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Georgism

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Re: Georgism

#211

Post by AnimalMuppet »

LVTfan wrote: post #187
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I have yet to see a single valid reason as to why LTV should be the primary tax. I've seen a lot of words, but they all seem to start by assuming that LTV would be fair and the current system is not. That forms a very poor basis for convincing people who don't already agree. Here's my argument against LTV: Warren Buffet owns one modest house in Omaha. Should he be taxed based on the land value of that modest hous…

Most of his stock holdings occupy land in very valuable places, and aren't paying much in property tax. The principle is to pay for what you take, not for what you make. His modest home, likely on a modest lot, in a not-huge city, is worth little. For a while, he had a couple of places in Malibu, and he told the WSJ what he thought of Proposition 13, keeping the taxes ridiculously low. Arnold Schwarznegger told him t…

Sure, his home is worth little, but he's worth billions. Should he be taxed based on his billions, or only based on his home? I see the injustice in your proposal.

And, most of his stock holdings occupy land in very valuable places? True to some small degree, but not all that true overall. Take Coca-Cola, for instance. They own some very valuable land in Atlanta. But the value of Coca-Cola is much more than the value of the land, and is mostly unrelated to the value of the land. Should Coca-Cola be taxed based on the value of Coca-Cola, or on the value of Coca-Cola's land?

Re: Georgism

#212

Post by oDot »

geofft wrote: post #121
oDot wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An economy is driven by production, not consumption.

Sure. But the standard way of driving production is private consumption. Given that you have disincentivized the poor from consuming, what is the counterbalance that incentivizes the rich to produce? (There are a couple of standard answers, including government consumption / public works projects, that can address this.)

Note that a sales tax as only tax means no income tax, so overall a gain to production incentives.

Re: Georgism

#213

Post by oDot »

zozbot234 wrote: post #105
oDot wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-reso…

> 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.

I see. Well we seems to have different goals. As I see it, government is mostly good at destroying wealth, and so I aim to minimize their revenue.

> 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.)

I am essentially suggesting a non-refundable, uniform VAT

Re: Georgism

#215

Post by LVTfan »

free_rms wrote: post #124
LVTfan wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An acre of farmland might be worth $2500 or $5000, and that land has been improved by clearing, draining, fencing, etc. (improvements done by the current or an earlier owner or his tenant). LVT is based on the UNIMPROVED value of the land, so if there were an as-yet-uncleared acre nearby, it and the acre of farmland would be assessed at the same value. An acre in midtown Manhattan might be worth $250 million to as mu…

So it's all on the assessor to decide the 'proper' unimproved land values to raise enough revenue while not driving the wrong people out of business? At a national scale? On that note, is the inherent land value of a lot in Bushwick way higher then 20 years ago now that they've gentrified? Is neighborhood desirability an 'unimproved' attribute? I very much get where you guys are coming from in a philosophical sense,…

The assessor's job is just to determine the value of the various sites. It is said that a group of locally knowledgeable people could sit around a table with a large map of the community, and they'd quickly reach a consensus about what is the most valuable site in the city. And then they could go block by block determining the relative value of the various neighborhoods. From that, a land value map could be derived, and likely it would get a few tweaks from the community.

As Bushwick becomes popular, because of better transit, or community amenities or whatever, yes, the unimproved value of the sites served by them go up. A school develops an excellent reputation? Up go the land values. (Some say that in most suburban towns, the superintendent of schools is the highest paid employee, in part because s/he can influence "property values" -- more precisely, land values -- more than any other single person.)

My first acquaintance with Elizabeth Warren came from a book she wrote about 2003, whose title was something like "The Two Income Trap: How Middle Class Parents are Going Broke" and in part it was from seeking the best public schools for their children, and paying a huge share of their income for it, seldom to be matched by single parents.

Re: Georgism

#216

Post by zozbot234 »

oDot wrote: post #213
zozbot234 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-reso…

> 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. I see. Well we seems to have different goals. As I see it, government is mostly good at destroying wealth, and so I aim to minimize their revenue. > That would make it a tax on revenue, which is quite distortionary indeed and gen…

> As I see it, government is mostly good at destroying wealth, and so I aim to minimize their revenue.

The "excess cost" I was referring to is precisely a matter of destroying wealth. It's all well and good to limit government involvement in the economy but clearly, whatever revenue it does collect should be collected efficiently.

Re: Georgism

#217

Post by neilparikh »

emilfihlman wrote: post #117

Why should only bigger communities together own something? If I want to fuck out in the middle of nowhere and do my own thing, why should others be allowed to harass me there? Additionally the government printing money, giving it to us and then requiring us to give it back does not create value, it creates a loop that causes work for nothing.

Under Georgism, in practical terms, you would still be able to do that. The value of land in the middle of nowhere would be essentially 0, so you wouldn't need to pay much LVT. You may still need to pay some LVT, to reflect that the state is still providing you some services (in particular, enforcing your claim to the land).

Re: Georgism

#218

Post by LVTfan »

NumberWangMan wrote: post #169
LVTfan wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't the AMOUNT of land they use, but the value of what they use. An acre of good farmland might be $2500. An acre in Manhattan might be $250 million and up. The rental value of the land is proportional to the value of the land. And when the Single Tax was conceived, it was already abundantly clear that urban land values were far above rural land values, and rising much faster. Few tech companies will want to loc…

Hmm, that's a good point. Though, wouldn't an LVT that encourage companies to push all their employees to work from home, where possible? There are certainly benefits to that, but it might mean that certain industries get taxed much more heavily than others. Is it ok if distributed work-from-home software companies pay no tax at all, because they have no offices? The workers would pay tax on their own houses and apar…

A carbon tax and a tax on cigarettes are very consistent with the single tax. They're taxes on externalities imposed on the community.

Solar energy is an infinite resource, so there is no reason to charge for it, but for scarce or finite resources, pay for what you take.

Re: Georgism

#219

Post by scatters »

Mirioron wrote: post #182
jrs235 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>On that note, is the inherent land value of a lot in Bushwick way higher then 20 years ago now that they've gentrified? Is neighborhood desirability an 'unimproved' attribute? Yes. Desirability and infrastructure near land increases it's unimproved value.

So if I want my tax bill to be cheap I should be against everything that the government does that would improve life around my home? Won't this take NIMBYism to a whole new level?

Currently NIMBYs complain about changes that they perceive will lower the value of their real estate. Complaining instead about things that would increase the value of their property seems like a good change.

Re: Georgism

#220

Post by pydry »

rikroots wrote: post #167
pydry wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LVT would not be an appropriate method for targeting tax extraction from extremely wealthy landlords. They would (probably) make up their losses through rent increases and additional service charges Seriously?? If your inquiry concluded this then it certainly was being run on behalf of landlords. They would no more be able to make up their losses through rent increases than I could make up the loss of being charged…

> They would no more be able to make up their losses through rent increases than I could make up the loss of being charged extra for a loaf of bread at the supermarket by unilaterally raising my wages. One does not drive the other. Do you have research, or an evidence base, for this? > [...] it certainly was being run on behalf of landlords. It certainly was not.

>Do you have research, or an evidence base, for this?

Economics by Paul Samuelson: https://archive.org/details/economics00paul/page/603

Do you have research that indicates the opposite is likely to be true? I'd be really interested in seeing what that is based upon.

>It certainly was not.

It's not unusual among for economists to do this subconsciously due to the incentive structure of the profession.

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