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Tax the Land

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Re: Tax the Land

#461

Post by bretthoerner »

bradknowles wrote: post #457
bretthoerner wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What real estate do you think those people would buy if the condos weren't build?

If they were buying single family detached homes, at least those wouldn't block the views, ruin the skyline, and wipe out the natural areas near the river.

Huh, I think the condos downtown "wipe out" a lot less of the river (they're not even that close to the river, there's a whole hike and bike trail between them and the river...?) than all of the single family detached homes right up against the river that go on for mile after mile upstream (literally for cities-worth of land!).

And without downtown, I don't know what your view or skyline would be of, other than an empty blue sky, of which 99.99% of Texas offers you that, if you want it.

Oh well, like you said, NIMBYism is certainly a thing.

Re: Tax the Land

#462

Post by solidsnack9000 »

belorn wrote: post #399
CryptoPunk wrote: post #392

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 article goes into the advantages of a land value tax over other types of tax, including a property tax: The big question land value taxes help answer is: How can a government raise funds without distorting choices and possibly leaving people worse of…

> Those people should be selling their land. We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. From the article as well: If we have that attitude to people owning things, then the first thing should be wealth tax on jewelry, cars, boats, and other luxury items which if you can't afford to pay the tax then you should be forced to sell it. I remember how popular that concept where here in EU…

We don't have a housing crisis because of scarce jewelry that isn't being put to use -- and the same is true of luxury boats, fancy cars, and other luxury items. The issue is precisely that land is not a luxury item; but it is being treated like one, in that it's being used as a store of value.

Re: Tax the Land

#463

Post by solidsnack9000 »

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…

If gold were actually being hoarded in such a way that it prevented manufacturing, and cities and states were passing laws that prevented gold from being used for other purposes -- requiring a ten year approval process to melt a gold "historic heritage heirloom" -- then we'd need to talk about policies for gold; but we don't have that problem! No one seems to have the idea that the government should protect our emotional attachment to gold; but they do want government to protect our emotional attachment to land.

Re: Tax the Land

#464

Post by solidsnack9000 »

gameman144 wrote: post #366

I totally get the appeal of land taxes and restriction of land-use regulation at the local level, and by and large they seem like a reasonable approach to poor resource allocation and unequal ownership opportunities. One thing I've not seen addressed, though, is the apparent disincentive to improve communities in meaningful ways. For instance, say I live in a very expensive city and I can no longer afford the land ta…

It seems like you overlooked the obvious -- when your LVT went up, your land went up in value. You sold your land and moved to some other, cheaper, place and thus realized a profit from that increase in value. If, in the other place, you make things better and the land goes up in value so much that you can no longer afford the LVT, then you can sell your land and realize, again, a significant profit. These profits are a strong incentive.

Re: Tax the Land

#465

Post by teakettle42 »

closeparen wrote: post #367
teakettle42 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> … and the people who can't even afford to move there in the first place. There’s no inalienable right to live in a popular place you cannot afford. Can you articulate an ethical argument for why it’s a problem that not everyone can afford to move to the most desirable cities?

America’s housing supply will grow. A policy that it grows only by sprawl is a policy of cruelty to everyone today and in the future who thrives best in an urban environment and isn’t super-rich. Urban environments can’t be stamped onto cornfields; they only occur when sparser environments become expensive. I don’t think there’s a right to live in any arbitrary expensive town. I do think there’s a right to have the e…

> so that urbanism is not impossible to access.

Urbanism in a desirable location is expensive, everywhere in the world.

It’s an inescapable problem of scale.

You’re free to live like a sardine in a dense city, but it will be expensive. You cannot avoid that.

Re: Tax the Land

#466

Post by bradknowles »

bretthoerner wrote: post #461
bradknowles wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were buying single family detached homes, at least those wouldn't block the views, ruin the skyline, and wipe out the natural areas near the river.

Huh, I think the condos downtown "wipe out" a lot less of the river (they're not even that close to the river, there's a whole hike and bike trail between them and the river...?) than all of the single family detached homes right up against the river that go on for mile after mile upstream (literally for cities-worth of land!). And without downtown, I don't know what your view or skyline would be of, other than an em…

There were plenty of older buildings in downtown Austin that were not right up on the riverbanks, before the flood of the multi-million dollar condo hi-rises. They would be the skyline that I would want to maintain.

The expensive single-family homes further up the river may take up a lot of horizontal space, but they don't ruin the skyline and since you have to dig down about as far as the building will be tall, they don't cause such massive damage to the natural surroundings.

Moreover, most of them are occupied. Most of the hi-rise condos are not occupied. They are pure empty investment properties from people who have more money than they know what to do with. If those condos came with a local residence requirement, then I'd feel a lot better about them being there.

Re: Tax the Land

#467

Post by nine_k »

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.

Tokyo is considered an entire prefecture, not a mere city. Considering its population (23M), it makes sense.

Re: Tax the Land

#468

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

pandaman wrote: post #451
ubercow13 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is ignoring the point: positive rights should not exist I’m confused by this statement. You don’t have an inalienable right to keep the area around your home exactly how you want it either. That’s a positive right and requires taking the rights of others, for example by enforcement of zoning laws that affect land owned by other people.

Positive right: somebody has to do something for me. Negative right: nobody must do something to me. The right of self-governance is a negative right. I can see how it can be confusing since you can re-phrase anything as either positive or a negative action e.g. "you must stop stealing my stuff so property is a positive right" and "you should not deny my need for healthcare ergo it's a negative right" so here is a tr…

"I have the right to build apartments on the land I own."

"I have the right to tell you what you can and can't build in my neighborhood."

Which one is positive and which is negative?

Re: Tax the Land

#469

Post by RC_ITR »

jjav wrote: post #360
RC_ITR wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We already see standard property tax forcing the elderly out of their homes in many areas. This was exactly the narrative that led to Prop 13, and what it has led to is the most inflated property market in the entire world because there is nearly no carrying costs for a first (LA), second (Palm Springs), third (Atherton), or fourth (Tahoe) home! Sure, a random subset of boomers can die in their empty 6 bedroom house…

> nearly no carrying costs for a first (LA), second (Palm Springs), third (Atherton), or fourth (Tahoe) home! You're still paying property tax on all those homes, and that propery tax goes up 2% every year. So "nearly no carrying costs" is not true.

Just to clarify some points:

Yes, ofc You are still paying property tax, just way less than you would in nearly any other jurisdiction. It’s capped at 1% of total assessed value and that value can only go up 2% a year (i.e. way less than market).

That was the meaning of the word “nearly.”

EDIT: Just to contextualize this a bit, let’s assume those four houses were bought ten years ago for a total of $4m at the time. They are now worth $10m, but the owner pays $50k a year in tax to carry that “investment” that has gained on average $600k a year. Not exactly a meaningful carrying cost.

Re: Tax the Land

#470

Post by sangnoir »

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…

People who live in a town (homeowners or renters) are not the whole stakeholders, though they are the only ones who can vote there. Workers who commute into the town, and out-of-town property owners (commercial or residential) don't usually get the ear of the local government the way homeowners do
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