Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Book Review: Progress and Poverty

gameofrent.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 129 posts

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#81

Post by notfbi »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #56

For those who think a Georgist tax makes sense, why not apply the same type of logic to income? If someone is employed as say, a teacher making $75,000 a year, but would be most productive as a software developer making $200,000 a year, should we tax them on $200,000 a year?

1. Theoretically a tax against potential earnings is actually good, but it's much more difficult to estimate than land prices.

2. LVT is mostly about redistributing rents, with the land use efficiency bonus as a big second order benefit.

3. Professions aren't exclusionary. A person doesn't squat on their teacher gig for 20 years in order to see how their claim on being 1 of finite-X allowed software developers might rise in price. Other people would just become software developers.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#82

Post by nwah1 »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #56

For those who think a Georgist tax makes sense, why not apply the same type of logic to income? If someone is employed as say, a teacher making $75,000 a year, but would be most productive as a software developer making $200,000 a year, should we tax them on $200,000 a year?

The logic of LVT isn't to force all of the factors of production to their highest and best use. It is to share the value of the Earth, which no human created, and thus georgists believe it should be shared equally.

That this particular solution to that moral view also happens to put land to its highest use is a nice bonus.

Henry George was a classical liberal, and thus did not believe anyone had a right to the labor of others, or that they should have any say in what kind of labor others should perform.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#83

Post by snidane »

TimPC wrote: post #32
MiddleEndian wrote: post #22

On a personal level, I like the LVT as a single tax because then I wouldn't have to do any paperwork. They give me a bill, I pay a bill, there's no exceptions, I can improve (or fuck up) my property, and overall the numbers won't change (unless a ton of people improve or fuck up their properties around me as well). Nice and easy. But it also seems effective overall. After I quit my last job and before I got my curren…

The transition is hard. I'm convinced it has to be both gradual and compensated.

Unlikely that georgist system would get adopted gradually. It never worked in history.

Denmark georgist party (Justice party of Denmark) never got a strong popular support. When they got some attention and implemented georgist policies, vested interests would take the new gains and roll the policies back, capturing the profits only for themselves.

There are pockets in the US which are adopting georgist policies out of desperation. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-g...

The only model that was sustainable on a country level was Singapore and the eastern colonies like Hong Kong or Jiaozhou Bay.

Unless there is dire disperation or a threat of a bigger enemy attempting to swallow you, the population gets complacent and always goes back to the humanity default of trying to outcompete their immediate neighbors, instead of working together to survive the threat of the poverty or the surrounding enemy.

I admire your optimism. My hopes are that humanity gives georgism a chance this time. Instead of repeating the cycle by falling into yet another great war and then bringing prosperity back only as a post-war restoration.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#84

Post by WalterBright »

Consider this: subsidize something societies want more of, tax something society wants less of.

Wouldn't this be a pragmatic way to raise tax revenue? What do we want less of?

Pollution.

What do we want more of?

Jobs, prosperity, the good things in life.

So tax pollution instead of things like jobs, prosperity, etc.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#85

Post by dionidium »

pessimizer wrote: post #77
dionidium wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Property tax is already a thing of course Yes, but note that property taxes are extremely unpopular: > America's most hated tax: Local property tax (42%) By far, America's most hated tax is your local property tax! It's almost ironic that your home, perhaps the single greatest source of taxable deductions on your federal income taxes, is also the greatest source of dislike when it comes to taxes in general among th…

Lobbyists, PR professionals and the people who pay them own lots of property and pay property taxes. They're far harder for the wealthy to dodge than income or capital gains taxes. Of course the public has been trained to hate them, like they've been trained to hate estate taxes, and in some years public polls would show near-majorities against progressive taxation in general. edit: it seems obvious because of the th…

I'm thinking of my buddy back in Missouri -- not wealthy; not a lobbyist, PR professional, or any kind of professional -- who told me (more or less):

"It's unfair. It's the one tax you can't avoid. No matter what you do, you can't opt out. It's like you don't even own your own property. The government owns it. You never really own anything, as long as they can tax you just for existing on your own land."

That's the intuitive, everyman objection.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#86

Post by rufus_foreman »

nwah1 wrote: post #82
rufus_foreman wrote: post #56

For those who think a Georgist tax makes sense, why not apply the same type of logic to income? If someone is employed as say, a teacher making $75,000 a year, but would be most productive as a software developer making $200,000 a year, should we tax them on $200,000 a year?

The logic of LVT isn't to force all of the factors of production to their highest and best use. It is to share the value of the Earth, which no human created, and thus georgists believe it should be shared equally. That this particular solution to that moral view also happens to put land to its highest use is a nice bonus. Henry George was a classical liberal, and thus did not believe anyone had a right to the labor…

Did some human create my ability to work in a factory stacking boxes or to work as a software developer, both things that I have done? Which human created that?

And suppose no human did that, to talk about sharing that value equally? That sounds really creepy to me.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#87

Post by AnimalMuppet »

snidane wrote: post #76
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The username checks out; where do you think wealth comes from if not land? I gave several examples of wealth that doesn't come from land. I asked for an explanation of how, in those examples, wealth came from land. You reply with an insult to my chosen username. That's... not a very good argument. > Paper money in the end is just a representation of claims for assets generated from land. Here you're using the assum…

Georgists divide into two categories. They define land differently, or emphasize different aspects of it. 1. Left wing georgists. Land = resource needed for human life. Humans cannot fly, therefore land is a life necessity. Food grows on land and nowhere else, therefore land is necessary for life. 2. Right wing georgists. Land as a monopoly. Electromagnetic spectrum (5g, wifi, radio waves) cannot have too many owners…

So, if you define "land" as including domain names, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and electromagnetic spectrum, then sure, almost all money comes from "land". I would say that at that point, calling it "land" is pretty misleading, though. A right-wing Georgist who wanted to communicate ought to call it something else, like "monopoly control" or something.

> after zero interest rate policy, quantitative easing, helicopter money and debt amnesties, the only choice is between a war and georgism.

Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

Many Georgism advocates seem to have this idea that Georgism is this magic formula that is going to fix everything, and the only alternative is catastrophe. Even by those standards, though, this statement seems rather extreme. Can you defend it, rather than simply assert it?

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#88

Post by snidane »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #87
snidane wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Georgists divide into two categories. They define land differently, or emphasize different aspects of it. 1. Left wing georgists. Land = resource needed for human life. Humans cannot fly, therefore land is a life necessity. Food grows on land and nowhere else, therefore land is necessary for life. 2. Right wing georgists. Land as a monopoly. Electromagnetic spectrum (5g, wifi, radio waves) cannot have too many owners…

So, if you define "land" as including domain names, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and electromagnetic spectrum, then sure, almost all money comes from "land". I would say that at that point, calling it "land" is pretty misleading, though. A right-wing Georgist who wanted to communicate ought to call it something else, like "monopoly control" or something. > after zero interest rate policy, quantitative easing,…

It's called "land" because it is one of the three original factors of production in classical economics - labor, capital and land.

Labor is energy, Capital is accumulation of energy. Land is any natural opportunity.

Domains, patents or spectrums are portions of namespace, string space, idea space, frequency band - some kind of space, in other words land.

> Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

Many Georgism advocates seem to have this idea that Georgism is this magic formula that is going to fix everything, and the only alternative is catastrophe. Even by those standards, though, this statement seems rather extreme. Can you defend it, rather than simply assert it?

I don't want to defend anything. It's up to people to decide if they want to burn everything to the ground after exhausting all the economic policities with nothing much to show for it. Real estate keeps getting bigger problem than ever, birth rates plummeting. Continuing the trend will result in a collapse by one of 1. depopulation 2. war 3. revolution or similar event. Since real estate is such a big part of it, georgism - the antidote for misbehaving real estate - seems like the next tool to reach for.

Anyways - everybody who spends a bit of time trying to understand it realizes that it is logically the obvious solution, but is politically infeasible.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#89

Post by AnimalMuppet »

snidane wrote: post #88
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if you define "land" as including domain names, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, and electromagnetic spectrum, then sure, almost all money comes from "land". I would say that at that point, calling it "land" is pretty misleading, though. A right-wing Georgist who wanted to communicate ought to call it something else, like "monopoly control" or something. > after zero interest rate policy, quantitative easing,…

It's called "land" because it is one of the three original factors of production in classical economics - labor, capital and land. Labor is energy, Capital is accumulation of energy. Land is any natural opportunity. Domains, patents or spectrums are portions of namespace, string space, idea space, frequency band - some kind of space, in other words land. > Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence. Many Ge…

> It's called "land" because it is one of the three original factors of production in classical economics - labor, capital and land.

That makes as much sense as trying to fit all of chemistry into earth, air, fire, and water. There's a lot more going on in economics these days than "the three original factors of production", and trying to shoehorn everything into those terms doesn't make sense.

Your last two paragraphs assume that everything is going to burn to the ground if we don't have a magic fix. I asked for a defense of that; you gave me a restatement.

And in your last paragraph, "everyone who understands knows it's right". Nice. I'm sure that's some flavor of logical fallacy, but I'm too lazy to dig up the right label to put on it.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#90

Post by t0suj4 »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #22

On a personal level, I like the LVT as a single tax because then I wouldn't have to do any paperwork. They give me a bill, I pay a bill, there's no exceptions, I can improve (or fuck up) my property, and overall the numbers won't change (unless a ton of people improve or fuck up their properties around me as well). Nice and easy. But it also seems effective overall. After I quit my last job and before I got my curren…

The trouble with value assessment is good enough to dismiss LVT altogether.

I don't want to be forced to liquidate my house to cover LVT bill only because the land value shot up thanks to being a part of future promise from a developer project that doesn't have to fall through.

Post reply on HN