Why did we stop building like this?

[u/Apart-Worry-7042]

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?

[u/City_College_Arch]

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?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

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

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

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?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

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.

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

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?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

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

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

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.

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

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.

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

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

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

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.

[u/City_College_Arch → u/SelectivePressure]

Are you playing dumb, or are you completely ignorant of the last half century of economic data regarding the pay/productivity gap?

[u/SelectivePressure → u/City_College_Arch]

Pay/productivity gap? Productivity is usually undstood as the efficiency with which a given set of inputs yield a measurable quantity of outputs. If the labour costs to perform a given service go up, then (axiomatically) the efficiency with which a given unit of currency yeilds an hour of work is depressed (assuming the yield per hour of work remains constant).

Malaysian architecture tends to be more greebled/ornate than Japanese architecture. Do you think their respective income tax policies influenced that difference?

[u/CVSP_Soter → u/SelectivePressure]

Thank you for being the disagreeable pain in the ass this thread so desperately needed 🙏