3 ms·

I was for a land value tax (because people with more wealth in the form of land would pay more taxes in theory) but after watching the video I am now against it

I was for a land value tax (because people with more wealth in the form of land would pay more taxes in theory) but after watching the video I am now against it. It hinges on the definition of improving land, and from an environmental standpoint human improvement of land is an externality that as often as not creates negative value through exhaustion of resources, waste and unsustainability. Also IMHO there is far too much investment in construction, when buildings are already sitting idle. As we keep moving forward with tech and automation, this spending will become more superfluous. It's becoming more clear to me that we should be thinking about proportions, not arithmetic. Money is a construct, so hard numbers like the size of the money supply and debt are meaningless. It makes more sense to imagine the median global income as being a unit of 1 (per day, per year, it doesn't matter) and then measure individual assets and debts against that. Americans get a score of 5 ($50k median household income), 5 billion people in the world get a score of 1 or less as they earn under $10,000 per year. Millionaires ($100k per year or more) get a score of 10, billionaires get a score of 10,000, etc. Yes yes there are taxes and expenses but the orders of magnitude remain the same. Dealing at the abstraction level allows seeing patterns that aren't normally visible. The biggest anomaly is the level of work people are willing to maintain while getting paid substantially less than a small minority. The other one is why is so much work nonproductive, for example why do people pay half a billion dollars for a TODO website when 3% of the population can grow all the world's food? It's like there is so much wealth in a few hands that it doesn't know where to go except to try to expand itself. Wouldn't it make more sense to invest that money to automate the other industries to get to a 3% level and let the other 97% of the population work in research or health or space travel, anything really? Solving problems once and for all so that we can have both money and time (actual wealth) rather than having to choose one (phantom wealth). For real solutions to these seemingly intractable problems I highly recommend looking into modern monetary theory (MMT): http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/what-is-modern-monetary-theory-or-mmt.html http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/what-is-modern-mo... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Monetary_Theory http://heteconomist.com/modern-monetary-theory-is-relevant-to-more-than-just-capitalism/ http://heteconomist.com/modern-monetary-theory-is-relevant-t...

hx87 10y ago
Improvement isn't always worse for the the environment. Is converting a forest to a parking lot a net negative from an environmental point of view? Yes. Is converting a parking lot to a 5 story residential building a net negative? No, because the parking lot wasn't environmentally friendly to begin with, the residential building doesn't damage the environment any more than the parking lot, and provides much more value to the public than the parking lot for the same environmental cost. > Also IMHO there is far too much investment in construction, when buildings are already sitting idle. Unfortunately all the idle buildings are in the wrong places. LVT, plus tax credits for reclaimed materials would at least move them to where they can do the most good.
bufordsharkley 10y ago
To help the environment, it's important to avoid sprawl. And to avoid sprawl, you need building on the intensive margin (infill) to be more attractive than building on the extensive margin (sprawl). Land-use policy without LVT precludes infill, so there's every reason to say that LVT is an environmentally-friendly policy. That said, you don't want all land being elevated to its highest use, including sub-marginal land. That's why enacting a floor to how low a land tax could be makes sense-- it would serve to protect wilderness.

hx87 10y ago

Improvement isn't always worse for the the environment. Is converting a forest to a parking lot a net negative from an environmental point of view? Yes. Is converting a parking lot to a 5 story residential building a net negative? No, because the parking lot wasn't environmentally friendly to begin with, the residential building doesn't damage the environment any more than the parking lot, and provides much more value to the public than the parking lot for the same environmental cost. > Also IMHO there is far too much investment in construction, when buildings are already sitting idle. Unfortunately all the idle buildings are in the wrong places. LVT, plus tax credits for reclaimed materials would at least move them to where they can do the most good.

bufordsharkley 10y ago

To help the environment, it's important to avoid sprawl. And to avoid sprawl, you need building on the intensive margin (infill) to be more attractive than building on the extensive margin (sprawl). Land-use policy without LVT precludes infill, so there's every reason to say that LVT is an environmentally-friendly policy. That said, you don't want all land being elevated to its highest use, including sub-marginal land. That's why enacting a floor to how low a land tax could be makes sense-- it would serve to protect wilderness.