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

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#181

Post by throwaway201103 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:05 PM UTC

mullingitover wrote: post #98

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are big huge businesses we aren't adequately taxing: Big tech. When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more. And Jeff Bezos does not need more money.

> When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more. Agreed. We should be ruthlessly taxing capital gains, and in general should look upon money earned without laboring for it with scorn.

So taking an investment risk so that a startup can grow is to be looked on with scorn? You might be posting in the wrong community.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#182

Post by enriquto » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #148

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.

The most convincing argument for job guarantee over UBI I saw was plan jefes in argentina. It started out as a job guarantee, where women were given jobs as caregivers and got shifted to UBI where the women were told they didn't have to do the jobs but they'd still get the money. They still did the jobs when they didn't have to. They said it provided them with a social network and social interactions and most importa…

> The most convincing argument for job guarantee over UBI I saw was plan jefes in argentina.

The rest of your text seems to be an argument for UBI and against job guarantee. Is that first sentence what you meant?

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#183

Post by AnimalMuppet » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #110

hourislate wrote: post #53

The only thing inevitable will be that eventually Land-Value taxes will not be enough (if implemented) and then what? There is no end or limit to the amount of money a Government can squander.

While I don't agree with your premise that private sector is magically more efficient, let's just accept it. The government can also hand out cash raised from the LVT as a UBI. Problem solved.

If you think that solves the problem, I don't think you understood the problem...

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#184

Post by throwaway201103 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #168

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 m…

It's interesting and I need to do some more thinking and research. On the one hand I don't think that one should be forced off one's land because others could be using it in a more valuable way. However the whole idea of property rights is founded in improvement or creation of value. Abandonment is a thing, and if you do nothing to improve or derive value from land you can lose your property rights in it.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#185

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #173

joe_the_user wrote: post #160

I think the problem with land-value taxes is that objective valuation of raw land value is actually difficult and even arbitrary. If you say a parcel of land is valuable because there's a building on it, you wind-up with just a real estate tax. If you value all land the same, people will just abandon ownership of large parcels, probably with paradoxical results. Almost automatically, the assessment of just land has t…

You don’t need a great deal of precision with a land value tax. If the closest properties where sold at X$/ acre that’s a solid suggestion of the actual value of that land. The goal is essentially to separate the value of land based on local infrastructure like subway systems from the amount of effort put into improving the property. An empty lot that’s worth 10,000$ per acre may physically look the same as an empty…

You don’t need a great deal of precision with a land value tax.

You need a ball park figure for land value to work and even that is going to depend on the philosophy used for valuation. If Walmart buys the cheapest land it can find and builds a distribution center on that land, how much is that land worth? What they paid for it? What someone else would pay for it now? How bought all the parcels around it that now would be useful for housing?

Either paradigm is real estate valuation (at which point it become real estate tax) or the paradigm is something else with that something else up for grabs.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#186

Post by throwaway201103 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #44

mr_cyborg wrote: post #16

I’m struggling to envision how this would impact homeowners differently than the current property tax paradigm. If I have a house and the value of the property goes up, my property taxes increase. If I were to sell a house at market rate, theoretically it would be reflective of what rate it was being taxed at. How would this same situation play out with a land-value tax?

Homeowners whose physical home makes up a lot of the value of their property would probably see a decrease, and those whose home makes up a small amount of the value of their property would probably see an increase. The broad idea is to incentivize actually using land instead of sitting on empty lots waiting to flip them.

So what about specifically a vacant/unoccupied tax as opposed to an LVT? Some places in Canada are doing this to disincentivize ownership of vacant condos/properties.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#187

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

adwf wrote: post #123

ichbinwiederda wrote: post #68

I detest property taxes. What ends up happening is that people who are on the brink of poverty keep losing their (inherited) land because the government deems it an income generating asset, even though it is not (it's either their home or some dilapidated piece of land without much actual income generation prospects). Often they also get screwed on the selling because they are under pressure and because they are not…

Indeed, the biggest problem with LVT is who exactly gets to value the land and how. It's an extraordinarily difficult issue which would require a very precise implementation. Once you start assessing peoples property in such a wholesale fashion, you almost end up in a classic "managed economy" situation. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" failed due to the combined difficulty of asse…

Except that it appears to have already been implemented in many places and it seems to work just fine. See the Wikipedia article on it.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#188

Post by pydry » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

enriquto wrote: post #182

pydry wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most convincing argument for job guarantee over UBI I saw was plan jefes in argentina. It started out as a job guarantee, where women were given jobs as caregivers and got shifted to UBI where the women were told they didn't have to do the jobs but they'd still get the money. They still did the jobs when they didn't have to. They said it provided them with a social network and social interactions and most importa…

> The most convincing argument for job guarantee over UBI I saw was plan jefes in argentina. The rest of your text seems to be an argument for UBI and against job guarantee. Is that first sentence what you meant?

Yes. I don't really see how I was arguing in favor of UBI.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#189

Post by AnimalMuppet » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:18 PM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #163

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 lobbyi…

I'm not sure that LTV is a great idea. But if it is, why stop at land?

Take Google, for instance. Google owns some buildings on some land. But, in proportion to how valuable Google is, they don't own much land. What they own is a mountain of code, and multiple mountains of data. The single most valuable thing they own is the google.com domain. And out of all of that, we're going to tax... the land? Huh?

If all money came from land, then LTV would make sense. When it was devised, that was more or less true. But it's not the 1800s any more, and that is a long way from true today.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#190

Post by willcipriano » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

scarmig wrote: post #171

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.

I'm curious what mechanisms it proposes. One of the funner ones I've heard of is that the owner and payer of the property tax performs the valuation of the land: it makes implementation pretty much free and uncontroversial! The only caveat is that whatever value the owner lists as the value is an amount they must accept for the land in a sale (plus some meaningful fee to drive off trolls). So, sure, you can list the…

I would not sell my home at the assessed value. As I would have to move my family, get a new mortgage, and change jobs and schools potentially. I live in a fairly expensive area and a home that meets my requirements (no hoa, not a townhouse) is hard to find. I may have to fork out twice as much to get something that meets those requirements. I don't see that as a great reason why I should pay taxes more than my neighbors.