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Why a land-value tax is inevitable

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Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#221

Post by jelliclesfarm »

paconbork wrote: post #175
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the needs of genes of prolific breeders who use women’s bodies as vessels I believe you mean the needs of actual human beings born of such people, to whom the God-given rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and yes, the collective inheritance of the commons, are owed.

Can you please point out to me the original source where said ‘God-given rights’ are proffered?

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#222

Post by jelliclesfarm »

8note wrote: post #162
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Parents pass down their genes. They benefit.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#223

Post by snicker7 »

valuearb wrote: post #216

The problem with this op-ed is that it's based on an entirely false premise, it completely ignores how much revenues governments need. Clinton was able to run a federal government spending less than 20% of GDP, since George Walker Bush federal spending has exploded to the 25 to 30% range. The reality is that 20% is plenty, and can solve all the problems government has the ability to solve. Need to start by NOT 1) ser…

Defence is 12% of federal spending -- or around ~2.5% of GDP, or a whopping 0.5% more than the NATO threshold.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#224

Post by adwf »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #187
adwf wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems to be either standard property taxes listed (with a bit of variation) or minor deployments as experiments?

That's the gist of why I was comparing it to communist economics - it works great in small communities, but when either the scale is large, and/or the stakes are high, it will be subject to inefficiency and corruption.

LVT experiments on the small scale have people highly invested in making it work. On the large scale, this will just be a matter of everyday bureaucracy and any competence will revert to the mean.

On the large scale, it will be subject to the exact same corruption seen elsewhere. Certain industries will carve out exceptions to the tax, certain people with influence will get their historical properties excluded, etc.

By and large I've heard of LVT being a replacement for Sales/VAT style taxes. Whilst those are often regressive, at least they are relatively simple, 20% VAT is 20% VAT.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#225

Post by CincinnatiMan »

scarmig wrote: post #209
paul_f wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a land value tax, not a tax on the improvements. If you have a lot worth $50,000 and a house worth $250,000, and place a value of $50,000 on it for tax purposes, do you propose people can buy your house for $50,000?

No, they buy the land underneath your house for $50,000. They can then charge you a use fee for the land. If you don't want to be charged a use fee, you publish a higher price for your land.

How does the use fee get set? I think you're simplifying things too much. Creating a land market where people can be forced to sell their land that they don't want to sell doesn't seem like it'd work.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#226

Post by CincinnatiMan »

pyuser583 wrote: post #196
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.

For a LVT, the value is whatever it was purchased for.

Typically land is bundled with the improvements to said land though.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#227

Post by snicker7 »

quotemstr wrote: post #219
valuearb wrote: post #216

The problem with this op-ed is that it's based on an entirely false premise, it completely ignores how much revenues governments need. Clinton was able to run a federal government spending less than 20% of GDP, since George Walker Bush federal spending has exploded to the 25 to 30% range. The reality is that 20% is plenty, and can solve all the problems government has the ability to solve. Need to start by NOT 1) ser…

> Need to start by not 1) serving as the worlds policeman 2) building double the aircraft carrier tonnage of the rest of the world combined. 3) spending a trillion dollars on newest latest fighters not ready for service when we aren't at war, 4) staging US troops and ships in the Middle East or Europe when both are immensely wealthy and able to defend themselves. 5) pouring $40B into a launch system design based on o…

Earmarks and pork funding is not even corruption. It is a representative's duty to advocate on behalf of their constituents. And constituents want spending programs in their communities.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#228

Post by quotemstr »

snicker7 wrote: post #227
quotemstr wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Need to start by not 1) serving as the worlds policeman 2) building double the aircraft carrier tonnage of the rest of the world combined. 3) spending a trillion dollars on newest latest fighters not ready for service when we aren't at war, 4) staging US troops and ships in the Middle East or Europe when both are immensely wealthy and able to defend themselves. 5) pouring $40B into a launch system design based on o…

Earmarks and pork funding is not even corruption. It is a representative's duty to advocate on behalf of their constituents. And constituents want spending programs in their communities.

There is a sense in which pork wastes money: distributed production is less efficient than centralized production. And you could call a congressman wasting the public's money to get something for this district a kind of corruption. But like I said, I think this inefficiency is a small price to pay for peace.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#229

Post by CincinnatiMan »

teddyh wrote: post #207
joe_the_user wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But a city needs different buildings with different uses, no? However, IIUC, a LVT would tax a plot of land by what use it could theoretically be put to in order to make the most money. And this is evaluated individually for each plot of land, with no regard for what would actually happen in reality if every single plot of land would actually be put to use in the most money-making way. Would a LVT not force a monocul…

This is an interesting thought. It's like how we want developers to build affordable housing, but through the market they are forced to only create "luxury" developments in order to make up for the large fixed cost of the land.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#230

Post by pashamur »

valuearb wrote: post #208
mullingitover wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really there just shouldn't be any privileged category for capital gains and it should be taxed like regular income, progressively.

The reason for giving capital gains a preferred long term rate is inflation. If you invest in business for 10 years and double your money, you've made a 7% annual return. But if inflation averaged 7% during that time you actually made zero economic gains. A better way to restore progressively to capital gains is to index them for inflation, and then you can tax them at ordinary income rates.

Yeah, it was an aha moment for me when I understood the reason for the cap gains / normal tax difference.

It makes sense that it's an attempt to index for inflation, although strange that there is only one cutoff (securities held for 1 year taxed the same as the ones held for 10 years); you would imagine some sort of step-down function would make more sense / track inflation more accurately (or indexing directly which is much harder).

So maybe different tax rates for 1/5/10/20 years held?

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