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The end of sprawl

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Re: The end of sprawl

#81
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny enough, if tax burdens are shifted from labour and capital to land, land rents will actually increase. (But that's because people will have more net income left to bid up land rents.)

I believe that right now, people perceive that land rents are (relatively) subsidized. So people chase that subsidy.

Land rents are depressed by taxes on capital and labour. (Without those taxes, people have more money to bid up land.)

However land rents are not taxed (very much) by themselves, so fall squarely to the owner of the land. So in that sense they are definitely worth chasing today.

Re: The end of sprawl

#82
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten to fifteen percent is vastly better. It's doable but it's not that easy. You need a middling-good job in flyover country. That's the part that's not that easy - it's harder to justify a gig in flyover country by sheer ability. Companies on the downward slide towards Schumpeterian irrelevance just don't care and so don't bother them with the facts... IMO, this was what my ( Silent Generation ) parents used as a he…

Some reason I found it hard to Google GeoTax - eventually I found this paper which has a description under the name georent- https://econjwatch.org/file_download/66/2005-04-foldvary-tyr...

Look for Georgism and land value tax. Those names are more common.

Re: The end of sprawl

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To provide a better example, I used to play drums. As much as I'd like to continue practicing, I can't in an apartment complex even if I were to buy an electric kit. The tapping on the pedal would be too much for the people who live below me. This problem, combined with the insane amount of people moving to Atlanta, has me thinking about moving.

I suspect it's not common in the US, but my apartment is directly above a shop. I can stamp on the floor as much as I like in the evenings and on Sundays, since the shop is empty. You could try raising the drum kit off the floor: http://www.alesisdrummer.com/index.php?topic=4068.0

I didn't even know this was an option. Thank you for sharing.

Re: The end of sprawl

#84
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities are crazy efficient economically. Provision of infrastructure and goods is much cheaper in cities. Commuting sucks (and is one of the few clear drags on happiness that persist, unlike becoming a quadriplegic). Cities are also more productive. But: cities are financed wrong in most countries. They could easily finance themselves from land value taxes.

Cities are more efficient in theory. In practice, for whatever reason, they tend to have higher costs of living, taxes, and more congested infrastructure/traffic. Until that changes people may be better off economically living away from them.

In practice, money is siphoned away from cities to subsidize suburbs making the cities more expensive.

Re: The end of sprawl

#85
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your company is ok with you working for an hour or two on the way in to the office, then why not just work at home for an extra 90 minutes until after peak commute hours and zip into the office when traffic is light? Or better, just stay home entirely. Many companies still don't embrace full-time telecommuting (including tech companies like Apple and Google that have unlimited technology resources to make it work)…

Doing email isn't more productive just because you do it in the same place you do "real work" . And techie work is mostly laptop work anyway, the bus is like the proverbial coffee shop.

I'm probably about only about 75% as efficient on a laptop as I am with a proper keyboard and large screen. I don't trust developers who work full time on a laptop...
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