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Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

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Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#251

Post by zzzzzzzza »

nickff wrote: post #132
lmm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owning huge amounts of land is uniquely antisocial in a way that owning huge amounts of other stuff isn't. If Mr Moneybags buys ten thousand paintings, we can always produce more paintings (and the rising price of paintings will push more people to take up careers in art). But if Moneybags buys ten thousand acres, the rest of us are ten thousand acres worse off in a way that we can't really fix.

Those are ten thousand paintings which the public cannot experience or enjoy! In many ways, the paintings are more precious, as they could go on worldwide tours, and be experienced by millions of people; most land has virtually no uniqueness, and cannot be shared.

the thing that is scarce is, depending on the country, not even really land itself but really proximity, connectedness in the graph of resources. price of land goes very high where there are lots of jobs and good schools....

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#252

Post by Kaotique »

MrPowers wrote: post #7

I'm not a huge fan of how deadweight loss is defined in the article: > virtually all economists agree that land value tax has zero "deadweight loss"–a fancy word for a drag on the economy that makes certain activities no longer profitable Property taxes tax the land + the building. Building taxes are complicated to assess. They require tax assessments, appraisers, tax code, accountants to compute depreciation schedul…

I was recently in Egypt and they have a tax on finished buildings. So naturally no building is ever finished. It is a very weird sight that 90% of the buildings don't have windows and uncompleted roofs.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#253

Post by d3ckard »

sjwalter wrote: post #151
MrPowers wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great question. Land taxes are great because there is less of a deadweight loss. Governments need money to operate. All else equal, we should get governments the money they need without wasting people's time to comply with complicated tax laws. Humans also generally agree that progressive taxation is a good idea. Rich people should pay more to fund the government. Rich people own a lot of land, so they'd pa…

> Humans also generally agree that progressive taxation is a good idea. Fairly bold assertion. I'd say most humans don't even really know what progressive taxation means. > Rich people should pay more to fund the government. A static tax regime (i.e., taxes calculated by a simple fixed percentage of wealth or income) leads to the same outcome. E.g., in a 10% fixed tax regime, someone making $10k/a pays $1k in tax and…

I’d like to add here that the biggest fallacy is assuming rich pay income tax at all, which leftists across the world all seem to universally believe.

I would argue that in 21st century the definition of rich is actually „achieves most of his income through sources which are not subject to income tax”.

Progressive income tax mostly hurts well qualified proffessionals nowadays (people actually working for that income) and as such is detrimental to economy at large.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#254

Post by Kaotique »

larsiusprime wrote: post #175
djokkataja wrote: post #171

Just for fun, purely as a thought experiment... Could digital "real estate" or "territory" be taxed in the same way -- not literal digital territory, like in games, but considering "ad spaces" as virtual territory? I suppose more generally, any "technology company" which primarily makes its profits by virtue of establishing a network effect, wherein they earn ever more money as more people show up. One possible objec…

You mean like domain names?

Exactly. It is actually a very good comparison I think. When you buy a bunch of domains and squat them without doing anything with them you are paying the "tax" but have no income. It is actually in your best interest to develop a business on your domain to compensate for the costs.

Just like land tax would do. Squatting a bunch of land would cost you a lot. It is would be in your best interest to maximise income from the land to pay for the tax.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#255

Post by Kaotique »

Some questions that come to mind.

Is the price for land supposed to be the same in the entire country or should the government calculate a cost per region. A square meter inside a city would be more expensive to own than a square meter in the countryside?

What are you thoughts on implementing this tax system gradually? Could it work to assign certain parts of land that can be bought and taxed and then except the person from paying other taxes. IE: Buy this land, build a house and don't pay income tax while you live there.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#256

Post by alignItems »

The concept behind Georgism is ancient.

In Biblical Israel all land was redistributed every 50 years.

The exact implementation probably wouldn’t make sense in our times (they divided the land initially by lottery, and all land sales reverted every jubilee year. Everyone “went back home”, all at once - effectively resetting the Monopoly board to restart the game).

However, the idea can probably be adapted using a more gradual, non-synchronous, and non-tribal method. (Perhaps pay the land tax with shares in the land?).

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#257

Post by pydry »

panick21_ wrote: post #250
pydry wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flat tax was designed to be regressive. Why take a regressive tax and then try to patch it with 1000 difficult to implement hacks to make it progressive? Why not just use taxes that are naturally progressive? The flat tax is the most transparently self serving idea from the rich since trickle down.

Lol, so if you change a fixed number into a slanting line its '1000 difficult to implement hacks'. That literally replacing a fixed number with a simple function(income) -> %. However there are also good reasons not to do that. And the tax is not regressive, you clearly haven't read about it other what other people who have not read about it.

Under flat tax you spend more you get taxed more.

Who spends the greatest % of their income + wealth? The poor.

Who spends the lowest % of their income + wealth? Jeff Bezos.

It's really not that complicated to see how it shifts the tax burden.

Steve Forbes pushed it like a religion for a reason. It wasnt because he loved poor people or hated tax avoiders.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#258

Post by nicoburns »

mindslight wrote: post #110
throwaway6734 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who pays for the roads, water, electricity, internet, and postage that connects rural regions?

Well either way they're paid with real estate taxes. So the question is should someone on two acres be paying four times as much as someone on a half acre. Or the same as a 16 unit apartment building? Cost proportional to area doesn't even make sense for utilities or roads (average distance only goes up as the square root), never mind straightforward per-resident costs such as public school or trash disposal.

> Well either way they're paid with real estate taxes.

Not necessarily. They could well be paid for by any other taxes. Income taxes, etc. There's no rule to state that certain taxes have to pay for certain expenses.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#259

Post by neilwilson »

pydry wrote: post #233
neilwilson wrote: post #203

It gets the purposes of taxes wrong, and assumes the usual economic myths of a fixed amount of money and a loanable funds structure, with money being a veil over barter. Once you realise the latter are a myth, then the entire concept of taxing land makes no sense. Government, in a country with its own free floating currency, has no need of tax money to spend. In fact spending causes taxation from the induced transact…

>Once you realise the latter are a myth, then the entire concept of taxing land makes no sense. Government, in a country with its own free floating currency, has no need of tax money to spend. Tax keeps a lid on inflation and can be used to discourage socially undesirable activity. It absolutely makes sense to keep inflation down and prevent productive land from being hoarded or used inefficiently with a tax at the s…

Inflation is handled by superior spend side auto-stabilisers, like a Job Guarantee, and socially undesirable activities are done with levies and duties, not tax. The latter being a political position, not an economic one.

If you have sufficient saving in society , then you hardly need to tax at all - as Japan demonstrates.

Re: Does Georgism work? Is land a big deal?

#260

Post by dnautics »

MrPowers wrote: post #102
aeternum wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really doesn't make sense. Views matter for example, land with a blocked view should be worth less than land without the blocked view. Land immediately adjacent to a golf course or park is often valued higher. Land immediately next to railroad tracks or industry, not so much while the discount drops off steeply just a few blocks away. Water rights, drainage, soil quality, contamination, roadway access all matter…

I agree that different factors cause some land to be more valuable than others. I'd argue that the factors you've listed are relatively easy to factor into an appraisal. Property taxes, in comparison, are really hard to compute. Each jurisdiction has different rules. There are different valuation methodologies. If you add a 2 car garage, what the useful life. What depreciation schedule should be used. How should infl…

> Property taxes, in comparison, are really hard to compute

Mark to market. If you sell your home, then that value is the fixed price of the home until the next sale event.

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