261–270 of 322 posts
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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.
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.
A captain could declare the value of the cargo whatever he sees fit, and pay the tax on that amount.
The customs reserved the right to buy the entire cargo at the declared price, at their discretion.
It's a bit harder to implement with large parcels of land, but should work well with home-sized lots.
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> This sounds regressive. We can't make that determination without knowing how much profit a rented bungalow can receive versus the apartment building. A bungalow in midtown Manhattan might very well house one of the world's richest families. Fundamentally, LVT is a wealth tax. If you hold a large amount of wealth (land) but have no income then the tax would seem regressive from an income-based perspective. But from…
The argument against it is that a vacant property imposes very little cost upon society. It doesn't require fire protection, it doesnt add children to the education system, it doesn't use any municipal resources. If it's an eyesore or presents a hazard in some way, sure, but simply being vacant or "underutilized" doesn't do that. Why should it pay to simply exist?
A vacant property (really, any ownership of property, period) results in an opportunity cost externalized onto all other members of society. That opportunity cost is equal to the land's value. In the middle of nowhere, therefore, that opportunity cost might be low to the point of nonexistence, but in the middle of a city downtown, that opportunity cost can be and often is on the scale of tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more!) per year. That is wealth that is long overdue to be repaid back to the rest of society.
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The vacant lot in the middle of Manhattan has a massive opportunity cost to society. If you goal is to own a vacant lot and you don't care where it is, trade that vacant lot in Manhattan for another one in rural Alabama.
The apartment tower also has massive costs. It requires high-capacity water, sewer, electric, and trash service. It requires specialized fire protection services including extra training and equipment to fight fires in high rise buildings. It has a massive carbon footprint. Why should a property owner who does not impose any of those costs (or imposes a tiny fraction of them) pay equally for them?
The apartment almost certainly already pays for all of these things.
> It has a massive carbon footprint.
Which can be offset or even reduced/eliminated outright.
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No, or not nearly as much. The needs of a child are mediated by productivity, which has been wildly different throughout history. E.g. maybe we'll have practical fusion in 100 years and can support 100 billion people no problem. But the surface area of the earth is fixed. If you want 100 acres to do nothing good with, do it with a giant seastead.
> If you want 100 acres to do nothing good with, do it with a giant seastead. And even then, the surface area of the Earth is still fixed. So is the volume (unless you're willing to destroy Earth as we know it in the process). So a seastead just kicks the can down the road. If you want 100 acres to do nothing good with, do it in space.
2. But I don’t agree that property rights ought to be snatched from owners.
3. I also don’t think we could keep on increasing the world population when we have clearly crossed carrying capacity.
They are all different issues and points. Not necessarily related.
You don’t need separate a person’s property from him just because a few million people are homeless.
You don’t need to keep on breeding homo sapiens to out breed all other species and destroying habits and environment to support the extra billions of human beings. Because the apex predator can wipe out every eco system to support itself. And at a faster rate if it outbreeds the rest of the species.
Half the planet needs to be uninhabitated and rewilded for species and habitat preservation, conservation and restoration.
As apex predators, if we don’t protect habitat and other species below us, it is like sawing off the main trunk of a tree below us while perching on the top most branch. We will become extinct as a species.
One day, I am going to be able to buy thousands and thousands of acres and let nature take it back. There is a better chance that we will survive as a species if we reduce our population rather than keep on increasing it exponentially. Because we are guaranteed to outbreed every other species upon whom we rely on for our survival.
The planet survives because of a delicate balance between the ocean’s temperature and carbon levels in our atmosphere. We really don’t understand it fully yet. It’s premature to assume that we can keep on breeding to perpetuate our species. It’s the most unscientific, irrational and illogical way to solve a problem. It certainly is a sure way to erase ourselves from the universe as we know it.
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You most certainly should be paying the equivalent of 10 households. You deny 9 others the ability to use the land. If you have real use for the land, paying the lvt won’t be an issue. If you can’t use it efficiently, an lvt will incentivise you to sell what you don’t use.
I disagree, if a town with 1000 households are interspersed with 100 farms, those 100 farms should not be paying an equal amount of money to the town finances as the 1000 households. It just doesn't make sense. They should certainly be paying for the right to have exclusive access to that land, but those 100 farmers do not put as much of a financial strain on the town budget as those 1000 households
If those 100 farms take up the same land area as 1000 households, then yes they absolutely should. Hell, they'll even have an easier time doing so, since they're (ostensibly) using that land productively (and if not, they absolutely should be) and thus be more able to internalize that opportunity cost they've imposed on others.
And if they can't produce enough to internalize that opportunity cost, then all the more reason for someone else to be given the opportunity to do so.
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They do - if there could be 5000 more households on the land occupied by the farmers, and paying that much more tax revenue to the town, that could be viewed as a financial strain.
It's unlikely that there is pent-up demand for 5000 more households in a rural farm area. Farm land just sits there. It doesn't "cost" the local town/county anything.
Okay, then all the more reason for those farms to sell off some unused acres to alleviate what little pent-up demand there is. And if there are no unused acres, then it's best to work on getting more productivity per acre to make some unused acres.
The agricultural sector is in dire need of a kick in the rear to encourage better land efficiency; LVT is one heck of a kick.
> Farm land just sits there.
Then it ain't a farm, in which case all the more reason to sell off that land and make it available to someone else.
> It doesn't "cost" the local town/county anything.
It imposes an opportunity cost on everyone who would more effectively use that land, including other farmers with better methods (and also, more broadly, anyone else wanting places to live and/or work and/or play).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want 100 acres to do nothing good with, do it with a giant seastead. And even then, the surface area of the Earth is still fixed. So is the volume (unless you're willing to destroy Earth as we know it in the process). So a seastead just kicks the can down the road. If you want 100 acres to do nothing good with, do it in space.
1. I agree that people need to be housed. 2. But I don’t agree that property rights ought to be snatched from owners. 3. I also don’t think we could keep on increasing the world population when we have clearly crossed carrying capacity. They are all different issues and points. Not necessarily related. You don’t need separate a person’s property from him just because a few million people are homeless. You don’t need…
Nobody's calling for any snatching of property rights. What's being called for is for landowners to internalize the opportunity costs they've externalized on the rest of society (and, indeed, the planet).
> I also don’t think we could keep on increasing the world population when we have clearly crossed carrying capacity.
As much as I agree, unfortunately humans happen to enjoy making more humans (and indeed, arguably have a biological drive to do so), so barring either the ability to move humans off Earth or some Malthusian catastrophe, global population will continue to increase whether we like it or not.
> Half the planet needs to be uninhabitated and rewilded for species and habitat preservation, conservation and restoration.
Which is a lot easier when people are penalized for contributing to suburban and rural sprawl.
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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.
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LOL. No longer not using the term "earmarks" in financing legislation is not the same as ending pork barrel spending. If it is, please explain the SLS. It's entire design was dictated by Congress to use specific components from specific contractors.
Do you have a source for your assertions about the SLS? I can't seem to pull anything up.
“ In 2011, Rep. Tom McClintock and other groups called on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate possible violations of the Competition in Contracting Act (CICA), arguing that Congressional mandates forcing NASA to use Space Shuttle components for SLS are de facto non-competitive, single source requirements assuring contracts to existing Shuttle suppliers.”
“ In the summer of 2019, a former ULA employee claimed that Boeing, NASA's prime contractor for SLS, viewed orbital refueling technology as a threat to SLS and blocked further investment in it.”
“ In 2019, the Government Accountability Office found that NASA had awarded Boeing over US$200 million for service with ratings of good to excellent despite cost overruns and delays”
“ On 1 May 2020, NASA awarded a US$1.79 billion contract extension for the manufacture of 18 additional RS-25 engines. Ars Technica, in an article published on the same day, highlighted that over the entire RS-25 contract the price of each engine works out to US$146 million, and that the total price for the four expendable engines used in each SLS launch will be more than US$580 million. They critically commented that for the cost of just one engine, six more powerful RD-180 engines could be purchased, or nearly an entire Falcon Heavy launch with two thirds of the SLS lift capacity.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
http://www.competitivespace.org/issues/the-senate-launch-sys...