611–620 of 764 posts
Any commodization of a necessary resource for living is inherently unethical. I know this isn't a popular opinion on HN, but I need you to think about this not as the property owner but as the tenant
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Renters are paying for the value of the land and the improvements. If the rental price of the apartment is above that, they won't pay it and find another place. If there are no places they will go homeless. Since landlords are already charging for this value, an increase of taxes does not increase the rents. > every property owner isn't going to operate at a loss So they will then sell. But who would buy at curre…
> If the rental price of the apartment is above that, they won't pay it and find another place. If there are no places they will go homeless. Since landlords are already charging for this value, an increase of taxes does not increase the rents. Nope. Sorry but that's not how it works. If the landlord has to pay 4x tax they will pass some (all) of that increase to the renter. Also, a 4x increase in tax != 4x increase…
How much of a tax gets passed along to the consumer is modeled in an introductory macroeconomics course. It depends upon the elasticity of supply and demand. A tax falls primarily on the side of the transaction with the lower elasticity, because they are less able to adapt behavior to avoid the tax.
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...
The reason economists like a land-value tax is because the elasticity of supply for land is effectively zero: there is a fixed amount of land, and regardless of what the tax rate is, landowners are either going to seek a return on their ownership or will sell it to someone else who'll get a better return. Elasticity of demand is pretty low too, but it's not zero: people can double up with roommates, move in with families, or become homeowners. So a tax on unimproved land ends up falling almost entirely on the landlord, with relatively little long-term impact on rents.
In practice, we're likely to see pretty severe reallocations of land and short-term price dislocations, as existing landowners find that their usage is not productive enough to pay the tax and so they need to sell to new firms who will use the land in different ways. But this is working-as-intended: the goal of an LVT is to incentivize better usage of land through high-density development of desirable parcels, individual homeownership (when density makes sense), and commercial activity.
Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
I already posted a comment on this, but forgot to answer the actual question. I don’t think it follows that it’s wrong to commoditize basic necessities. Take, for example, food: the reason just about everyone in the western world can afford food is BECAUSE it is commoditized. I would like the barriers to home ownership to be lowered. On the other hand, I don’t think the rental market is evil. A lot of people can’t af…
The western world gets cheap food because it exploits the labor and resources of the less fourtunate. Real estate investment is a direct example of wealth concentration. The less wealthy pay a richer individuals rent plus a little profit on top. That person should be able to buy the dwelling directly without a middleman extracting profit.
Let's say they need 10% down only to do that construction. 30k each. What is the stat, 50% of people have less than 5k in the bank?
It took me 1 year of working with no college debt to save up 20k for a house. That was fast. Where do I live until I have 30k to build? My family? I was working on the other side of the country. What if you don't have family? You are homeless until you can afford to build?
Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
I would start by making property taxes substantially higher for non-owner-occupied property. If you are rent-seeking rather than residing on the property you should pay way more, maybe 4x or higher, in taxes. Housing prices would crash and that would be the point; but everyone who owns property would be against it because they don't want to see their assets drop in value. The counter-argument people make is "that wou…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The value of the land is based on 1. The inherit value of the land - rivers, gold or oil being key examples. 2. The nearby infrastructure 3. The zoning policies 4. The community and commercial services If there is land zoned for another NYC, with the infrastructure of NYC, including the excellent port access, it would very quickly become worth what NYC is worth as people showed up. We see this with the pop-up cities…
I completely agree with that last post's reasoning for why a pop-up city might stay empty or become another New York. I don't see why it needs a land value tax and having one causes anything. All the things you are putting into your land value calculation cause that. Not the tax. Now don't get me wrong. I'd love me a land value tax as it would probably mean I'd pay less for where I live. But that's it so far. Color m…
I'm a programmer, as most are on this website. The thing that mostly interests me is when incremental changes don't lead to global maximums. As are most who study AI and say, Agile development. When is it that prisoner's dilemmas occur?
I pay attention to things like programmers who fix the bug they introduced fix the bug at a deeper level[0], I pay attention to Simple Made Easy[1], I pay attention to the systemic effects[2].
I point out that the Land Value Tax is so simple and yet fixes so many things. It fixes an inherit problem with society at a deep level. You need to pay attention to the incentives and how they mold the eventual outcomes. Land value taxation leads to correctly aligned incentives.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28128729
No, because governments' ability to procure it for the needy is a very separable problem. But let me play Devil's Advocate: agriculture, the foundation of the food supply, is one of the most commoditized markets that exist. Does this bother you too? Why not? If it's because food is generally a smaller part of income, highly responsive to market pressure to keep prices low in addition to some stabilizing subsidies fro…
> why can't real estate work the same way? So I'll tackle this... Food is highly responsive to market pressure because it is nearly entirely fungible. I'll throw this here for the sake of making sure we're on the same page when I say that --- Fungible: able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable. --- So food markets are sensitive to pressure because there is hardly ever anything…
It's a natural first impulse, but it's wrong. What is the correct impulse is to be concerned about how lopsided most cities zoning is towards single family, as that is what is driving the market power that makes real estate profitable as a financial asset. If most of a city was zoned to allow up to multi residential highrises rather than most of a city being zoned for single family it would cut the appreciation abili…
The problem with this is the only entities with the financial power to build such buildings are large developers and corporate landlords. That leads to either high rents or high HOA fees. We need some way to pool prospective homeowners together to build this kind of high-density housing. Because otherwise we’re trading one problem for another and still failing to make home ownership affordable.
Housing production is far too centered in the opinions of "the community." Does the community even exist when it is not opposing housing? One wonders. Housing cares far too much about your identity and character. Whether it is qualifying for a mortgage, passing a co-op board interview, or cities and neighborhoods calibrating their codes to attract the "right kind of people" and keep out the "wrong kind of people." This neighborhood isn't for renters. This neighborhood isn't for tech workers. This neighborhood isn't for multigenerational families. This neighborhood isn't for transit riders or cyclists. Housing types that mere professionals could afford would be inconsistent with the character of this aristocratic community.
Shut up! My money's as green as yours. Take it. In exchange I get a place to live. If there are not enough then someone can come along and make more. It would be so much better if housing were dramatically more commodified than it is.
It's a natural first impulse, but it's wrong. What is the correct impulse is to be concerned about how lopsided most cities zoning is towards single family, as that is what is driving the market power that makes real estate profitable as a financial asset. If most of a city was zoned to allow up to multi residential highrises rather than most of a city being zoned for single family it would cut the appreciation abili…
> If most of a city was zoned to allow up to multi residential highrises rather than most of a city being zoned for single family The problem with this is the only entities with the financial power to build such buildings are large developers and corporate landlords. That leads to either high rents or high HOA fees. We need some way to pool prospective homeowners together to build this kind of high-density housing. B…
> We need some way to pool
That's e.g. a co-op, not exactly unusual concept to pay for housing construction at different scales.