively to taxing personal “net income”)
> businesses are applied to profits not revenue
Yes, if your rental business was a separate entity it would make perfect sense. Subtracting your business costs from personal income isn’t quite that though
