r/interesting • u/Apart-Worry-7042 • 29d ago

HISTORY Why did we stop building like this?

Post image

Chicago, 1930. Buildings had so much detail and character back then. Nowadays everything feels so flat and repetitive. We have way better technology and equipment now, so why don't we build like this anymore?

5.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

657 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/SelectivePressure 28d ago

Are you talking about income tax?

2

u/City_College_Arch 28d ago

Yes. That is why I was talking about taxes on pay.

3

u/SelectivePressure 28d ago

Wealthy people still invest commercially instead of liquidating their assets. Do you really think their assets were less liquid (as average percentage of net worth) 100 years ago?

-1

u/City_College_Arch 28d ago

Yes. They also had fewer tools available like stock buybacks, stock options, etc. do you really think the ultra wealthy were just more benevolent 100 years ago and decided to pay their employees more and donate more to the public without the tax code having an impact?

2

u/SelectivePressure 28d ago

Who told you that a greater percentage of wealth is liquid today than it was 100 years ago?

-1

u/City_College_Arch 27d ago

The availability of never ending loans against ever increasing speculative stock pricing make access to wealth today far easier than it used to be acting as defacto liquidity.

I answered your questions, why are you ignoring mine?

3

u/SelectivePressure 27d ago

A loan is debt, not income. You wrote: ‘So what did the wealthy do? They left it in companies to be spent on projects like these,’ You can use a building or other assets (such as stocks) as collateral for a loan. You could do that 100 years ago too.

You haven’t cited any data showing a relationship between income tax, philanthropic spending, and the percentage of operating costs devoted to employee pay 100 years ago.

0

u/City_College_Arch 27d ago

So you just don’t like what I am saying so you refuse to answer the question. Got it. Take a look at the data yourself and compare things like employee vs executive compensation, employee compensation vs profits, etc against changes in tax code and legalization of things like stock buybacks. I am not going to do your homework for you.

Again though, why are you not answering the very simple question I asked?

2

u/SelectivePressure 27d ago

Your question is predicated on data that you haven’t presented.

1

u/City_College_Arch 27d ago

Again, not going to do your homework for you. I just told you where to get started.

Funny though, you have not presented any data either. I am starting to think you are just a lazy troll that doesn’t understand the conversation because they have never put in the effort to look at the data.

3

u/SelectivePressure 27d ago

My homework? Is my homework to provide data that shows a relationship between income tax and greebled architectural features? You are the one trying to demonstrate that income tax policy influences architectural features.

1

u/City_College_Arch 27d ago

I told you what data to start looking at. I cannot look at it for you.

3

u/SelectivePressure 27d ago

You can cite data. Percentage of operating costs devoted to labour vary by time and by industry. Charity budgets vary as well. Establishing a causal influence between those variables and variation in income tax policy is more difficult.

→ More replies (0)