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Georgism

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291–300 of 338 posts

Re: Georgism

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They would no more be able to make up their losses through rent increases than I could make up the loss of being charged extra for a loaf of bread at the supermarket by unilaterally raising my wages. One does not drive the other. Do you have research, or an evidence base, for this? > [...] it certainly was being run on behalf of landlords. It certainly was not.

It might have not been directly funded by landlords but it might have been approved for publishing with the same motives as opposed to the other studies which came to opposite conclusions.

It was an Inquiry into the role, functions and funding of Local Government in England. Landlords no doubt had a stake in the Inquiry's conclusions but then so did everybody else living and working in England at the time (not least central, and local, governments).

Re: Georgism

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you tax potential capital (like house prices), then gentrification is the consequence. Think somebody living in a modest house mixed neighbourhood. Rich ppl buying houses there, property tax shoot so high (because the small house is now worth millions) that the person has to sell. As far as I understand that happened in Vancouver. Not sure if it leads to a fairer society. (of course one could argue it is fai…

Gentrification happens everywhere all the time without high property taxes. I'm not sure it is something we can or should avoid. A little inequality is ok and may function as a driver for growth, a lot of inequality had bad outcomes for everyone, even the rich. I sincerely believe all types of capital should be taxed instead of income, the tax burden doesn't have to change but it should be redistributed a bit. This w…

How would you value the asset and not come up with (almost) arbitrary numbers? Especially since biggest value of google are non material assets (brand name, domain name and customers)

Re: Georgism

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gentrification happens everywhere all the time without high property taxes. I'm not sure it is something we can or should avoid. A little inequality is ok and may function as a driver for growth, a lot of inequality had bad outcomes for everyone, even the rich. I sincerely believe all types of capital should be taxed instead of income, the tax burden doesn't have to change but it should be redistributed a bit. This w…

How would you value the asset and not come up with (almost) arbitrary numbers? Especially since biggest value of google are non material assets (brand name, domain name and customers)

Every system is subject to gaming of course, but I think taxing assets would make it a little harder for companies and individuals with lots of assets to avoid taxation and would encourage putting money to work.

Values for assets are market values, which are arbitrary and every-changing yes, just like income and profit is arbitrary and every-changing but at least values for assets are generally set by third parties, as opposed to the value of profits - the situation could not be much worse than the one at present where large companies choose how much tax to pay by manipulating their books to adjust profit.

I don't think companies should be taxed on customers personally, but if they choose to value their brand name at $10m owned by a subsidiary as a tax dodge (as at present), sure they should be taxed on that.

Re: Georgism

#294
post #278
post #270

So this seems all well and good for urban areas but what about rural land ownership? Or is that not a concern here?

Rural areas don't need the kinds of infrastructure that urban areas need, but they need some. They need schools, they need roads and maintenance. They'd love to have broadband. They may need drainage or water systems that serve undense communities. They need emergency services, courts, and a variety of other things that civilized people who live in communities find valuable. (My use of "civilized" is in no way a crit…

My question was more to do with how the improved value would scale for rural land that had a lot of use but can't generate as much income. Many rural businesses require a lot of land area but only produce a modest income which is possible under the current setup because land prices and taxes are low. There would have to be a lot of consideration given to the population density and the types of improvements made.

Re: Georgism

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may as well say that nothing has inherent value. The concept of "inherent value" is a bit broken, as the same thing that gives land value (somebody else wants it) is exactly what gives anything else value (somebody else will give you something for it). Valuations in currency are an abstraction for how we deal with this really tricky and intractable problem. But like all abstractions, it's leaky. A $100 bill has n…

Yes, nothing has inherent value. Different humans value things differently under different conditions. For example, I may be willing to trade a lot for oranges if no other food is available. But if lots of other food is available, I wouldn’t be willing to trade anything. Some people don’t like oranges and wouldn’t trade anything unless they were starving. This is why prices are always changing in a market. Prices onl…

I don't think that Georgists have the misunderstanding that you claim. I'm not a Georgist, but I do like many of their ideas and listen to some modern day ones.

What you are arguing against, the idea of taxing something based on its "value" where everybody already values things differently, this is not a new thing. It's not hard to implement. We already do it. It's here in the real world. We have property taxes. Each property is unique, non-fungible, everybody has different valuations for every property, and yet somehow we still work out a "market" value.

Establishing land values is only a slight modification of establishing property values. It's easily solvable, and the places that have implemented it have not had difficulty establishing the valuations for tax purposes, by basing these valuations off of market transactions.

But, you might argue, what if your personal valuations are different than what the "market" values them at? Well good for you, because then you are likely able to find a great deal more value out of a property than what the market values something at.

And maybe if the market values something far less than what you value something, then you can hold on to it for cheap! And if the market values something far more than you value something, you can avoid the expense of buying it, or if you have it, you can profit from selling it.

If markets are useful for something, it's finding out what a population thinks something is worth. When it comes to land, and who is excluded from using this precious and finite resource, and who is allowed to use it, market valuations are extremely useful. We can watch transactions to figure out who is using up the most of what other people want (i.e. holding land with high market value). If somebody is hoarding a precious resource, but unwilling to pay the taxes to hold onto it, perhaps they don't actually value that resource so much after all.

Re: Georgism

#296
post #230
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not according to the HN rules

Re: Georgism

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Right, but how does that lead to less housing? It's not like the landlord would stop renting the apartment and just hold it empty right after an LVT is implemented, since they would to pay the LVT either way. Most likely, the landlord would sell the building and land to…

A housing shortage doesn't necessarily mean that new housing would be more profitable than something commercial. I do agree that this would encourage landowners to improve their buildings more in theory. I'm from a country that has a land value tax and frankly it just doesn't matter much. Maybe I just haven't seen the distorting effects that property taxes have.

Re: Georgism

#298
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people don't really realize how much free money is creamed off by property owners and resource extractors. Not least because of their constant attempts to disguise what they do as productive. It's not like people are in a coffee shop and seeing "% of this product that goes to rent" built into the prices. They tend to assume that the price of the cup is basically the ingredients (which is why people b…

Rent is hardly "free money". Businesses and individuals pay rent in lieu of purchasing the property they use outright. There are times when it makes sense to own your own property and times when it makes sense to rent. If you did away with rent then everyone would be forced to buy property instead—which would be less flexible and not significantly cheaper. (Edit: Fixed typo.)

Nobody is proposing doing away with rent. They are proposing to pay landlords for what the landlords provide (some flexibility, maintenance, etc.) and to stop paying them for what they don’t provide (an area worth living in, nearby parks/subways, local job opportunities, restaurants, etc.)

Re: Georgism

#299
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once you own land, it's yours. Idea that you can buy a monopoly is generally a bad idea.

Clearly people don't think so, as the vast majority do agree with private property exclusive ownership.

Most people haven’t thought about it very deeply.

Re: Georgism

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been shown to be false already. Landlords cannot pass tax burden of LVT to tenants. "The producer is unable to pass the tax onto the consumer and the tax incidence falls on the producer. In this example, the tax is collected from the producer and the producer bears the tax burden. This is known as back shifting." From section "Inelastic supply, elastic demand" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence If…

Perhaps individual landlords can't raise rents but the burden will still be passed to the tenants in the end. If you cut the profits of landlords enough to be statistically significant then it will cease to be profitable to be a landlord. (Former) landlords will then invest their money elsewhere, leaving people to buy their own property instead of renting, which incidentally means that they're paying the LVT themselv…

This. It's useful to think of it as an investor. As an example, if you own a property whose value is 250k in land and 250k in a house, and it currently rents for 20k a year and the land tax is priced at 10%, you would be losing 5k a year. So you put it on the market but no investor is going to buy a property that loses money so the price would have to fall out of the land value until the tax based on the value of the land is below the rent you are able to charge.

Now, if you abolish zoning or rezone places in addition to a land value tax, it could work as the investor could build more housing for the same land thus splitting the cost over multiple renters which I'm sure is the intended affect but a land value tax won't work without changing zoning laws.

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