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Tax the Land

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541–550 of 613 posts

Re: Tax the Land

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay then just die? Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy. > The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing. No, they aren't. Wealth inequality is not a real problem. It's politicized jealousy. Wealth is not zero-sum, and someone having more than someo…

Or work near where you can afford to live? That assumes that's possible. I think the point being made is that it's often very much not possible. There are serious problems with our built environment and this is one of them.

It is possible, and people are fine with it. Otherwise, either a) the housing would not exist, or b) there would be more local job opportunities.

If there is demand for jobs locally and an economy to support it, they can start their own company.

If there is no economy to support it, then the community isn’t viable.

This is straightforward to understand, and not a problem to be solved. And certainly not one to be solved through stage violence.

Re: Tax the Land

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay then just die? Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy. > The majority are screwed over by an ultra-rich minority, personally I think that deserves addressing. No, they aren't. Wealth inequality is not a real problem. It's politicized jealousy. Wealth is not zero-sum, and someone having more than someo…

> Or work near where you can afford to live? If there aren't jobs that support living there, live somewhere else? You're presenting an absurd dichotomy. And what happens when there's no jos where you live, and the only places where jobs exist have extreme housing shortages? You can spend hours commuting each day, but then you're probably burning just as much money through gas - not to mention destroying the environme…

> And what happens when there's no jos where you live

Then you start a small business, employing others and building up your community. How do you think the ‘places where jobs exist’ started?

> the only places where jobs exist have extreme housing shortages?

If it’s intolerable to enough people, they won’t be able to hire. They’ll have to move, or pay more to overcome the housing shortage.

The fact that it isn’t, and they aren’t, shows this isn’t actually a problem.

Re: Tax the Land

#543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

The term "pulling up the ladder" has always been interesting to me, since even though there's a continuous tradeoff between the priorities of incumbents and newcomers (in any domain), it tends to be cast in very concrete and black-and-white terms in any debate where it's used (at least as far as I've seen). For instance, single-family homeowners voting to keep their areas single-family zoned are cast as "pulling up t…

> the current rich-world countries built up their economies largely on the back of environmentally damaging practices. Now that we're developed, though, there is a large push for global regulation of climate policy, punishing polluting countries

While tangential to your point, it should be emphasized that when the current rich-world countries built up their economies, low-emission energy such as solar, wind, and nuclear were not available (or much more expensive). And it is those same rich countries that developed those technologies, that the rest of the world now has access to. In this light, requesting that countries minimize fossil fuel use is not so unfair.

Re: Tax the Land

#544
post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. They are pretty successfully standing athwart capitalism’s most powerful firms, going toe to toe with people who have hundreds of billions of dollars on the line (in terms of Silicon Valley’s capacity grow and add headcount, not just the re…

> People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. This is about as far from true as it can get. Ordinary working class people who just happened to buy a cheap house in a place that many decades later became a hot-spot of real estate development.. are still ordinary working class people.…

I’m sympathetic to the view that having millions of dollars “doesn’t count” when they’re all tied up in living in an ordinary home. But then we would have to apply the same cost of living adjustment to tech workers, which most people think is ridiculous. (“I’m not rich, you see, there is no money left after I have spent it all.”) They have the option to walk away with millions. They choose not to. That is a form of spending. These millions are both absolutely larger than what “high income” workers can accumulate, and from a higher-class source (investment and politics vs. labor).

Re: Tax the Land

#545

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 ar…

Totally, the ability to move is definitely present. The incentive to move if one chooses is a great benefit of increasing land value, we're absolutely agreed on that front.

The problem that I'm trying to point out is the converse disincentive to stay which these policies can introduce. For instance, my family, friends, social and professional networks, and history are all within the region I currently live. If I'm priced out of this current region but am okay with moving to a different region, then this is a great situation: everyone's happy.

If, on the other hand, I want to keep living the life I've built over decades, the ability to cut-and-run with the increase in my property value is little consolation; I'll be a richer man, but I'll be forced away from my home.

I've mentioned it a few times in the thread, but just want to clarify: I'm not saying that from a policy perspective we shouldn't force these people to move in order to accommodate the needs of more people. All I'm saying is that we are giving those people who want to stay in their homes the short end of the stick with these policies.

If we look at towns and cities with super-restrictive policies (e.g. single-family zoning, locked in property tax bills, rent control, etc.), they are objectively inefficient in how they allocate land. Being a resident in one of these places, though, would lead to a pretty good and stable life.

To the residents of these locations, heavy land and property tax policies are essentially telling them "Other, richer people want to live here but it's too full, so you should find somewhere else to live". It's not hard to imagine the human aspect of the opposition (including restrictive zoning in the status quo), which conversely say "Other, richer people want to live here but it's too full, so they should find somewhere else to live.".

Again, inefficient in the aggregate, and I wouldn't argue that it's the foundation we should build policy on, but it's hard to blame someone for taking that stance.

Re: Tax the Land

#546
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,…

>>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…

> We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized.

Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land?

For example: imagine how many untold billions of extra value and tax revenue could be generated in Manhattan by tearing down Central Park and building it all full of dense housing towers.

But would Manhattan be a better place to live as a result?

Re: Tax the Land

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think when we change the laws, we should compensate those who lose out from the change. By giving people the assurance that the laws will either remain the same, or they will be compensated if a change in the law incurs for them losses in their investment, people will be encouraged to invest more of their time and money in endeavors in our society. Regulatory/institutional stability is a related concept and widely…

no, investors need no additional incentive to invest. they squarely chose to take the risk, and will do so regardless of boondoggles like this, because they have no better alternative (i.e., opportunity cost impels them). it's the same fallacious argument used to keep progressive taxes at bay (oh noes, the rich people will leave america for... ???). let them fail. it's not a social problem in the slightest. the socia…

>>no, investors need no additional incentive to invest.

That is not true. Greater incentives translates to more investment, and more investment is socially beneficial.

>>it's the same fallacious argument used to keep progressive taxes at bay (oh noes, the rich people will leave america for... ???).

There is nothing fallacious about this argument. Disincentives to investment lead to less investment. Less investment means less gains in productivity and wages, which also means less taxable income that can support the mandatorily funded safety net leftists support.

>>certainly it means more political opposition in the form of money, but not in votes, which is the more pertinent metric.

Historically, measures that threaten major special interests are difficult to pass due to the opposition they face. Ignoring that is putting ideology ahead of pragmatic results.

Re: Tax the Land

#548
post #546

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…

> We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land? For example: imagine how many untold billions of extra value and tax revenue could be generated in Manhattan by tearing down Central Park and building it all full of dense housing towers. But would Manhattan be a better place to live as a result?

>>Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land?

No, but we can have special provisions for public goods like parks. Outside of properties that generate these kinds of public goods, the revenue a property generates is generally a proxy for social good it does. For example, a condo building with 150 residential units and 10 commercial units on the ground floor will do more social good than a parking lot, and that is easily revealed by how much more revenue it generates.

Re: Tax the Land

#549
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

Reversing the trend of jobs concentrating in metro areas is not exactly feasible. How would this be done? Prohibiting companies from hiring more than X employees? What keeps them from just setting up another company and hiring them as consultants? Or is there going to be a fixed cap on the number of people who are permitted to be employed? If someone moves to the city, and it's already at it's max number of workers t…

> Reversing the trend of jobs concentrating in metro areas is not exactly feasible. How would this be done?

Strange question to ask, given we've been seein the decentralization of jobs happening pretty strong for two years now. Jobs are remote now, wheneve possible, and people are moving to areas they want to live instead of being chained to the commute to an office.

Re: Tax the Land

#550
post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Gold is a finite resource, like any other natural resource. The cost of gold is partially formed by the land purchase of the mining company paid. One can not just start digging and increase the supply of gold. You need land first and it need to be one of a few special locations on earth where such mining is profitable. I don't think the distinction being present are convinceing me. I can agree that undeveloped natura…

>>Gold is a finite resource, like any other natural resource.

For practical purposes, gold is not finite for the time being. We can keep mining it to expand supply for a long time to come.

Maybe for some elements, it would make sense to apply a usage tax to discourage under-utilization of the existing supply, but that day hasn't come for gold.

>>You need land first and it need to be one of a few special locations on earth where such mining is profitable.

There are many places where one can purchase mining rights, and profitably mine gold. It's just a matter of investing the resources to do it.

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