Allegedly, Karl Marx called Georgism "capitalism's last ditch ". I can't find a source, but this was an interesting collection of historical thoughts: https://merionwest.com/2019/06/02/through-letters-the-gap-be...
Georgism
231–240 of 338 posts
Re: Georgism
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
OK, but why just the land? Trusts hold stock, too, that some long-dead person bought. Their heirs receive the dividends from that stock, for not having done anything whatsoever. By your logic, why should that not be taxed?
What is so magical about land, that only that should be taxed? What makes it different from all other assets?
> And recall the data on how concentrated stock ownership is.
Yes, I recall the data on how concentrated stock ownership is. The exact same logic you are using on land tax applies to stock ownership. So... what was your point?
Re: Georgism
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
The status quo is a jawdroppingly fast and totally unprecedented reduction in poverty [0]. If my goal were to reduce poverty; my strategy would be to defend the status quo. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty
You see how that's non-responsive to the parent, right?
If parent wanted a direct response they should have posted a concrete suggestion. There wasn't a lot there to respond to.
Technically speaking; there isn't anybody who would even blink at the idea of making things better. The status quo exists because there are a bunch of people who think [proposed change] makes things worse. Poverty isn't even a particularly important aspect of the decision making process and its extreme form might be eradicated in a generation if Africa gets hit by the same forces as Asia.
It will be difficult to make such rapid improvement out to be in need of major changes.
Re: Georgism
#234A lot of people focus on the fairness of the Land Value Tax, but the consequences of using one are just as interesting if not more. This tax has been put into practice in some cities in Pennsylvania, and there's evidence that it has a whole bunch of positive effects on the city, due to the way that it incentivises improving your property and making the most of your land (since you're going to be taxed on it pretty mu…
I sort of agree that replacing property taxes with land-value taxes would make sense, so long as you can actually do the value assessments fairly and impartially. What doesn't remotely make sense to me is the suggestion that LVT should be the primary or even only tax, which you see others arguing for here in the comments.
The reason Henry George thought it should be the only tax is because of the economic consequences. Since land is by and large fixed in quantity and a society's productive uses of land are largely dictated by the technology of the times then a Land Value Tax would not create inefficiencies in the market the way other taxes like tariffs or an income tax do.
Re: Georgism
#235A lot of people focus on the fairness of the Land Value Tax, but the consequences of using one are just as interesting if not more. This tax has been put into practice in some cities in Pennsylvania, and there's evidence that it has a whole bunch of positive effects on the city, due to the way that it incentivises improving your property and making the most of your land (since you're going to be taxed on it pretty mu…
You would probably want to include some tax advantaged incentives to maintain a bit of public space, public art, parks, or just green spaces. Giving over some portion of your land for public benefit, even if limited use, should be encouraged rather than penalized. It would also encourage more interesting usage patterns and development than pure land-use maximization would do. The latter might have you end up with blo…
some cities already do this, with, it seems, mixed results
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_owned_public_space
https://cooperativecity.org/2017/11/01/privately-owned-publi...
Re: Georgism
#236Earlier 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…
> When the supply of housing remains constant and the demand of housing remains constant then prices remain constant. LVT changes none of these variables directly. Doesn't LVT increase the cost of providing the already existing housing and wouldn't that decrease the supply of housing? This would apply one time when the LVT comes into effect.
>Doesn't LVT increase the cost of providing the already existing housing
No, it just shifts where the land rents go.
Depending on how it was implemented it could lead to a wave of property developers going spectacularly bankrupt and a lot of mortgages secured on the value of land would be defaulted on. Stock market would likely take a hit/tank.
Re: Georgism
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, LVT adds no cost to providing housing. All land is taxed, so a landowner has to pay the same tax whether the land is empty, or has a single floor house, or a 30 story apartment. If anything, it encourages building more, so that the income from the rent can be used to the pay the LVT.
> No, LVT adds no cost to providing housing. I'm not talking about long-term, but the initial effect of LVT coming into effect. If the landlord has to pay more then that's an increase in cost. Landlord income was likely at equilibrium before LVT. Those that could afford to lower prices to outcompete others probably already did so. As a result I don't see how we can expect landlords to eat the cost instead of passing…
>Those that could afford to lower prices to outcompete others probably already did so.
Why on earth would you assume that a landlord charging market rent would lower their prices when there's nothing forcing them to?
>As a result I don't see how we can expect landlords to eat the cost instead of passing it on.
Heavily leveraged landlords would be able to pass the costs on in the form of defaulting on mortgages. Non-leveraged landlords being forced to eat the costs would likely be very unhappy about being forced to "eat the costs" (lose their stream of unearned income), but they would have few other options. Violence would be a significant possibility.
Re: Georgism
#238Monopoly was based on, or one might say perverted from, a game created to inculcate Georgist ideas in children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord%27s_Game .
Re: Georgism
#239A lot of people focus on the fairness of the Land Value Tax, but the consequences of using one are just as interesting if not more. This tax has been put into practice in some cities in Pennsylvania, and there's evidence that it has a whole bunch of positive effects on the city, due to the way that it incentivises improving your property and making the most of your land (since you're going to be taxed on it pretty mu…
You would probably want to include some tax advantaged incentives to maintain a bit of public space, public art, parks, or just green spaces. Giving over some portion of your land for public benefit, even if limited use, should be encouraged rather than penalized. It would also encourage more interesting usage patterns and development than pure land-use maximization would do. The latter might have you end up with blo…
The problem with “privately owned public space” is that it tends to reduce demand for actual public space; the majority of people never do anything that would offend the land owner, so never see the problem, while e.g. political speech, actual freedom, and all the other great things we get out of public space are silenced.
Re: Georgism
#240Earlier 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,…
I’m thinking that assessing is the wrong approach. If it could be baked into negotiations Instead the market could do it’s thing and find the proper price.
Having auctions continuously or frequently might be a bit aggressive, otoh only doing negotiations when changing “owners” might be to slow and produce odd incnentives. Not sure what the middle ground is though, 10-year leases?
Edit: Some of this is more or less what’s happening when buying a property based on a mortgage. The bank decides what the property might be worth, and what the new owner will be able to pay in rent. It must be possible to do slight adjustments in this scheme so that the rent ends up as tax instead.