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Georgism

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Re: Georgism

#221

Post by LVTfan »

epistasis wrote: post #199
NumberWangMan wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you take this a few more steps, what happens is that those employees that can work more remotely without significantly decreasing productivity will leave, because of the savings. Which will decrease land prices from those that truly benefit from co-locating, increasing their profits. A LVT will generally greatly decrease the concentration of wealth. The massive concentration of wealth in the Bay Area economy comes…

Paying more than 30% of one's income for housing-related expenses -- not just rent and utilities, or PITI plus utilities plus maintenance -- has become almost universal.

It is a form of sharecropping.

And then we must pay the dumb taxes on top of it. Sales taxes, wage taxes.

Taxing land value fully would bring the purchase price of a home down to the depreciated value of the structure plus something for the lovely mature landscaping. Instead of a downpayment on the land and building, one would, in effect, be purchasing the building from its current owner, and taking over the stream of location-based payment to the community. No down payment on that. Mortgages would be smaller, and shorter, and the sum of the mortgage payment and one's land value tax would be a lot less than the current sum of one's housing-related costs plus the dumb taxes. If one wanted to move from one city to another, selling one's home would be easier because more people could afford it, and in one's new city, one could afford a similar home, because wages in the new city would support the higher tax on the higher land value there.

Today, moving from Peoria to NYC or Silicon Valley is a whole other ballgame.

Phase this in, removing the dumb taxes, one after another, and collecting an increasing share of the annual value of the land, and our children will have better opportunities to thrive.

Re: Georgism

#222

Post by scatters »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #206
snidane wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military is actually a great example for LVT. If you mean defence part of it. Invading other countries is likely profitable for select groups so who else should pay for it if it gets approved. But let's focus on defence. It's not that much individual people, who need protection, because they can flee to another country in case of war. What actually needs protection is property which you cannot take with you. And voil…

First: "They can flee to another country in case of war" is terrible reasoning. You expect the other country to let them in? All of them? Yeah, that's not the way things actually happen in this flawed world. Most of them will not have the opportunity to flee. So... they should just die? No, the military is there to protect the people , not just the wealth. So your post seems like it's trying to rationalize a not-up-f…

Since when has the purpose of invasion been genocide?

Re: Georgism

#223

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #203
balfirevic wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land value tax is considered among the economists as being one of the least distortionary taxes.

I don't believe so. It's considered to remove distortions in land use , as compared to property taxes that include the value of structures. In other words, you get less vacant lots and more productive use of land. Which there are good arguments for. But proposing to replace income and sales taxes with land value taxes, making it the primary tax -- which would necessarily skyrocket the land value tax to produce the sa…

[deleted]

Re: Georgism

#224

Post by LVTfan »

perilunar wrote: post #132
rikroots wrote: post #4

Back in a different life, I worked on the Lyons Inquiry which looked at English Local Government finances. Final report was issued in 2007[1]. As part of the work we had to look into Land Value Taxes as a supplement/alternative to Council Tax and Business Rates. There's nothing wrong with the idea. The big issues were mainly around introducing a new tax system and the massive upheavals and uncertainties businesses an…

> "Why tax property?" Because its appreciation in value is largely unearned wealth, especially in a country like England with a long history of aristocracy and landed gentry.

And as Adam Smith pointed out, it is there, and visible. It can't be hidden, can't be spirited out of town or offshore during the dark of night. You don't even need to know who it is that owns it; as long as they pay their land value tax, they can remain anonymous.

You might search for the term "unearned increment." It was a common expression to point out what people who reaped but did not sow receive due to our failure to collect the economic rent.

One person's unearned increment is another's — and likely many others' — lost birthright. Who is entitled to it? All of us! How do we implement this? Land value taxation.

Re: Georgism

#225

Post by _4ziu »

yufeng66 wrote: post #9

The founding father of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, was heavily influenced by Georgism. He believed all income derived from land, including appreciation of the land, should be heavily taxed. He incorporated it into three principle of the people, which is the cornerstone Kuomintang ideology. But nobody would argue Taiwan is a Georgism heaven right now. Why? Rich and political powerful people own the land. G…

It is because the rich and powerful own the land that georgism is hard to push through. You could implement georgist laws simply, but the rich and powerful have connections that you don't and politics will always favour them, so you won't get any of that policy to hold. This isn't georgism's fault in particular, but the fault of just about any tax scheme.

Re: Georgism

#226

Post by AnimalMuppet »

scatters wrote: post #222
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: "They can flee to another country in case of war" is terrible reasoning. You expect the other country to let them in? All of them? Yeah, that's not the way things actually happen in this flawed world. Most of them will not have the opportunity to flee. So... they should just die? No, the military is there to protect the people , not just the wealth. So your post seems like it's trying to rationalize a not-up-f…

Since when has the purpose of invasion been genocide?

The point of invasion has been to kill people until the other government will do what you want. "Kill people" is supposed to be just the military, but there are inevitably civilian casualties. A big part of the point of a military (namely defense) is to keep anybody else's military from getting inside our borders, where it's our people being killed.

Both snidane and I assumed that there would be danger to civilians in case of an invasion. The invader doesn't have to intend genocide for that to be true.

Re: Georgism

#227

Post by neilparikh »

sudosysgen wrote: post #143
zozbot234 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Taiwan (in common with other Asian countries) mostly allocate land to the private sector via long-term leases, as opposed to ownership of indeterminate duration? That would be enough to regard it as quite Georgist.

Leasehold land is mostly a thing in communist countries that claim to temporarily implement capitalism.

One example (maybe the only example?) of a capitalist country with leasehold land is Singapore. The land policy there seems to have worked relatively well.

Re: Georgism

#228

Post by LVTfan »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #211
LVTfan wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To the degree that Coca-Cola is harming people, they owe something. Coke likely occupies a very valuable site in Atlanta, and perhaps has O&O bottlers on locally valuable sites, near centers of population, served well by transportation infrastructure that brings ingredients in and finished products to the customers. When communities start collecting the full value of those sites (and stop burdening the buildings and equipment with taxes) who will be harmed?

Should Coca-Cola be taxed on its good will? or for adding to people's satisfaction?

The biggest promoters of Henry George's single tax were business people who saw a way to a more just society in which all could prosper. But there were others -- railroad, steel, other monopolies -- whose continued position depended on keeping their monopolies, and they were less than enthusiastic about the concept.

Who owns the land in the central business district of most cities? Often it is the corporations that use it, but frequently it is trusts of people long dead, whose heirs just keep enjoying the ever-rising land rent. They didn't create the value. The corporations should pay for the value of the land they use; so should the trusts who collect the land rent of our most valuable sites.

And the value of Warren Buffett's holdings might be affected, but the freer market it will create will provide opportunities for all sorts of entrepreneurs to work their business plans.

And recall the data on how concentrated stock ownership is.

Re: Georgism

#229

Post by LVTfan »

corpMaverick wrote: post #191
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,…

What happens if I build a house in the land ? Is the house is still mine ? It seems like it would keep me from improving the land.

Your possession would be just as secure as it is today. If a huge city grew up around it, your property taxes would rise over time, and at some point, your single family home would be surrounded by skyscrapers, and no longer be using the land effectively. But if you were wedded to that house in that location, and had the funds to continue to pay your property tax, or your land value tax, you could stay forever. No one would stop you.

Occasionally one sees a diner in a skyscraper neighborhood. Under LVT, their incentive would be to find another place to conduct business, perhaps on the 1st floor of a taller building, and let the site be redeveloped to meet current needs.

Re: Georgism

#230

Post by roenxi »

EGreg wrote: post #118
MiroF wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Because downvotes are not supposed to be for disagreement. This is HN. The standard is to downvote low quality comments only.

Downvotes are explicitly a tool for when people disagree.

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

Although in a practical sense that is bowing to the inevitable.

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