Why a land-value tax is inevitable • Hacker News Board

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#161

Post by paconbork » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:41 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #149

paconbork wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case you should sell your property and make bank on what Walmart would be willing to pay for it. (If you wouldn't make bank then your taxes wouldn't be prohibitively high)

Why would Walmart make a deal when they could just wait for or lobby the county to valuate your land at some excessive value and force a sale in distress? LVT is just bad policy that sounds ok in concept. In my city, inner city residential property is near worthless once it falls below section 8 standards. The taxes are low too as result. With a LVT scheme, someone would cook up some “true” value subjectively, which…

Can't Walmart already do this? Property assessors already estimate the value of your property and the value of the land plays a part.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#162

Post by 8note » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:44 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #95

Ericson2314 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, or not nearly as much. The needs of a child are mediated by productivity, which has been wildly different throughout history. E.g. maybe we'll have practical fusion in 100 years and can support 100 billion people no problem. But the surface area of the earth is fixed. If you want 100 acres to do nothing good with, do it with a giant seastead.

That’s not my point. And you didn’t answer my question. You spoke of commons as collective inheritance. A serial breeder..say..someone who has a couple of children with different women more selfish than someone who has 1-2 children. The commons will be saturated by the needs of genes of prolific breeders who use women’s bodies as vessels. Is that selfish? Since we are talking about selfishness and commons as a collec…

This parent does not get that benefit though, each child does usually when you say somebody is selfish, they're actually doing stuff that gains benefits for themselves.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#163

Post by mythrwy » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

LVT is a great idea.

I'd also like to see more general resource use taxes (i.e taxes on raw materials like water, oil, aluminum etc.). They could be adjusted based on economic conditions (instead of playing shell games with interest rates) and adjusted for external effects. Make it formulaic. Open source, everyone can see how it works and who adjusted and how and it's not a closed door XX party with input from lobbyists.

Among other good effects I see this encouraging efficient use and recycling.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#164

Post by coddle-hark » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:46 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #156

bryanlarsen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That works for internal products, but not foreign ones. If you're importing from somewhere that also has a comparable carbon tax it's fine, but otherwise you have to apply the carbon tax to all imports. Doing so also likely violates any free trade agreements you've signed. It's a hard problem, but the gains are massive, so it's worth it. It'll be a lot easier if a set of countries do this together.

I think the solution here is likely to pass extra-onerous taxes on imports, and then tell the host countries "If you don't like it, apply the tax yourselves, and then we'll remove ours once we deem yours satisfactory".

I dunno, that sounds like a trade war to me. If it were this easy there’d be no need for international diplomacy.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#165

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

The big moral problem I have with a recurrent tax on assets like land or improvements on land (buildings) is that it erodes the fundamental right to private ownership. What does it mean to own anything if policies can retroactively apply taxes to it or continually extract taxes and ultimately take that asset away from you? That’s simply not compatible with a free society and it amounts to theft in my opinion.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#166

Post by roenxi » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #157

The idea of land-value tax strongly reminds me of the often cited, and much maligned, so-called fiduciary duty to shareholders which CEOs and/or board members reportedly have. This duty creates, it is said, an incentive towards naked short-term greed, which is often described as a bad thing. Now, even though this duty is also usually derided as fictional, the argument, if this duty did exist, is reasonable. But does…

> ... in essence forcing landowners to always use the land in a way which extracts the maximum amount of money from it ...

That incentive already exists, landholders typically use their land in a high-value way. If you cast your eye on Europe there are a large contingent of undeserving people who have generations of wealth that they secure through owning land, which does not degrade over time. The big win of a land tax is about breaking ultra-low-risk inter-generational wealth transfer. If wealth is transferred between generations there at least has to be some level of competent management demonstrated by each new layer of the family tree.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#167

Post by chills » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #11

1. UBI 2. LVT 3. Environmental externality taxes That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.

I think you'd need to widen point 3 to be a Pigovian tax[1], and add a fourth point for a severance tax[2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severance_tax

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#168

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #157

The idea of land-value tax strongly reminds me of the often cited, and much maligned, so-called fiduciary duty to shareholders which CEOs and/or board members reportedly have. This duty creates, it is said, an incentive towards naked short-term greed, which is often described as a bad thing. Now, even though this duty is also usually derided as fictional, the argument, if this duty did exist, is reasonable. But does…

The idea of a LVT is that valuable land should an efficient use - the obvious example of inefficiency are the upper middle class neighborhoods on the SF Peninsula - Silicon Valley. The aggressive zoning and relatively low tax situation mean that it's impossible for people who get job in Silicon Valley to live there, causing crazy spill over to the rest of the SF Bay Area. Theoretically, forcing up taxes would force more efficient uses of land - allow the building of apartment high rises and so generally increase the affordability of housing.

But that's theoretically. Whether you could actually impose this regime is a different matter. What the "real" value of land isn't a clear thing thing imo. A town might that since it's zoning prevents building much, it's land isn't worth much.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#169

Post by throwaway201103 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:50 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #104

Rickvst wrote: post #18

Land-value tax doesn't have huge inefficiencies like some other taxes. But the hard part is assessing "value". How should land value be decided? The book "Radical Markets" has some good insights on how to find the value of every plot of land by using markets.

> But the hard part is assessing "value" Insurers have no problems assessing land value and have been doing it for centuries.

Insurers assess improvement value. Land is not insured, because it really can't be destroyed. If you house burns down, the land is still there. The only thing you lost is the house.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#170

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

bhawks wrote: post #115

Ericson2314 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern Monetary theory is theory not policy. The jobs guarantee that goes with it I really don't like. It's stupid in 2020 to not be trying to reduce the total labor per person. Sure, some infrastructure projects are really important, not profitable, and might even require the training of new labor to get it done. They should definitely still happen. But I see no good reason to hitch that to jobs guarantee.

Reducing labor as a goal seems rather odd. Why do you feel people should not have the freedom to work? What would you rather people do instead?

[deleted]