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Georgism

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Re: Georgism

#101

Post by free_rms »

tlholaday wrote: post #89
CydeWeys wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sort of agree that replacing property taxes with land-value taxes would make sense, so long as you can actually do the value assessments fairly and impartially. What doesn't remotely make sense to me is the suggestion that LVT should be the primary or even only tax, which you see others arguing for here in the comments.

> What doesn't remotely make sense to me is the suggestion that LVT should be the primary or even only tax When you were new to arithmetic, did it remotely make sense to you that the number of integers and the number of even integers was the same? If you find a surprising conclusion, consider reading the argument. Perhaps you will discover that you agree with the premises and the reasoning, and the conclusion will se…

If the arithmetic for this tax scheme doesn't seem to remotely work out, ruminations on the nature of infinity aren't going to set me at ease with it.

Here in the finite world, most of the money moving around is in services, while most of the land is disconnected from that economy. How are you getting 1-2 trillion in tax revenue from land without making, say, farming economically unviable? Will it just be riddled through with exceptions and carveouts?

Re: Georgism

#102

Post by jrs235 »

snidane wrote: post #47
CydeWeys wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tax should tech companies pay then, given that the only land they really need is cheap rural land for data centers? This taxation system does make sense for land, but there's way more economic activity happening that isn't associated with land than there is that is.

Tech companies should pay for what they use. They are efficient at not consuming too many resources while producing a lot of value? Probably shouldn't pay much then. But this applies not only to big tech companies but to individuals too - they shouldn't pay much if they don't consume or extract from others. Taxes are only a last-resort mechanism to raise money in absence of proper funding model. If you can price gove…

*exclusive land possession rights

Re: Georgism

#103

Post by pydry »

CydeWeys wrote: post #74
NumberWangMan wrote: post #67

A lot of people focus on the fairness of the Land Value Tax, but the consequences of using one are just as interesting if not more. This tax has been put into practice in some cities in Pennsylvania, and there's evidence that it has a whole bunch of positive effects on the city, due to the way that it incentivises improving your property and making the most of your land (since you're going to be taxed on it pretty mu…

I sort of agree that replacing property taxes with land-value taxes would make sense, so long as you can actually do the value assessments fairly and impartially. What doesn't remotely make sense to me is the suggestion that LVT should be the primary or even only tax, which you see others arguing for here in the comments.

I think a lot of people don't really realize how much free money is creamed off by property owners and resource extractors.

Not least because of their constant attempts to disguise what they do as productive.

It's not like people are in a coffee shop and seeing "% of this product that goes to rent" built into the prices. They tend to assume that the price of the cup is basically the ingredients (which is why people balk at paying for tap water in restaurants).

Re: Georgism

#104

Post by MiroF »

free_rms wrote: post #101
tlholaday wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What doesn't remotely make sense to me is the suggestion that LVT should be the primary or even only tax When you were new to arithmetic, did it remotely make sense to you that the number of integers and the number of even integers was the same? If you find a surprising conclusion, consider reading the argument. Perhaps you will discover that you agree with the premises and the reasoning, and the conclusion will se…

If the arithmetic for this tax scheme doesn't seem to remotely work out, ruminations on the nature of infinity aren't going to set me at ease with it. Here in the finite world, most of the money moving around is in services, while most of the land is disconnected from that economy. How are you getting 1-2 trillion in tax revenue from land without making, say, farming economically unviable? Will it just be riddled thr…

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...

It does not seem at all clear to me that most economic activity is in services and not in resources/monopoly ownership.

> farming economically unviable

Farming is already unviable, that's why we subsidize it so heavily.

Re: Georgism

#105

Post by zozbot234 »

oDot wrote: post #87
zozbot234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, the thing is that the whole "single tax idea" is a bit misguided. A consumption tax (sales tax) is great, but there are some sensible reasons to tax capital income/investment to some extent, too. Mostly, because it correlates somewhat with basic ability-to-pay; also, because people might try to disguise income/expenses as investment-related in order to shield them from taxation, and having a more uniform tax…

> Mostly, because it correlates somewhat with basic ability-to-pay; What do you care about ability-to-pay? > ...also, because people might try to disguise income/expenses as investment-related in order to shield them from taxation, and having a more uniform tax base helps prevent this. You can't shield from that tax. All entities pay, for every sale, no refunds.

> What do you care about ability-to-pay?

Because it helps align incentives. You can have a 7% tax on sales, or a 5% tax on sales plus a 2% tax based on a noisy correlate. The latter will raise more revenue at a lower excess cost.

> You can't shield from that tax. All entities pay, for every sale, no refunds.

That would make it a tax on revenue, which is quite distortionary indeed and generally considered a last-resort. (Or you could have a VAT, where all entities pay but tax paid on non-final sales is refunded. VATs are quite good but not totally free of this kind of gaming.)

Re: Georgism

#106

Post by pydry »

CydeWeys wrote: post #32
JSavageOne wrote: post #17

I've yet to see a single valid objection as to why LVT (Land Value Tax) should not be the primary tax, yet it's nowhere to be found in the political dialogue. Such a shame that the majority of the tax burden instead falls on the working class while the landowners get a free ride.

What tax should tech companies pay then, given that the only land they really need is cheap rural land for data centers? This taxation system does make sense for land, but there's way more economic activity happening that isn't associated with land than there is that is.

An extremely heavy tax on holding patents.

Patents are essentially the "land" of the tech industry. With weaker patents there probably wouldn't be any such thing as "big tech" as it would be constantly disrupted from below.

The exception is google's search index, which is, given its capital intensity and power requirements, practically a form of of heavy industry on a par with aerospace or automotive.

Re: Georgism

#107

Post by MiroF »

EGreg wrote: post #69
chii wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why there is still so much poverty even while there has been so much progress there's been an objective improvement to the % of people in poverty over the past few centuries. It's just that there's an even larger improvement to those who were rich, relative to the improvements to the poor. If you had a choice, you would choose to be poor today, than to be poor a century or two ago.

I upvoted you, to counteract the downvotes. You are correct... obviously science and technology have improved the lot of the ordinary person, and made us all much, much richer. The main issue is that automation tends to hurt workers while it helps consumers. And since most people are both — they have to work harder and harder just to stay in place. Until we put in place a UBI and universal health insurance, pass over…

> Edit: funny, I am getting downvoted also, for agreeing with you

If the parent was being downvoted for a certain view, why is this at all surprising?

Re: Georgism

#108

Post by toohotatopic »

MiroF wrote: post #96
toohotatopic wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the same. You cannot transport voice over a pigeon, at least not instantly. If you don' allow substitutes then every brand has a monopoly on the products of their brand. Technically that's a monopoly. But nobody complains about McDonalds having a monopoly on McDonalds burgers.

And you can't farm without farmland. Selling other goods and services is a very imperfect substitute for farming. Other burgers are a pretty good substitute for McDonald's burgers.

We are back at the assumption that farming cannot be substituted.

For a society, it is true that farming can hardly be substituted. But for an individual, it's more than possible to have another profession.

Re: Georgism

#109

Post by snidane »

andruby wrote: post #28
nabla9 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is brilliant way to solve it so that value and market-value meet. Keep the land always in market. It's called Common Ownership Self-Assessed Tax (COST). Land owner would self-assess the value of assets they possess, pay a tax on that value. The owner would be required to sell the asset to anyone willing to purchase them at this self-assessed price. If you value the land high for any reason and want to keep it,…

That would mean anyone who has enough money can buy the land that people live on just to harass them. It’s an interesting idea, and I like it in principal, but I also like living in my house on my land knowing that I need to give permission before someone can buy it.

You solve this easily by assessing value and buying the land rights for a period of time - say 7 years.

So basically you lock down the price in an auction once every 7 years giving you enough predictability and time to justify your investment.

This is how these groups operate in present day already

1. businesses renting space in cities - they lock down rent for say 10 years

2. individual apartment renters - price is usually locked down for 1 year

3. domain name system - you lock down piece of land in "string space" for a year

4. electromagnetic spectrum auctions (LTE, 5g spectrum bands for telephone companies) every several years usually when new technology is deployed

5. technology patents locked down for 20 years

6. Government LAND to LANDOWNERS - locked down once, with expiration time at infinity and passable down through generations

It helps to see what Georgists actually want to achieve with LVT - proper auction mechanism for something everybody needs and there is scarcity of it - land.

For political reasons they attack it from the position of tax, not from the position of an auction. Which makes it a bit convoluted and confusing unfortunately.

Re: Georgism

#110

Post by rswail »

snidane wrote: post #47
CydeWeys wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tax should tech companies pay then, given that the only land they really need is cheap rural land for data centers? This taxation system does make sense for land, but there's way more economic activity happening that isn't associated with land than there is that is.

Tech companies should pay for what they use. They are efficient at not consuming too many resources while producing a lot of value? Probably shouldn't pay much then. But this applies not only to big tech companies but to individuals too - they shouldn't pay much if they don't consume or extract from others. Taxes are only a last-resort mechanism to raise money in absence of proper funding model. If you can price gove…

If you follow MMT, taxes are the way governments withdraw money from circulation.

> So you collect the money for the infrastructure project by land "tax" before you begin with construction.

No, you use land taxes after completion to pay back the debt incurred to create the infrastructure. Adjustments of valuations based on the advantages of the infrastructure result in a greater burden of that repayment on those that receive the greatest benefit, but everyone contributes.

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