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Tax the Land

vox.com

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Re: Tax the Land

#151

Post by notreallyserio »

Hammershaft wrote: post #130
giantg2 wrote: post #13

"The big question land value taxes help answer is: How can a government raise funds without distorting choices and possibly leaving people worse off? If you tax income, it provides a disincentive to work. If you tax property, it provides a disincentive to improve the physical buildings on top of the land." Of course it will distort choices and leave some people worse off. If the author can't see that, then they have…

> Of course it will distort choices and leave some people worse off. If the author can't see that, then they have a serious bias problem. The whole point of the land value tax is to tax land to encourage higher density and higher cost use. Under our current system we subsidize low value land uses by subsidizing the crap out of infrastructure to expansions of suburban areas zoned for single family homes. https://www.y…

> You are thinking in absolute terms and not on the margins. If the marginal income tax beyond a threshold jumps by %10, then even discounting the increasingly marginal value of each additional dollar earned I will value the return on work less when I hit that tax threshold.

And given you don't want that dollar, and given the dollar is still on offer (the work's still gotta get done) someone else will earn it instead. This is probably a net gain because you got to do something else with your time and the other person got money they (probably) needed more than you.

Re: Tax the Land

#152

Post by uoaei »

fleddr wrote: post #145
uoaei wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?

Do you? Because depending on the country, the "public" are existing home owners and those wanting reform the minority.

I am having trouble finding statistics on the proportion of homeowners in any given country. The available statistics I can find are based on "owner-occupied homes" which is not comparable.

What do homeowners want? Well, they don't want higher home prices if no one is around to support the local economy. So clearly they want some level of distribution of access.

Re: Tax the Land

#153

Post by woah »

giantg2 wrote: post #13

"The big question land value taxes help answer is: How can a government raise funds without distorting choices and possibly leaving people worse off? If you tax income, it provides a disincentive to work. If you tax property, it provides a disincentive to improve the physical buildings on top of the land." Of course it will distort choices and leave some people worse off. If the author can't see that, then they have…

Property tax already means that your tax will go up. Your scenario seems like scaremongering

Re: Tax the Land

#154

Post by giantg2 »

uoaei wrote: post #124
giantg2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society." I doubt the affected person feels it's good. Quite frankly, the land value tax ideas seem absurd to me. It's just another redistribution scheme - work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax. It seems it's the government's and everyone else's desire to just…

Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?

"Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?"

I'm a part of the public, and I don't want it. I imagine there is a sizable number of others that don't want it too.

We could just force people to do whatever we want because a majority wants it, but that's no different than mob rule.

So far I haven't heard a compelling argument that this approach would solve more issues than it causes. The precise implementation would influence this greatly, but it isn't well defined. If we want to control housing prices in specific locations, I think a better approach is to cap the number of jobs in an area based on its carrying capacity. This would also provide more even distribution thorough out the state/country, reduce infrastructure concerns, and reduce property prices. But good luck convincing the politicians - they already like attracting jobs/companies by offering tax breaks, zoning variances, etc.

Re: Tax the Land

#155

Post by carom »

larsiusprime wrote: post #56
boredumb wrote: post #32

Wait! We voted for more taxes on land owners not renters, why are the rents going up!?! Vox is a dumpster fire and the owners have been hyperbolic rage bait farmers for over a decade.

Sounds like a testable hypothesis, let's look at the evidence: https://www.gameofrent.com/content/can-lvt-be-passed-on-to-t... The best empirical evidence available shows pretty strong signs that land value taxes are not passed on to tenants

>Imagine I'm a landlord, and I have a vacant lot I'm renting to a tenant who's got a mobile home parked there. What's going to happen if a Land Value Tax is imposed on me? Well, I'm already charging as much as the market will bear. If I charge any more, my tenant will move out.

That's rich. As someone who is a landlord, I'm already charging what two owners ago was charging when they died and the city won't let raise the rent because of COVID and beyond that, there is a rent stabilization ordinance which will never allow my rents to catch up to market rate.

I would like to see zoning fixed before we add more market distortions. This really doesn't account for the cost of construction as well. If you have a property that can earn $2,500 per unit, and it costs $300k, you can break even in $10 years. Now the government is taking half, it takes 20 years to break even. You just eliminated people who would invest in new housing. Does the LVT magically affect construction costs?

So then land gets cheaper because the government is taking half the potential revenue (not even profit, which makes renting incredibly unprofitable considering expenses). What stops wealthy people from just buying it as single family homes then? You have just lowered the price of the land, so they will come in a scoop it up.

It seems insane to me that we have these distortions that ruin the housing market (zoning, rent control) and the answer is to add another distortion (LVT) rather than eliminating the ones currently in place. You're disincentivizing people from renting their land if you cut into the profit of doing so. Make building not a bureaucratic nightmare and I will build. Revoke RSO and I won't shut down my property and convert it to a SFH for myself.

Re: Tax the Land

#156

Post by carom »

larsiusprime wrote: post #75
boredumb wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you save up money and buy a house to rent and your mortgage/interest/tax payment is 1100$ you will be charging 1100$, adding in a % to make sure that any routine maintenance and future renovation costs are covered. If property taxes are raised and my mortgage/interest/tax payment are now 1350$ you will raise rent accordingly unless you are running a charity or expect a roof to repair itself. I don't need a theoret…

> I don't need a theoretical analysis from a game developer who has to imagine himself as a landlord as I have personally owned rental property before, have known people who have owned rental property and rented property before. Great, because I didn't provide you with a theoretical analysis, I provided you with an empirical analysis that actually looks at the evidence from the real world. Regardless of my credential…

It is theoretical because the analysis you provided and the the Vox article don't account for zoning in any meaningful way.

Re: Tax the Land

#157

Post by uoaei »

dismalpedigree wrote: post #150
uoaei wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You are honestly arguing that the concept of private property is a mistake? Serious question. How do you envision things working when everything is communal? What motivates productivity and overcomes the tragedy of the commons?

Yes. Many have argued the same. If you wish to be informed, I recommend doing some reading. In particular, there is a difference between personal property and private property, and that difference is expounded in great detail in the literature.

Are you saying selfishness motivates productivity today? I think you would be hard-pressed to justify that claim.

Are you saying that we do not experience tragedy of the commons today? In today's economy, everyone having the same access to unregulated markets can be seen as a tragedy: this turns people into either suckers or grifters, and nothing in between. Sounds pretty fucked up to me.

I see a tragedy of the commons in the ubiquity of the belief that "I own this" and "I don't own that". Everyone believes this to the point it is an ideological underpinning of contemporary society. But it is not true a priori, so I am not really seeing how you justify it in the first place, especially without empirical counterfactuals. And obviously it has some serious drawbacks, such as people dying needlessly. Those people could contribute to your wellbeing but they are dead and can no longer do that. A tragedy, indeed.

Re: Tax the Land

#158

Post by giantg2 »

uoaei wrote: post #152
fleddr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you? Because depending on the country, the "public" are existing home owners and those wanting reform the minority.

I am having trouble finding statistics on the proportion of homeowners in any given country. The available statistics I can find are based on "owner-occupied homes" which is not comparable. What do homeowners want? Well, they don't want higher home prices if no one is around to support the local economy. So clearly they want some level of distribution of access.

Looks like about 86M owner occupied homes out of 141M total housing units. So likely more than half depending on the distribution of household members.

"What do homeowners want? Well, they don't want higher home prices if no one is around to support the local economy. So clearly they want some level of distribution of access."

I'd imagine that only applies for a small area (SV, NYC). Outside of that area, it's not a real issue (people don't talk about that in the areas I have lived).

Re: Tax the Land

#159

Post by giantg2 »

uoaei wrote: post #134
dismalpedigree wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The masses are asses. We shouldn’t just do things because the most people want it. Thats called tyranny by the majority.

I personally believe it'd be great if people like you could completely divest themselves from nation-states. You don't want to contribute to a commonwealth, that's fine, you can rough it over there and live a sad, cold, hungry existence. The vast majority of the comforts of modern life are afforded specifically and only because other people contribute to the common cause. You reject your responsibility to contribute…

"you can rough it over there"

Over where? Organizations (gov, corp, etc) always grow and want more power. There is no place free of it or opt-in only.

"Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists."

I think this is a gross misconception. I doubt most people want to be survivalist. It's possible they just want less government telling them what to do, especially in their private life. You could have a minarchist government where people want to contribute to their government/community. We see this to an extent in rural areas.

Re: Tax the Land

#160

Post by uoaei »

giantg2 wrote: post #154
uoaei wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?

"Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?" I'm a part of the public, and I don't want it. I imagine there is a sizable number of others that don't want it too. We could just force people to do whatever we want because a majority wants it, but that's no different than mob rule. So far I haven't heard a compelling argument that this approach would solve more iss…

> We could just force people to do whatever we want because a majority wants it, but that's no different than mob rule.

That's not mob rule, that's simple majority rule. We have access to other forms of consensus algorithms, but so far simple-majority seems to be the most anyone can stomach. That is very unfortunate.

> would solve more issues than it causes.

That's not the metric though, right? The metric is: are things better under that system vs this one? We want to measure whether B(enefits)2 - C(osts)2 >= B1 - C1, not whether B2 - C2 >= 0.

I strongly agree with what I think you're implying, which is that we need more metropolitan areas, but I think we are not going to get very far with limits. You will get a lot more participation and a lot less tumult (not to mention orders of magnitude less bureaucratic overhead) if you offer carrots rather than sticks. People management is a real consideration: people are not identical particles subject to the continuum hypothesis.

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