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It works if everybody puts up a defensive value because tax rates would drop for constant revenue. Also consider how much value would be assessed for all proper

by jl2718 6y ago

It works if everybody puts up a defensive value because tax rates would drop for constant revenue. Also consider how much value would be assessed for all property, e.g. google.com. In the US there is $16T currency, $38T stocks plus a roughly equal amount in corporate internal valuation, ~$30T small business, $33T houses, $17T commercial real estate, plus commodities, any other mark to market securities, vehicles, collectibles, intangibles like copyrights, patents, operating licenses, and really anything else that a court can adjudicate possession of. I would expect somewhere around $250-500T with defensive valuation, so tax rates <1%. If your house is worth $1M, it’ll cost you $800/mo. By comparison, a US top 5%-er pays the same in property tax, plus income tax of about $7000/mo. And it seems amazingly efficient. List and pay. If you like it, pay more. If you want to sell, just pay less and somebody will inquire. Market liquidity and order book depth transparency would be amazing. Capitalizations would be accurate for liquidation rather than estimated by float pricing. The big monkey wrench I see is privacy. I believe this can be solved with zero-knowledge proofs. Maybe this is my next project.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
OK, wait a minute. The tax is on the value of the land, right? It's not supposed to change just because I build a house on it, right? (Though having power and sewer to the lot may improve the value.) So if I don't value it highly enough myself, someone else can come in and take the land. But the house is on the land. So I'm going to have to adjust the price to the actual price of the house + land, or someone else will outbid me and take it, thereby getting both the land and the house. Or else, when they outbid me, they only get the land but I keep the house. But how's that actually going to work in practice? The net effect is that this scheme stops being Georgism. It becomes a tax on the total value of the land plus improvements.
- jl2718 6y ago
  Yes; that’s true, it’s not a land tax. But many have pointed out that land fails to capture the scarce raw material that makes up an economy, such as human attention. These are very hard to assess. Land is too, and frankly the productivity of land alone is probably not enough to pay for the government, so all profits get collected as tax and the value of the land drops to zero.

by jl2718 6y ago

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

OK, wait a minute. The tax is on the value of the land, right? It's not supposed to change just because I build a house on it, right? (Though having power and sewer to the lot may improve the value.) So if I don't value it highly enough myself, someone else can come in and take the land. But the house is on the land. So I'm going to have to adjust the price to the actual price of the house + land, or someone else will outbid me and take it, thereby getting both the land and the house. Or else, when they outbid me, they only get the land but I keep the house. But how's that actually going to work in practice? The net effect is that this scheme stops being Georgism. It becomes a tax on the total value of the land plus improvements.

jl2718 6y ago
Yes; that’s true, it’s not a land tax. But many have pointed out that land fails to capture the scarce raw material that makes up an economy, such as human attention. These are very hard to assess. Land is too, and frankly the productivity of land alone is probably not enough to pay for the government, so all profits get collected as tax and the value of the land drops to zero.