Book Review: Progress and Poverty • Hacker News Board

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#91

Post by klyrs » Sat, May 14, 2022, 5:17 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #66

zozbot234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since all taxes are ultimately borne by land (specifically, by resources in fixed supply), it's not at all clear that compensation is required for a neutral tax shift.

> Since all taxes are ultimately borne by land ... Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence. How is income tax ultimately borne by land? Sales tax? Inheritance tax? Gasoline tax? Corporate income tax on corporations like SpaceX, Goldman Sachs, and Intel? "Ultimately borne by land" may have made sense a century or three ago, when (almost) all income ultimately came from the land. That's not the world we li…

If you take the view that "land" is where all the matter on earth comes from, it kinda makes sense. It's the strictest interpretation of materialism I've ever heard, though; there would be nothing of value without input of the sun's energy.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#92

Post by bee_rider » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:21 AM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #85

pessimizer wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

It is a sort of silly objection -- you can avoid property tax by having no property, in the same way that you can avoid income tax by having no income. I guess it is probably easier to evade income tax, than property tax, though.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#93

Post by lordnacho » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:28 AM UTC

its_ethan wrote: post #65

lordnacho wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone came up with this delicious game: Landowners decide for themselves what value their land has, and pay tax accordingly. But whatever they say the value is, someone else is allowed to buy it for.

It's certainly a fun game, but does that mean if I decide my property is worth $100,000, accurate or not, I am forced to sell it just because someone comes along and decides they want to buy it? Also, is this a game that happens every year to allow for appreciation? For a realistic implementation, why not just use the fact that the landowner already decided what the value their land has when they purchased it and/or…

I think you need a new value each year, otherwise of course if the economy goes well people will buy your land off you cheaply.

So you get to decide your tax each year but if you save yourself too much someone else will grab the excess value.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#94

Post by bee_rider » Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:29 AM UTC

its_ethan wrote: post #63

bee_rider wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a land value tax we could at least come up with pretty straightforward equations, right? Some starting value from being in town, then add something for oceanfront property, then add something some extra bump based on distance from some set of amenities provided by the community (parks, subways, etc). It is at least possible to come up with something, unlike, what, the assessor's gut feeling about how nice your h…

> Some starting value from being in town, then add something for oceanfront property, then add something some extra bump based on distance from some set of amenities provided by the community (parks, subways, etc). How do you know you weren't also supposed to take the floor plan or exterior paint color into consideration? How do you account for the value lost from having obnoxious neighbors? What happens when, in the…

You don't know the equation you came up with is correct, but it is at least describable, so if someone doesn't like it they can live elsewhere I guess, or argue about it at the next town hall session. If a bad equation is designed, then that's a problem, but it is a general bad governance problem that effects everyone, rather than an arbitrary lightning-strike problem like a bad assessment.

Floor plan or paint color -- the point of a land value tax is that it is based on the value of the land. Floor plan and paint color would be improvements on the property, so they would be excluded.

The current system is not very functional. Housing is not very affordable in most cities due to speculative real estate investment and under-development. I mean, we clearly get by, but just because the alternative is being homeless.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#95

Post by andrewjl » Sat, May 14, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

prichino wrote: post #71

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since all taxes are ultimately borne by land ... Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence. How is income tax ultimately borne by land? Sales tax? Inheritance tax? Gasoline tax? Corporate income tax on corporations like SpaceX, Goldman Sachs, and Intel? "Ultimately borne by land" may have made sense a century or three ago, when (almost) all income ultimately came from the land. That's not the world we li…

The username checks out; where do you think wealth comes from if not land? Paper money in the end is just a representation of claims for assets generated from land. Food, minerals, energy, actual things all come from land. You cannot eat a metaverse.

You can't eat sunlight or the wind either yet both seem pretty useful.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#96

Post by zozbot234 » Sat, May 14, 2022, 8:11 AM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #48

zozbot234 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is arguing for a literal 100% LVT. You'd want to still leave a fraction of land rent (say 10% or so) untaxed, since this introduces a desirable market mechanism in property assessment - and George even acknowledges this. What's nutty is to let land speculators capture all of that value for no real reason.

I think the group that is capturing the most value is actually landlords, followed by speculators. I also agree that 90% LVT may be better in practice, although I do know people who still argue for 100% and various auction mechanisms to determine the LVT.

You could use "auctions" to capture that residual value if those were long-term land leases. But you'd still want to assess and tax land rent afterwards, because in practice high-stakes leases have proven vulnerable to government corruption.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#97

Post by igorkraw » Sat, May 14, 2022, 8:35 AM UTC

andrewjl wrote: post #95

prichino wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The username checks out; where do you think wealth comes from if not land? Paper money in the end is just a representation of claims for assets generated from land. Food, minerals, energy, actual things all come from land. You cannot eat a metaverse.

You can't eat sunlight or the wind either yet both seem pretty useful.

And where do you plant the crops or build the wind turbines and solar plants to harness these?

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#98

Post by markdown » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:13 AM UTC

xboxnolifes wrote: post #42

markdown wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work that way. A subway gets built near your property. The benefit of greater access accrues to you more than it does someone 10km away. So your LVT has to go up. Now you can't afford the taxes, and you're forced to sell and move to somewhere with lower LVT. It's bought by someone who will put it to better use. Maybe an apartment block instead of your single family home. Over time, every piece of land is put…

> Now you can't afford the taxes, and you're forced to sell and move to somewhere with lower LVT. It's bought by someone who will put it to better use. Maybe an apartment block instead of your single family home. > Over time, every piece of land is put to its most productive use. But before it gets there, there will be some pain for the individuals who choose (or are forced) to move because they can't afford to the i…

Nah, that won't work. Needs to be re-evaluated every 5 years at least.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#99

Post by nwah1 » Sat, May 14, 2022, 9:18 AM UTC

rufus_foreman wrote: post #86

nwah1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was not clear enough, apologies. Naturalness is not the reason that things should be owned in common. Rather, the reason that land ought to belong equally to all is because unchecked exclusive ownership reduces the freedom of non-landowners. It is thus incompatible with a classical liberal view that celebrates individual freedom.

If I build a fence and claim everything inside of it, you might find that reasonable. If I build a fence and then successfully claim everything outside of it, then I have in effect made everyone else prisoners inside of the fence. And if a subset of humanity claims the entire Earth, then the rest become like trespassers to be dealt with however the landowners saw fit. The rents they demand could be unlimited, since everyone requires access to land.

Every parcel claimed reduces the amount of freedom of everyone else, and eventually all land becomes claimed and rents begin rising in tandem with the progress of civilization, putting people into a position of serfdom. And that is why no amount of technological progress will ever eliminate poverty.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#100

Post by notahacker » Sat, May 14, 2022, 10:08 AM UTC

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…

I think the division between land as natural resources and land as any non-Schumpeterian economic rent source (so broadcast spectrum rights but not brands because the company created those) is more between traditional and modern Georgists.

But it still runs into the same practical problems. The taxable value of "unimproved" Google.com is negligible (the same value as any other domain name, or vaguely pronounceable nonsense word domain name if you're trying to be really specific with your tax assessments), probably less than they're currently paying their domain registrar for.

If you're taxing billion dollar companies and their founders significantly less, you're taxing everyone else significantly more or providing fewer public services (in George's vision where LVT is the only tax). There's an efficiency argument that letting Googles be even richer is good for all of us because we get so much more stuff from it and people who use land to live on rather than to build social networks on deserve penalising for their relatively unproductive use of the land, but it's not one that necessarily corresponds well to the reality of the sort of CRUD-apps with lockin monopolies Silicon Valley VCs tend to build and the sort of employment and development opportunities the average homeowner has