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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

#61

Post by plasticchris »

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,…

Assuming there are ample buyers, and no predators waiting in the wings for distressed sellers who cannot afford the taxes.

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

#62

Post by earleybird »

robocat wrote: post #56
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,…

> Suddenly, property tax on everyone's $0.01 parcels shoots up from $0 to $12,000 per year In New Zealand, property taxes are relative: the tax you pay depends on how much your property price rises relative to everybody else’s property prices. The local government has a fixed budget, which is apportioned between all the properties proportional to property values. Example: a city has a budget of $1000. The city has tw…

I believe that's the typical scenario.

taxes = mill-rate * property-value

If you're paying more in taxes it's either because the taxing authority decided to raise more money or your property has increased relative to your neighbours.

It all comes down to the mill rate.

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

#63

Post by Schroedingersat »

drekipus wrote: post #14

This is an interesting post, But requires changes "to the system" that is a little too big for my small brain to think about. If I might diverge from a little as a thought I'm still figuring out: It ends on the thought of "for a common good" which makes me think of that utilitarian ideal, one that I don't think is going to be approached by democratic processes of popular vote and the like* So what then? if not "democ…

Anarchist models (zapatista territories, machnovia, catalonia, rojava etc) work fairly well internally or at least better than alternatives, but do not seem to be robust to extermination or cooption by well funded capitalists (the ussr and ccp are examples of state capitalism, not socialism or communism).

I think the zapatista principle whereby the entity that does violence is completely decoupled from any decision making processes that do no involve direct violence and serves only the people and depends directly on the people is an essential ingredient.

Also voting methods are only a minor help without functioning journalism or media, and runoff vs preference etc. matters less than proportional representation

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

#64

Post by zozbot234 »

Formal ("legible") land tenancy rights actually benefit poor people who might plan to make durable improvements to the land; this has been made especially clear in the work of development economist Hernando de Soto. This is not incompatible with customary land rights vested in a whole community (as discussed in OP) since the two apply to very different scenarios.

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

#65

Post by owyn »

I have this half baked idea that taxation could be "inverted" in a way that would let people actually enjoy the game of taxation in a very capitalist way. Here's the scenario:

Individuals shouldn't pay tax on regular income up to some limit, just pick $1M for now. Corporate tax could also be set at 95% (chosen only because of the beatles tax man song) above some limit, just pick $1B for now. Every individual, whether they work or not could be allocated a $1M tax credit. So every person has $1M of monopoly game "tax credit" money. Anything an individual earns up to that point would be free of tax. Most people don't earn that much, GDP in the US is about 70k. But if you aren't working, or if you make less, you can lend your tax credit to a corporation at some exchange rate on a market. It would work like carbon credits. If the exchange rate was 1% then your individual $1M credit would be worth $10k. That's your basic income problem solved and the corporate sector gets to keep $990k of extra profit from your donated tax credit. Even if you made 500k, you'd still have 500k to play around with on the tax credit market. Maybe you'd donate it to charity, maybe you'd sell it. If you work for a company you could allocate your tax credits to them at a higher than market rate as your salary. Then a raise wouldn't even be cash, it might be a +1% to your exchange rate. Money is a human invention but I feel like since we're pretty much choosing capitalism on this planet, everyone could at least have table stakes in the game.

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

#66

Post by kodah »

hibikir wrote: post #52
kodah wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always called this "state-to-state" income inequality, because it used to be that people from relatively wealthy states would "retire" (probably not actually retire) in lower income states because they can purchase a home with less friction. Nowadays, the income inequality gap has grown drastically in each state, so I think this problem just falls under that umbrella. A good source: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/a-s…

The problem with this is that states are very poor boundaries for almost any economic and demographic indicator: A US state is a mostly arbitrary collection of rural, urban and suburban people, which happened to be put together a few hundred years ago, and which have relatively few economic ties with people from different groups. A big difference among states is just how much of each group we get, plus a small multip…

Yeah, I see your point. I do think there's something to do with a state having a concentration of wealthy people who then move. That, at least, seems problematic. I do think people, these days, are incentivized to do that because although we may look at them as wealthy they may have trouble affording where they're from. I don't even know what you do with that.

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

#67

Post by jjav »

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,…

> Well guess what?

> Now they're millionaires.

The difficulty with this reasoning is that it assumes that homes (and the land they sit on) have only economic value and nothing else matters.

> No owners "lose" from property values shooting through the roof.

In the story you just described they lost their homes they had built up and loved.

For many people, a bunch of cash doesn't replace that.

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

#68

Post by josephcsible »

jjav wrote: post #67
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,…

> Well guess what? > Now they're millionaires. The difficulty with this reasoning is that it assumes that homes (and the land they sit on) have only economic value and nothing else matters. > No owners "lose" from property values shooting through the roof. In the story you just described they lost their homes they had built up and loved. For many people, a bunch of cash doesn't replace that.

They didn't lose their houses. They sold them. When ownership of your house goes to someone else, you lost it if your bank balance stayed the same, but you sold it if your bank balance went up by the value of the house.

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

#69

Post by jjav »

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.

> ... or you accept that the widow argument was a bogus special interest ploy

It's not either/or. The old lady (old guys don't like to be kicked to the street either) argument was very real and causing a lot of pain for real regular people.

It's also true that the special corporate interest saw an opportunity and sneaked in to a law that never should've applied to them.

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

#70

Post by anamax »

ethanbond wrote: post #60
anamax wrote: post #22

Oh goody. Another group with an equation that they confuse with a complete picture of reality. (When you point out that reality comes up with different answers, they try to change or camouflage reality.) Note that Georgists don't tell us HOW the value of this "land value tax" is determined. It certainly isn't uniform across the US, but where does it change and why? In addition, Georgists insist that "public infrastru…

Georgists absolutely do not believe that public infrastructure exclusively drives value. Rather that the value of the land is set ~exclusively by the things that happen not on that land, both public and private. So your example of Disney is a very good pro-Georgist example. Why should someone who happened to own a random piece of land and did nothing with it for 4 generations get a multi-million dollar windfall becau…

> Rather that the value of the land is set ~exclusively by the things that happen not on that land

You do know that that is not true, that the value of land often depends ON things that happen on that land, right? (It's not hard to come up with examples.)

But, I do appreciate an example of something that I didn't mention, namely the propensity of Georgists to make claims that they find self-evident and profound but are actually are false.

> Why should someone who happened to own a random piece of land and did nothing with it for 4 generations get a multi-million dollar windfall because Disney accomplished something nearby?

The taxes aren't going to Disney....

> Re the valuation of land separately from the improvements, these are already separated on the vast majority of appraisals.

And that separation is mostly a fiction, as anyone who owns real estate knows.

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