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Georgism

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Re: Georgism

#301

Post by mrep »

neilparikh wrote: post #178
rikroots wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Inquiry didn't kill LVT, and efforts to promote it haven't stopped just because Lyons didn't recommend it as a solution going forward. > ... extremely wealthy landlords ... killing LVT 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 - effectively passing on the tax…

> They would (probably) make up their losses through rent increases and additional service charges - effectively passing on the tax to renters and leaseholders. Since no land can be created or destroyed, the supply-demand curve is fixed. This means that the land tax cannot be passed onto the renter, because the market conditions haven't changed. The rent is not calculated based on the landlord's costs plus some extra…

If the land tax is greater than what you can make renting, then that means your land is improperly priced. You can prove it by putting it on the market and no investor will buy it at that price because they would lose money and thus it would have to fall until the land tax is less than what they can make from rent.

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 and at the end of the day, it's all passed onto renters.

Re: Georgism

#302

Post by bsanr2 »

bsanr2 wrote: post #6
chii wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why there is still so much poverty even while there has been so much progress there's been an objective improvement to the % of people in poverty over the past few centuries. It's just that there's an even larger improvement to those who were rich, relative to the improvements to the poor. If you had a choice, you would choose to be poor today, than to be poor a century or two ago.

Why does this matter?

No, seriously, why does it matter that poverty has "improved" over the years? It still exists. It still leads to suffering and brutal, undignified deaths. Is collapsing in your trailer, abusive nursing home, or city street any better than in your hovel or, well, city street, 150 years ago? Like everyone else, society must answer the question, "What have you done for me lately?".

Re: Georgism

#303

Post by LVTfan »

pharke wrote: post #294
LVTfan wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Rural land values will remain low until there is significant economic activity and particular demand for land IN THAT PLACE. To the extent that land, say, 10 or 20 miles away is just as suited for the user's purposes, the next piece of land that comes on the market is quite adequate, and the rural business can locate wherever, not pay a premium.

I am reminded of a famous passage from Henry George's book "Progress and Poverty" (whose subtitle is "An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The Remedy") known as The Savannah. http://progressandpoverty.org/files/george.henry/pp042.html, starting at the 10th paragraph (the paragraphs are numbered in this particular file).

Incidentally, George dedicated P&P as follows:

"To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment."

Re: Georgism

#304

Post by nybble41 »

ethanbond wrote: post #298
nybble41 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The landlord provides a usable piece of land close to these amenities. They, along with others, contribute to making the area worth living in. They aren't being paid for the use of any nearby amenities, just for having the foresight to develop land in the correct location to synergize with the surrounding improvements. Is choosing the location to build not part of their contribution? And likewise for encouraging the later development of facilities in proximity to their own property? Frankly the idea behind the "unearned benefit" narrative—that a landlord ought to earn the same profit for land in a bad location as for land in a good location—is a bit ridiculous. Attempting to negate the value the owner derives from good placement in the community is counterproductive.

Re: Georgism

#305

Post by naravara »

nostrademons wrote: post #271
djannzjkzxn wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the argument is that voters are rational and therefore must vote for the correct level of LVT. Doesn’t the evidence show that the ideal LVT rate is zero, since that’s what they have in fact enacted?

Individual voters don't have to be rational as long as their errors cancel out. This is the "wisdom of crowds" / "central limit theorem" argument: statistically, you can get a very good approximation of the true value out of very unreliable individual measurements as long as you have a large number of independent such measurements. Whether this theorem is robust against systematic cognitive biases is another matter.…

>Individual voters don't have to be rational as long as their errors cancel out.

This, incidentally, is the function of propaganda. You introduce an influence that biases the system to encourage certain classes or error and discourage others, thus skewing the consensus-forming process.

Re: Georgism

#306

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rukittenme wrote: post #286
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> OK, but why just the land? Trusts hold stock, too The stock is taxed indirectly. Georgism holds that all wealth fundamentally comes from the land. This isn't completely true in the digital age but it is still true enough. > Their heirs receive the dividends from that stock If you tax income it never goes away. You just take a portion of whatever is there. If you tax wealth then the wealth is eventually drawn comple…

> Georgism holds that all wealth fundamentally comes from the land. This isn't completely true in the digital age but it is still true enough.

Yeah, I think that's most of the debate right there. A bunch of us seriously question whether it is "still true enough".

Re: Georgism

#307

Post by banads »

chii wrote: post #281
banads wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, there are more people living in poverty than the entire global population in 1950.

there are a lot more people now than in the 1950's too. As a proportion, is the poverty rate higher today than before? Are the currently poor today better off than the same relative level of poor in the 1950s?

The number of people living in poverty has increased since 1950, while the rate of people living in poverty has decreased.

If we're too busy patting ourselves on the back about the latter, we become blind to the existential threat posed by the former in the face of a global technological revolution which is making tools of mass destruction available better, faster, and cheaper at exponential rates.

Re: Georgism

#308

Post by ethanbond »

nybble41 wrote: post #304
ethanbond wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

The landlord provides a usable piece of land close to these amenities. They, along with others, contribute to making the area worth living in. They aren't being paid for the use of any nearby amenities, just for having the foresight to develop land in the correct location to synergize with the surrounding improvements. Is choosing the location to build not part of their contribution? And likewise for encouraging the…

No, landlords do not provide land. The land was there long before the landlord and will be there long after the landlord is gone, too.

The landlord, as evidenced by the fact that you are calling the land good or bad prior to having been developed by the landlord, should earn no profit based on that difference, because that difference would exist regardless of who – if anyone – is the landlord.

If the landlord makes some particular investment in addition to the "natural" or community-driven component of the land's value, she will keep all of the upside from that investment.

To repeat: All the gains generated by improvements upon the land – or enhancements in the "usability" of the land – will be retained by the landlord.

That is sufficient incentive for landlords to productively develop on valuable land. More importantly, it is a disincentive to speculating on that land (or withholding it from the market/withholding it from productive use). This is of course a behavior you see all over high value areas.

Re: Georgism

#309

Post by rukittenme »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #306
rukittenme wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK, but why just the land? Trusts hold stock, too The stock is taxed indirectly. Georgism holds that all wealth fundamentally comes from the land. This isn't completely true in the digital age but it is still true enough. > Their heirs receive the dividends from that stock If you tax income it never goes away. You just take a portion of whatever is there. If you tax wealth then the wealth is eventually drawn comple…

> Georgism holds that all wealth fundamentally comes from the land. This isn't completely true in the digital age but it is still true enough. Yeah, I think that's most of the debate right there. A bunch of us seriously question whether it is "still true enough".

Then apply a "digital" tax for whatever amount of revenue or justice you imagine you're missing out on.

Re: Georgism

#310

Post by NumberWangMan »

brudgers wrote: post #248
LVTfan wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frederick Law Olmsted realized early on that even a huge project like Central Park could be funded from the increase in land value it created in the neighborhoods surrounding it.

The risk when extrapolating from Manhattan is when extrapolating to places significantly unlike Manhattan. When Central Park was started, Manhattan already had a population density in excess of 10,000 people per km^2. Even Boston today is little more than half that. Munich, less than half. San Jose little more than one fifth. Central Park worked because the existing density was already high and there was no way for M…

Hmm, but consider that it works in both directions. In places that are not as dense and expensive, the public places won't increase rents of the surrounding properties as much, but neither will they take away as much tax revenue. Both scale proportionately. I think this applies just as much to a park in small town as it does to Manhattan.
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