271–280 of 322 posts
I would much rather read an article about land value tax from a site that doesn't also have an article suggesting COVID-19 is a hoax.
On HN we go by article quality, not site quality. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://medium.com/@phila_31297/why-a-land-value-tax-is-inev...
(And reputation and trust matter.)
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Carbon taxes don't seem simple, to me. Measuring the carbon cost of many things seems really hard. What's the carbon tax rate of income from a downtown parking lot? How do you even reason about that? (the others, sure, much simpler)
Yes, Carbon tax is the least simple, but at least the others free up the carbon tax alone from being at all equitable. That helps.
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.
British customs used to have a simple mechanism to bind declared value to market value. 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.
I would much rather read an article about land value tax from a site that doesn't also have an article suggesting COVID-19 is a hoax.
On HN we go by article quality, not site quality. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
In other words, I don’t think it’s possible to completely separate an article from its site, and so why I understand the spirit of that rule, I think it’s idealistic and naive, and it doesn’t consider the consequences of promoting a problematic site like this.
1. UBI 2. LVT 3. Environmental externality taxes That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.
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There are big huge businesses we aren't adequately taxing: Big tech. When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more. And Jeff Bezos does not need more money.
> When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more. Agreed. We should be ruthlessly taxing capital gains, and in general should look upon money earned without laboring for it with scorn.
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Well that's a bit different than your earlier statement that we should "ruthlessly tax" capital gains. Capital gains get a favorable treatment because we want to encourage investment that creates economic growth, but comes with risk of loss.
I mean, we ruthlessly tax working for a living, I just don't see why we don't tax speculation gains the same.
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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.
1. UBI 2. LVT 3. Environmental externality taxes That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.
No we don't. I will never participate in a scheme where we rob someone at gunpoint to "help" another person. The end doesn't justify the means.
See https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/01/why-taxation-is-neith...