Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tax the Land

vox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 613 posts

Re: Tax the Land

#431

Post by CryptoPunk »

belorn wrote: post #410
CryptoPunk wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this necessitates having that attitude toward owning things in general. Owning scarce natural resources is very different than owning man-made resources that have an elastic supply that can be expanded through production. A coherent moral framework can support the former being taxed, while maintaining that the latter should not be. Private ownership of the latter is both just, because the original owner…

I have a hard time distinguish between people owning gold and people owning land, and in this discussion, we are not just talking about owning land but people owning a house on that land. Similar in how gold is turned into a jewelry that people form emotional attachment to, a home is built on land which people form emotional attachments to. In both cases we have a man-made resource, ie a jewelry and homes, and in bot…

Gold rarely appears in its valuable form in accessible natural settings. It is acquired through the costly process of mining, which increases its supply. So it is not like land with respect to either supply elasticity or the cost of initial acquisition.

>>a home is built on land which people form emotional attachments to

I would argue people should be encouraged to not form an emotional attachment to a house, because the land it occupies is part of a larger society which may come to need it more than the person does.

You may have grown up in a house your grandfather built, but the neighborhood of that house may have changed from a sparsely populated district of a small city, to the densely populated economic core of a major metropolis and regional shipping/trading hub. The land needs to be repurposed to benefit the greatest number of people, and I don't think a perpetual land claim stemming from the principle of first possession should trump that imperative.

Re: Tax the Land

#432

Post by CryptoPunk »

neilwilson wrote: post #429
belorn wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am rather skeptic of land value taxes, but I would like to hear your view of why land value tax is better than simply raising the tax on rent and property sales. The main argument that I see against land value taxes is that land doesn't generate any income by itself, which forces people to pay money in situation where they might not have any income to do so. One could bypass this problem by putting in limitations,…

Land value taxes fail on the basics. Tax has nothing to do with raising money. It’s about releasing real resources for the public good - largely people to provide public services. Ideally the tax needs to be incident on the private sector entities that would otherwise hire the people the public sector needs to hire instead - military, judiciary, police, healthcare, education, etc. Government has no need of land, ther…

>>Tax has nothing to do with raising money.

Taxation is entirely about raising money.

>>It’s about releasing real resources for the public good - largely people to provide public services.

What does "releasing real resources" mean, and how does taxation achieve that? And how does a land value tax fail to achieve that?

>>It’s about releasing real resources for the public good - largely people to provide public services.

I'm puzzled as to how you conceive of government not needing land, when many government services do in fact need it, or how you perceive other objects of taxation being needed by government in a way that land is not.

Re: Tax the Land

#433

Post by CryptoPunk »

belorn wrote: post #390
Manuel_D wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no inalienable right to not be cripplingly impoverished. But any ethical countries would try to ameliorate that condition. Is it ethical for a select few to grow enormously wealthy by driving up the cost of living for the many by deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need? People need jobs to live. They also need a roof over their heads. The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro area…

> The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas, but the home-owning class constrains the supply of housing and drives up the price of their own assets. Disincentivizing this sort of rent seeking behavior is precisely the kind of thing property taxes accomplish. There are two solutions to that problem. Governments could either make it easier to rent in the increasingly concentrated metro areas,…

Concentrated metros are more economically productive, not to mention environmentally friendly and better for quality of life. Government discentivizing them leads to a less efficient economy that provides for less of people's needs.

Re: Tax the Land

#435

Post by CryptoPunk »

dbspin wrote: post #362
teakettle42 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deliberately causing a shortage of a basic need There’s no housing shortage. There’s a limited supply in highly desirable locations because they’re highly desirable. People can and do live elsewhere, working local jobs or commuting. > The jobs are becoming increasingly concentrated in a few metro areas That’s just one of many problems of scale; the solution is not to keep scaling up. > … the home-owning class const…

Just to address this from a non US standpoint. While I'm sympathetic toward both the desire to preserve the character and community of a neighbourhood and your antipathy towards rentiers - there absolutely is a housing crisis across Europe (and presumably in the US). Part of the reason is the lack of social housing provision, with most EU governments reducing or all together abandoning their post war commitments to l…

>>Perhaps the largest reason is the financialisation of housing as an asset class by hedge and other vulture funds.

Financialization of housing has had no negative impact on housing affordability in regions of the US, mostly in the South, that allow housing supply to grow, instead of constricting it with zoning restrictions. On the contrary, basic economic theory would dictate that more advanced financial markets that facilitate greater volumes of investment into housing would be good for housing affordability, by expanding housing supply, and by doing so, increase the number of units available for rent relative to people looking to rent.

Consider which city has the highest rental rates in the world: San Francisco. It has the most stringent restrictions on housing development, and housing use by owners, of any city in North America.

Inhibiting the market is what creates shortages, and housing is no exception.

We want housing to be commodified, and mass-produced by collections of profit-motivated individuals. Consider: construction has kept rent in Chongqing, China to $75 a month.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/asia/chongqing-chin...

Re: Tax the Land

#436

Post by liveoneggs »

car_analogy wrote: post #396
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a house after you die. So, you borrow money against the increase in value of the house. The OP is saying that when the estate (wealth of dead person) is concluded the balance will be such that loans against the property (aka 'equity release') will ask be paid easily by the sale of the property. Ergo, no loss to the hypothetical improver of the locality. I'd say also, anyone who is capable of producing…

> You don't need a house after you die. Perhaps these are just my European sensibilities talking, but a house is not a hamburger, that you consume and then discard when you're done with it. It is your home , and your children's, and possibly their children's too. It's part of the link to your community, your memories, your history. Not a market good like any other, measured only in dollars. You despair why communitie…

here they call that "pulling up the ladder"; you are missing the sentiment -- one side sees it as "leaving my family a secure home" and the other sees it as "tax dodging generational wealth transfer"

Re: Tax the Land

#437

Post by causality0 »

archhn wrote: post #243
causality0 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many places make voting difficult. I recognize this, and agree that it is terrible. Voting should be as easy and widespread as possible. There comes a point on the effort scale, however, below which not voting means you just don't give a damn. Voting in my city involves thirty seconds on a website to request a ballot and then dropping your envelope in the mail. If you don't care that much, or have managed to screw yo…

It's more complicated than this. Most working class people aren't even exposed to local politics. I guarantee you that the majority of working class people don't even know how or where to vote in local elections. Democracy sounds egalitarian in principle, but in reality, economics on the ground insulates a large number of people from the power process. I get what you are saying about not wanting these clueless people…

I'm a working class person. I don't have a bachelor's degree. My pay is hourly, I spend a good portion of my day on my knees with tools in my hands, and I rented until I bought a house last year at the age of 35. I gave a damn. I spent a lot of time living in the same building with a bunch of people who didn't. It wasn't being poor that made half my neighbors dump trash off their balconies and scream at their kids and walk right past graffiti literally three feet from their door. It was not giving a damn. I've struggled my entire life with motivation, but I tell you what, disgust is a good motivator.

Re: Tax the Land

#438

Post by mikem170 »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #208
causality0 wrote: post #204

Local governments, which have been granted near unchecked authority by state governments, are entirely captured by homeowners. I'm not fully clear on this statement. Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local, or is it saying that homeowners hold more power than renters? If the former, that's just silly. If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as eve…

In Tokyo, zoning is controlled by the national government.

I like the way that Japan handles zoning.

It's based on population densities. Localities can designate industrial and commercial areas, but can't deviate from federal guidelines to prevent growth.

Instead of single family homes they allow triplexes where a percentage of space can be used for a low-impact business, like a barber shop or something. They have setbacks geared towards making sure that you don't build three stories on top of your neighbor's house.

They have neighborhoods. They don't have a housing shortage. They don't have a system that doesn't empower developers who want to clear-cut cheap land on the outskirts of town and build sprawling anti-social subdivisions of oversized identical houses.

Here's some more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfm2xCKOCNk

Re: Tax the Land

#439

Post by teddyh »

tome wrote: post #359
teddyh wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article seems to be a little loose with its terminology. It uses the term “land value tax”, but describes it the same as what you term a “Georgist land tax”. But then the article seems to imply that all efforts nationwide to implement a “land value tax” are good, which I doubt, since what people usually mean by “land value tax” is much closer to what I described, not what you wrote.

I don't see the difference between "land value tax" and "Georgist land tax". Surely they both exclude the value of improvements, and the tax that includes them is called "property tax"?

After some investigating, it seems that I was the one with the loose vocabulary. It seems that you are right and I was wrong in the use of the term “land-value tax”. What I argued against, and called “land-value tax”, should more properly be termed “real estate property tax”. I am sorry for the confusion.

Re: Tax the Land

#440

Post by mikem170 »

alex_sf wrote: post #384
chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> renters get the same one vote per person as everybody else It's not just directly voting for a city councilor, planning board member, etc. that counts. Showing up to public meetings to show support or disagreement with something can do much to pressure those elected officials. But renters are going to have a much more difficult time showing solidarity for pro-development action, not only because of the difference i…

> Renters, on the other hand, have an asymmetrically difficult battle: pro-development individuals need to show up to all the proposed-development meetings, not just one for a particular street or block, if they want to expand housing. It's not homeowners vs renters, it's homeowners vs property developers. Property developers who, I can assure you, are perfectly capable of sticking up for themselves. > Homeowners are…

> It's not homeowners vs renters, it's homeowners vs property developers. Property developers who, I can assure you, are perfectly capable of sticking up for themselves.

I'd argue that current zoning laws and processes encourage large developers. They are the only ones who can navigate the system.

That's why so much new construction in the last several decades (at least) has been by large developers who buy cheap land on the outskirts of town, cut down all the trees, build a bunch of identical cheaply made houses isolated from everything else, sell them all at once, and hand over management to a homeowners association where rules are enforced to ensure conformity.

Post reply on HN