Book Review: Progress and Poverty • Hacker News Board

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#121

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 14, 2022, 10:01 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #119

notahacker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, much of the value locked in shares is land or land-like assets but a much higher proportion of the value of the average middle class person's property is land. So as taxes go it's incredibly favourable to most one percenters, and ordinary homeowners are amongst those whose taxes must make up the difference. (And Single Taxers have to raise 1/3 of GDP from someone so its not like the possibility of the middle cl…

Even if you focus on real estate alone, land is a "much higher" portion of that value only in urban cores where owning one's residence would be relatively uncommon (and that for very sensible, rational reasons). The areas that are most commonly associated with middle-class real estate ownership have significantly lower land values. While it's hard to say whether a genuine "single tax" is actually feasible given moder…

[deleted]

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#122

Post by notahacker » Sat, May 14, 2022, 10:09 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #119

notahacker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, much of the value locked in shares is land or land-like assets but a much higher proportion of the value of the average middle class person's property is land. So as taxes go it's incredibly favourable to most one percenters, and ordinary homeowners are amongst those whose taxes must make up the difference. (And Single Taxers have to raise 1/3 of GDP from someone so its not like the possibility of the middle cl…

Even if you focus on real estate alone, land is a "much higher" portion of that value only in urban cores where owning one's residence would be relatively uncommon (and that for very sensible, rational reasons). The areas that are most commonly associated with middle-class real estate ownership have significantly lower land values. While it's hard to say whether a genuine "single tax" is actually feasible given moder…

Land values vary from place to place, but I can't think significant pockets of middle class housing in developed countries where the value of the underlying land is as insignificant to the homeowners' net worth as natural resources are to Facebook's market cap.

If we plug in something approaching real data, the UK government statistics agency assesses that the UK has £6tr in land value (more than the value of the assets that sit on it!) of which two thirds is owned by householders. And there's an annual government budget of 1tr so those land value taxes are going to be a really high proportion of the total value of the land (and property that sits on it). Good luck convincing the average homeowner who takes 30 years to pay for their home from their salary and typically retires not long afterwards that the tax incidence of a Single Tax will be favourable to them

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#123

Post by Simon_O_Rourke » Sun, May 15, 2022, 8:15 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #84

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.

So you'd propose taxing meth, heroin and goodness knows what else too? While tax is merely an inconvenience for the wealthy, for the poor it can be a eat-or-starve decision.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#124

Post by zozbot234 » Sun, May 15, 2022, 10:09 AM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #122

zozbot234 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you focus on real estate alone, land is a "much higher" portion of that value only in urban cores where owning one's residence would be relatively uncommon (and that for very sensible, rational reasons). The areas that are most commonly associated with middle-class real estate ownership have significantly lower land values. While it's hard to say whether a genuine "single tax" is actually feasible given moder…

Land values vary from place to place, but I can't think significant pockets of middle class housing in developed countries where the value of the underlying land is as insignificant to the homeowners' net worth as natural resources are to Facebook's market cap. If we plug in something approaching real data, the UK government statistics agency assesses that the UK has £6tr in land value (more than the value of the ass…

> Good luck convincing the average homeowner who takes 30 years to pay for their home from their salary and typically retires not long afterwards

But that's exactly the point - these people are glorified renters, they don't really structurally benefit when land values go up. The fact that a Georgist tax has to be introduced gradually in order not to be punitive towards those who happen to be holding land at any given time is well known. But we already have property taxes for a start, many countries have large one-time fees on real estate transactions etc. These are taxes that could quite easily be replaced by a shift to LVT.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#125

Post by andrewjl » Mon, May 16, 2022, 11:26 PM UTC

igorkraw wrote: post #97

andrewjl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You're begging the question here. Currently we need land for these but that can change.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#126

Post by igorkraw » Tue, May 17, 2022, 10:52 AM UTC

andrewjl wrote: post #125

igorkraw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're begging the question here. Currently we need land for these but that can change.

No, I'm simply asking the inconvenient question, that's different. How can it change?

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#127

Post by prichino » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #73

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.

> 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…

I apologize for the uncalled snark. My point is that at the end of the day everything valuable at some point came from the land. The Intel factory is just wealth that was extracted and accumulated earlier, it is an actual, valuable asset.

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#128

Post by prichino » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

igorkraw wrote: post #97

andrewjl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

And to add, and where do you get the materials to build the wind turbines and solar plants?

Re: Book Review: Progress and Poverty

#129

Post by prichino » Mon, May 23, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #108

klyrs wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The exact proximity of earth to the sun is what gives the land on earth value. In fact, this implies that humans did none of the work, they just took what was already there and labeled it their own.

Not quite, owners DID the work and labeled it their own.