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Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

loukidelis.com

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Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#41

Post by entangledqubit »

curun1r wrote: post #18
lazide wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 'lose the land', really they'd be forced to sell or go bankrupt/accrue tax debt. Which is pretty terrible if the folks are little old ladies settling down to avoid the cruel harsh world, and now need to find somewhere else to live when they are least capable of doing so (being on a fixed income and all). The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be, btw. Even withou…

> The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be There’s a better way to handle this, though, than the Prop 13 approach of limiting taxes. You just allow a certain amount of property taxes to optionally go unpaid and accrue as a lien against the property that must be settled when the property changes hands. Old widows never get forced out of their houses, but they don’t…

... or you accept that the widow argument was a bogus special interest ploy to begin with and have people who genuinely need a prop 13 style exemption apply for an exception - rather than have it apply to everyone. From what I understand, Seattle does it this way.

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#42

Post by [deleted] »

stickyricky wrote: post #27
cousin_it wrote: post #3

I'd like to better understand the concept of "unimproved land value" vs. "improvements". For example, let's say there's a neighborhood of people who are quite poor but charitable toward one another. So they build nice gardens accessible for free, little galleries, drinking fountains and so on. As a result, other people want to move in, land value in the community increases, and eventually the original inhabitants can…

> What gives? It's a law. You can just put in exemptions. - "Land tax increases shall not exceed X% if it is your primary residence." - "Land tax shall not increase if you are over the age of 65". - "You may deduct monies put into the improvement of a property from your land tax." - "You may not pay more than 5% of your income in land tax". I don't see the issue. We don't tax income at 20% with no deductions. We don'…

[deleted]

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#43

Post by bombcar »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #29
threatofrain wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they voluntarily improved somebody else's land under no contractual agreement with the owner, why do they think they're entitled to a share of the new value? > If they voluntarily improved "public" land, good luck extracting gratitude from the state after the fact. The bureaucrats are more likely to issue fines and send in bulldozers. I wonder if this is a fringe example as I imagine few people are radically imp…

A small version of this occurs in the Mountain West. Some well-maintained rural roads are actually maintained illegally across Federal land by the locals. The Federal government is responsible for maintenance but often doesn't do any for decades and so the roads go into severe disrepair. If you ask permission to repair the road out of your own pocket, you will have to file absurd amounts of paperwork and the Federal…

Stuff like this is way more common than just roads.

The further you get from the lawmakers the more reasonable actuality gets, even if it is done plausibly deniable.

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#44

Post by lazide »

entangledqubit wrote: post #41
curun1r wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be There’s a better way to handle this, though, than the Prop 13 approach of limiting taxes. You just allow a certain amount of property taxes to optionally go unpaid and accrue as a lien against the property that must be settled when the property changes hands. Old widows never get forced out of their houses, but they don’t…

... or you accept that the widow argument was a bogus special interest ploy to begin with and have people who genuinely need a prop 13 style exemption apply for an exception - rather than have it apply to everyone. From what I understand, Seattle does it this way.

How is everyone going to get rich then?!?!

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#45

Post by tuatoru »

cousin_it wrote: post #3

I'd like to better understand the concept of "unimproved land value" vs. "improvements". For example, let's say there's a neighborhood of people who are quite poor but charitable toward one another. So they build nice gardens accessible for free, little galleries, drinking fountains and so on. As a result, other people want to move in, land value in the community increases, and eventually the original inhabitants can…

Every system has downsides. The question is, is "having to make an immense moneetary gain at the cost of your connection to the trees you planted and the closeness of your neighbors" worse than the system we have now, and for whom?

Again: No system is perfect. It seems to me that the Georgist approach would tend to lay the tax burden more evenly on people of all levels of wealth, even if it does force some people to sell and buy.

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#46

Post by Brian-Puccio »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #26
cousin_it wrote: post #3

I'd like to better understand the concept of "unimproved land value" vs. "improvements". For example, let's say there's a neighborhood of people who are quite poor but charitable toward one another. So they build nice gardens accessible for free, little galleries, drinking fountains and so on. As a result, other people want to move in, land value in the community increases, and eventually the original inhabitants can…

The inhabitants don't lose. Play your scenario out. A bunch of poor people buy 100 acres of land for $1, and they turn it into a paradise. It becomes cool, so rich hipsters wanna buy up chunks to Instagram it. The first person sells a patch of land he bought for $0.01 for $1M. Suddenly, property tax on everyone's $0.01 parcels shoots up from $0 to $12,000 per year. These people have no jobs, so they can't afford $12,…

> The inhabitants don't lose. > > Play your scenario out. > > A bunch of poor people buy 100 acres of land for $1, and they turn it into a paradise.

Yeah but instead it’s people who cannot buy land who rent their homes who make their community better only to be priced out.

> No owners “lose”

Right and for all the people who aren’t wealthy enough to own land who get priced out of their neighborhoods and have to move? Often further from places of employment?

The comment you replied to said “let's say there's a neighborhood of people who are quite poor but charitable toward one another”. Poor people buying 100 acres of land for $1 is not a “neighborhood of people”.

Your scenario is buying cheap land in hopes one day it’s expensive — basically a long shot lottery ticket.

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#47

Post by mjmahone17 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #26
cousin_it wrote: post #3

I'd like to better understand the concept of "unimproved land value" vs. "improvements". For example, let's say there's a neighborhood of people who are quite poor but charitable toward one another. So they build nice gardens accessible for free, little galleries, drinking fountains and so on. As a result, other people want to move in, land value in the community increases, and eventually the original inhabitants can…

The inhabitants don't lose. Play your scenario out. A bunch of poor people buy 100 acres of land for $1, and they turn it into a paradise. It becomes cool, so rich hipsters wanna buy up chunks to Instagram it. The first person sells a patch of land he bought for $0.01 for $1M. Suddenly, property tax on everyone's $0.01 parcels shoots up from $0 to $12,000 per year. These people have no jobs, so they can't afford $12,…

The other thing people who own land can do: take out a mortgage to build more homes on their land, live in one and either sell the subdivided land/co-op/condo units or rent them to others.

The only people who can be “driven out” are the renters, but if you let owners subdivide and build more, even they should be able to stay in the neighborhood indefinitely. It’s only once you break the chain by not building new homes that the existing community is forced to move. The original neighbors may become a minority compared to the newcomers, but the alternatives to building enough housing for everyone who wants to live in a neighborhood appears to me to be:

- make your neighborhood undesirable for even you to live in.

- make it impossible for new people to buy their way into the community.

- accept that non-owners and not-rich-enough owners will be priced out and forced to move from their homes.

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#48

Post by mjmahone17 »

derac wrote: post #39
rufus_foreman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value you put on living around your family and friends in this scenario is zero. That's not how normal people value those things.

People hate to hear this but noone has a right to live somewhere indefinitely. Logically, this doesn't even work. Lets say everyone in LA wants to live there with their children and their children's children and so on forever. Extrapolate this a few generations and eventually you will have a solid mass of humans 1000 ft tall. (This is a hyperbolic joke, you get the point)

Yeah I don’t see what’s wrong with your (in my mind) utopic vision. Everyone who wants to live in a mass of humanity 1000 ft tall should be able to afford to live in that mass, and we should be researching ways to make it more and more affordable.

The only way it doesn’t work is if the community makes it impossible for more new people to get in, or if there isn’t enough economic opportunity to support all the people living there. But people don’t generally want to move into communities where they can’t find work, and I see no good reason we should enforce minimum lot and zoning laws to prevent people from moving to where opportunity lives.

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#49

Post by [deleted] »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #37
boomboomsubban wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your issue is "what if someone owns huge chunks of land and doesn't try to make any money off it?" Then Hollywood gets built somewhere else where someone does want to make money. And eventually, those improvements may make the land the other person owns worth more money anyway and they'd be unable to pay the taxes.

> Your issue is "what if someone owns huge chunks of land and doesn't try to make any money off it?" That really has nothing to do with my issue. My issue is that, under the proposed system, two people who each own half of Los Angeles will pay a lot of property taxes, because the other half of Los Angeles adds taxable value to their half, even if their half is unimproved. But one person who owns the entirety of Los A…

[deleted]

Re: Seeing like a state, progress and poverty, and owning land

#50

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

Brian-Puccio wrote: post #46
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inhabitants don't lose. Play your scenario out. A bunch of poor people buy 100 acres of land for $1, and they turn it into a paradise. It becomes cool, so rich hipsters wanna buy up chunks to Instagram it. The first person sells a patch of land he bought for $0.01 for $1M. Suddenly, property tax on everyone's $0.01 parcels shoots up from $0 to $12,000 per year. These people have no jobs, so they can't afford $12,…

> The inhabitants don't lose. > > Play your scenario out. > > A bunch of poor people buy 100 acres of land for $1, and they turn it into a paradise. Yeah but instead it’s people who cannot buy land who rent their homes who make their community better only to be priced out. > No owners “lose” Right and for all the people who aren’t wealthy enough to own land who get priced out of their neighborhoods and have to move?…

> Your scenario is buying cheap land in hopes one day it’s expensive — basically a long shot lottery ticket.

Or literally all of Los Angeles 30+ years ago. Or basically everywhere desirable today 30+ years ago.

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