How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#121

Post by ladberg » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 8:56 AM UTC

greggman2 wrote: post #79

ladberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 I feel like the intuition behind prop 13 is similar to rent control but for land owners. Basically it freezes the price owners have to pay in taxes, so if the price of land goes up dramatically, people who have owned the land for longer pay far less in taxes. For example, person A bought a house in SF 25 years ago for 300k. Person B buys an identical house…

It sounds like most of the people here want prop 13 repealed but from your suggestion that would just make every pay the high tax so the "people often don't because the taxes would increase to a point where it wouldn't be worth it." would be true for everyone always right?

The basic idea is that people are being disproportionally taxed, usually in favor of the rich (i.e. people who have owned property in high CoL places for a long time). By raising the taxes on these people to "fair" levels, a bunch of good things happen.

First, a lot of property is opened up to the market because people are now willing to sell it, which should lower housing/land prices in general and enable more development. Second, the state gets a lot more tax money to use for education and whatever else.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#122

Post by apta » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 1:16 PM UTC

andys627 wrote: post #15

I like this billboard from the good old days https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Ev... . It says: "Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3,600 for this lot and will hold till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it." These lots produce negative externalities to society a…

> I take the profit without earning it.

Honest man.

This is why interest/usury are predatory and parasitic practices, and are banned in several religions.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#123

Post by kbutler » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

mhluongo wrote: post #61

lonelappde wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears that the quote is about George, not by George. "George advocated for Georgism" is a tautology :-)

Most people don't advocate for "themselves-ism" -> not a tautology

But Georgism is the things George advocated, therefore:

  George advocated for the things George advocated

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#124

Post by kbutler » Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

goobynight wrote: post #43

andys627 wrote: post #15

I like this billboard from the good old days https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Ev... . It says: "Everybody works but the vacant lot. I paid $3,600 for this lot and will hold till I get $6000. The profit is unearned increment made possible by the presence of this community and enterprise of its people. I take the profit without earning it." These lots produce negative externalities to society a…

Denver is littered with surface parking lots. This is due to the relatively recent spike in value. There is no way you could buy the property now and operate a parking lot, but they got in when it was cheap, so it's all profit now.

If the land could make more profit with another use, that profit is a net loss (opportunity cost).

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#125

Post by asokoloski » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

starfallg wrote: post #103

asokoloski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Taxing property encourages speculation and under-development. Showing an alternative, Pennsylvania has several towns and cities with a split-rate tax, which means that there's a higher tax on the assessed land value than on the assessed value of the property. Taking this to an extreme, you can tax only the land value, not the property, providing a very strong incentive to make the best use of desirable land.…

> And not just that, but typical property taxes provide a disincentive to even improve your own property, since you'll pay more tax. They encourage blight. A land value tax still does this, albeit indirectly. If you improve your property, the area gets marginally more desirable and land value rises. The solution for this in UK is to remove capital gains tax for the main home of owner-occupiers, and a transaction tax…

You're correct, but it's a completely different incentive. If you hold out and everyone around you improves their property, your taxes go up almost as much anyway! It punishes speculation and rewards productive use.

So a virtuous feedback cycle is created, where everyone is incentivized to improve and develop their property to the point where they're best taking advantage of the land it sits on -- or to sell it to someone who will.

I'm familiar with stamp duty -- it has a lot of problems, mainly around the fact that it discourages people from moving. It seems significantly worse than a land tax, to me.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#126

Post by asokoloski » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 3:39 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #10

asokoloski wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Taxing property encourages speculation and under-development. Showing an alternative, Pennsylvania has several towns and cities with a split-rate tax, which means that there's a higher tax on the assessed land value than on the assessed value of the property. Taking this to an extreme, you can tax only the land value, not the property, providing a very strong incentive to make the best use of desirable land.…

Under Proposition 13, you are not taxed on the land value or the property value. Instead, you're taxed on the land+property value at the time you bought the property. If you make a "substantial change" to the property, the tax is reassessed . That's what generates the "empty lots, parking lots, single-family homes in the middle of downtown, etc." -- if you replace your empty lot with a useful building, your property…

Oh, yeah. Prop 13 is like an order of magnitude worse than just taxing property + land vs a higher rate on land.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#127

Post by amatecha » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

mkmk wrote: post #24

amatecha wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "booting" do you mean "towing"? I'm from western Canada and have never heard the term "booting" before in relation to parking lots and what I assume must be towing.

Booting refers to wheel clamping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_clamp

Aaah interesting -- thanks!

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#128

Post by choeger » Sat, Oct 12, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

icsllaf wrote: post #26

choeger wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are a form of individual travel. An airport train is prescheduled and prerouted. The former beats the latter under specific circumstances only (or we would not have these two categories of transportation). I would argue that traveling from and to a large airport is about as disadvantageous as it gets for individual travel: Your schedule is determined by someone else. Your route is already fixed. The…

>The former beats the latter under specific circumstances only. A large part of that circumstance being the nonexistance of the former and creation of our urban environments to specifically cater to the latter.

> A large part of that circumstance being the nonexistance of the former and creation of our urban environments to specifically cater to the latter.

That's a nice talking points and might even apply to some (US) cities. But I live with an extensively (and expensively) built public transportation and still it loses vs. individual transport quite often.

Re: How Much Money Do Parking Lots Make?

#129

Post by goobynight » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #124

goobynight wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denver is littered with surface parking lots. This is due to the relatively recent spike in value. There is no way you could buy the property now and operate a parking lot, but they got in when it was cheap, so it's all profit now.

If the land could make more profit with another use, that profit is a net loss (opportunity cost).

Sure, but they believe the market isn't at the top. Opportunity cost could continue to increase until they cash out.

That is, maybe they could sell for $10 million now vs making $200k per year on parking, but if they hold on for another 5 years, the offers could rise to $15 million.