591–600 of 613 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>So what a LVT does, is to force individual landowners to sell land off to giant developer corporations who do have the resources to make it happen. Now those giant corporations are finally paying their damn taxes.
And how does that specifically help a family?
Not really stated in the article are three caveats: 1) Zoning laws have to change as well to actually allow development of the land being taxed toward more productive ends. 2) The land tax amount needs to be high enough that the pain of the tax effectively forces owners to improve what's on the land. A homeowner sitting on a million dollar piece of property in California taxed at ~1% is still unlikely to build an apa…
It's insanely perverse that we let companies like Blackrock buy up lots of homes and turn them into rentals.
Having had many many bad landlords of single family homes in the past, I'd prefer somebody like Blackrock as a land lord as they are less slokey and more likely to follow the law then a lot of landlords I've been forced to deal with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Concentrated metro areas are better for the environment that sprawl. I'm not even talking about suburbia, but even rural living. I'm not saying people should stop living there, but stopping densification will not help curb climate change and sustainable environment. Also, not everyone wants to live in non-dense places.
The difference of domestic emissions caused by city vs non-city residence is quite minor, about 10% per person looking at UK numbers. In comparison, a single flight by plane can double a person emission. It also not clear if using existing numbers of rural living makes sense since most people do not work from home. If the norm is to travel to work, the further people live away from said employment the bigger the foot…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>no, investment may move, but it doesn't simply vanish. wealth managers would be fired for holding investible funds in cash (which is what withholding investment means--that's the opportunity cost mentioned earlier). The percentage of income invested fluctuates, based on factors that include security of property rights and expected return on investment. Creating a reliable regulatory and tax regime would mean greate…
no, those are poor economic prescriptions that further entrench wealth in fewer hands to the detriment of the economy as a whole. investment will happen regardless. the money literally has nowhere else to go. this is really not a hard or controversial point. investors and politicians, on the other hand, like to say things like "investment will go away", but those are lies told to the susceptible to get pet policies e…
These are proven economic prescriptions that expedite the removal of costly encumberences to increasing the efficiency of the market and reducing rent extraction by the few.
>>investment will happen regardless. the money literally has nowhere else to go.
You don't seem to understand the point I'm making. Some percentage of income is invested. That represents investment inflow, that leads to capital formation. The percentage varies between countries and eras, based on factors like the average ROI rate, tax/regulatory stability, and security of property.
It stands to reason that more tax/regulatory stability would lead to a larger percentage of income being invested.
>>investors and politicians, on the other hand, like to say things like "investment will go away", but those are lies told to the susceptible to get pet policies enacted, not to reflect reality, better the economy, or improve the lives of ordinary citizens.
You're allowing conspiracy theories to overwhelm your thinking. Your certainty in bad faith motivating these arguments is causing you to not even comprehend the arguments before you reject them, as in the case of you not making the minimal effort to understand my point about a variable rate of investment that's dependent on multiple factors.
>>history books are literally chocked full of governments being overturned, and it's happened dozens of times in the past century.
There have been hundreds of states in existence at any one time for the last several millennia. Many instances of a type of event does not imply that this event is common. The fact is, relative to how many states exist, and how large of a time period most historical analyses cover, the number of successful revolutions by the lower classes is very few, and thus the event is rare in the context how likely it is that it will occur in any one country in a given era.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's like, your opinion man Well, and the opinion of people that don't like slavery and theft. > I don't know if you mean aspirationally, as in, there shouldn't be racist classist assholes out there so we shouldn't need positive rights to protect the dignity we all deserve I mean positive rights cannot be established without evil. They should never exist, and any you can think of should be abolished. > I wouldn't…
> You don't need to take from others to be free. That is, in fact, the opposite of freedom. But irrelevant: Things have already taken from others and they want it back. > Equity is impossible without violence and restrictions on freedom. Agreed, so because violence was used to obtain an UN-equitable position, they want it back. (I feel a little bit like I'm repeating myself; what's another way to say this?) People th…
Who took what, from who, when?
> Agreed, so because violence was used to obtain an UN-equitable position, they want it back.
Again: what, from who, when? There are two answers to this: something that isn't actually violence (agreeing to employment), or something from hundreds of years ago ('stolen land'). Neither are good arguments, in any way.
> People the color of your skin used violence ...
I'm brown. Want to try again? Maybe without criticizing someone's position based on their race?
> If "positive rights" can also be established in response to evil, then I don't see why they cannot be used to correct for equity.
I don't think you read that sentence correctly. Three things:
1) Positive rights should not exist, because: 2) Positive rights cannot exist without violence and slavery 3) Equity, and demands for it, are inherently evil.
> Property-rights are enforced by taxes
No, they aren't. Property rights are _usually_ enforced by the state, because of their monopoly on violence. There is nothing stopping me from defending my property myself.
> on some level, if these are "positive rights" ...
They aren't. As I explained.
> Your parents poison them which makes it more likely for them to be born lame, so I think it's perfectly fair to break your legs if you can't find another way to make that right.
Sins of the father, huh? Maybe we should punish out to 3 generations? Seems like you'd love the DPRK.
> Why do I tell a slave that they do not need to be a slave?
There are more slaves alive now than there have ever been in history. Someone working a minimum wage job in the US is very much not that, and it's patently absurd. Comparing a retail job to chattel slavery is disgusting.
> who does not have that opinion because I'm not a racist asshole.
Are you sure? You supported breaking my legs when you thought I was white. Now that you know I'm not, what now?
I mean, I know the answer: break them anyway, he's probably a counter-revolutionary.
This is exactly what's wrong with your entire philosophy. It's based on violence to get what you want, because you're incapable of achieving it any other way. Try harder.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
1) Property is a positive right. It requires that the state enforce your property claim. This does not come free; it requires taxes, a police force, etc. 2) Property is delimited in scope . You own your parcel. You do not own the neighborhood, even partially. If someone else wants to put up dense housing on their parcels, their property, there is no negative-right violation against you. You are, at that point, just a…
All rights, positive and negative require the state to enforce them so if we were to accept your definition, the negative rights would not exist and the whole positive/negative qualification became moot. You are free to not recognize the existence of negative rights but then how can you argue over the distinction between positive and negative in a good faith? > If someone else wants to put up dense housing on their p…
My "faith" doesn't matter. The logic of the argument matters. And frankly, you don't seem to be putting forward very logical arguments.
>> If someone else wants to put up dense housing on their parcels, their property, there is no negative-right violation against you.
> That's another POV you are entitled to but the courts found otherwise in the Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co.
That's not what the court found in that case. In that case, the court found that zoning was a valid extension of the authority of local governments. Local governments do not create negative-rights claims. Indeed, the zoning ordinance in question didn't even purport to do so.
Now, I've never been arguing that local governments lack the authority to pass zoning restrictions, even if I think some zoning is bad substantively. I've been arguing that you, as a private individual, do not have a negative right to make up your own personal zoning code and enforce it on others, without the democratic authority of the local government.
My argument here is entirely consistent with Euclid vs Amber, and frankly, your reference to the ruling is a non-sequitur.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an absurd example. Central Park isn't undeveloped land. It's a freaking historical site and national treasure.
Why specifically is it absurd, in the context of what LVT tries to achieve? LVT isn't about whether the land is developed or undeveloped. The idea is to tax it based on its maximally productive usage. So for example if a plot of land has a single house but it could fit an apartment building, it should have an apartment building. Of course Central Park is a treasure! But based on LVT, open fields in the middle of Manh…
I'm not sure this is true though. Manhattan wouldn't be close to what it is today without central park. It's not very hard to make the claim that central park provides more value than putting up apartment buildings would. Central Park makes that island some of the most expensive land in the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>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 service…
"Taxation is entirely about raising money." I hope that it is interesting and noteworthy for you to learn that many, many smart and thoughtful economists do not agree with that. In fact, they strongly disagree . Current thinking in modern economics - specifically in MMT[1] - is that money is created by loans and destroyed by taxes. Which is to say, the government (provided it is a sovereign issuer of its own debts, l…
Modern economists by and large do not subscribe to MMT. It has about as much support amongst academic economists as climate change denial.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One reason the West is prosperous is we have the rule of law. This obviously doesn't free investors from all risks but it does reduce political risks, i.e. being arbitrarily dispossessed by the government is mostly not something you factor in. In poorer countries it does get factored in: people take less risk and demand a higher premium for doing so, since why bother if it's just going to get seized? This goes a dece…
this isn't about seizing property, but about not giving away tax money to wealthy landowners every time our laws change against their interest toward the broader public interest.
Eh, this is a fine line. If Henry had his way we'd have a 100% tax on land, which means unimproved land is now worthless since you can't make any profit off it. A true LVT tax is effectively the same as a seizure of your unimproved land, as its entire value has been collapsed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why specifically is it absurd, in the context of what LVT tries to achieve? LVT isn't about whether the land is developed or undeveloped. The idea is to tax it based on its maximally productive usage. So for example if a plot of land has a single house but it could fit an apartment building, it should have an apartment building. Of course Central Park is a treasure! But based on LVT, open fields in the middle of Manh…
> But based on LVT, open fields in the middle of Manhattan is not the maximally productive economic use for that land. I'm not sure this is true though. Manhattan wouldn't be close to what it is today without central park. It's not very hard to make the claim that central park provides more value than putting up apartment buildings would. Central Park makes that island some of the most expensive land in the world.
It certainly wouldn't and I wouldn't argue the contrary.
But from the perspective of analyzing LTV and its implications, how would that be written into the tax code formula?
Surely it'd be possible to take some of the Central Park area and convert to highrises without meaningfully diminishing the benefits of having a Central Park. But how much area would be ok to build to maximize economic value? 1%? 5%? 50%? 80%?
Because at the end of the day, a tax law needs rules and formulas to compute the tax, so how do those get defined in a way that preserves open space but pushes for highrise development everywhere else (if that's the goal)?