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Land is in fixed supply and everyone needs land to work, sleep, and exist upon. Neither UBI nor any other policy changes that. Housing costs in expensive mark

Land is in fixed supply and everyone needs land to work, sleep, and exist upon. Neither UBI nor any other policy changes that. Housing costs in expensive markets are set primarily by land values and not by the value of the capital/building upon the land. Yes you can make a dent in the problem it by zoning for more units, but you cannot zone more land into existence in high value areas.

ALittleLight 6y ago
I don't think land is fixed in supply. We can build up and down and in the far future, into space. Either way, we are seemingly far from land being the bottleneck at the moment.
WalterBright 6y ago
> Land is in fixed supply and everyone needs land to work, sleep, and exist upon. For those who are convinced supply&demand doesn't work for dwellings, buy a rental and charge 10x the market rate. See how that goes. This applies to any business. For example, try selling something on Amazon/Ebay/Etsy/Craigslist. You can charge whatever you like for it. Whether someone will buy it is another thing entirely. Everyone needs food, too, but ironically it's the unneeded food (like Starbucks) that's expensive.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  Today how that goes is you get huge tax cuts for not making money and keeping valuable resources off the market. How that should go is you get taxed at the same rate as if you had set it at a price it could be rented at, therefore encouraging you to set your price correctly. That’s the LVT, that’s basically the entire thing.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    > huge tax cuts for not making money Nobody pays income tax if they aren't making money. That's why they're called "income" taxes.
    - ethanbond 6y ago
      Yep, and that’s why I’m advocating a “land value” tax instead.
- anxcv 6y ago
  Well, Starbucks (overpriced garbage coffee) is something like 50 times more expensive than making coffee at home. If you work in an expensive city, pay $2000 for one room, good luck finding a room for $40. It is precisely the problem that you cannot opt out of the housing market, at least when you need a calm and safe environment to think. Even when you don't, it is probably illegal to set up a tent somewhere, and legal camping sites are pretty expensive and horrible, too.
bpatel576 6y ago
You have to think of it in a deeper context than it being binary. It has very similar properties to oil. It's also fixed, but technology has done some phenomenal things to extract more of it with greater efficiency. The same is true for land and housing. UBI, self driving cars, and a greater shift away from working in offices are all going to change how we live and the type of land we will want to live on.
onion2k 6y ago
Land is in fixed supply and everyone needs land to work, sleep, and exist upon. Density of land use isn't fixed. We can build in three dimensions. Also there's tons of land that's hardly used at all in the form of golf courses. We should build cheap housing on them.

ALittleLight 6y ago

I don't think land is fixed in supply. We can build up and down and in the far future, into space. Either way, we are seemingly far from land being the bottleneck at the moment.

WalterBright 6y ago

> Land is in fixed supply and everyone needs land to work, sleep, and exist upon. For those who are convinced supply&demand doesn't work for dwellings, buy a rental and charge 10x the market rate. See how that goes. This applies to any business. For example, try selling something on Amazon/Ebay/Etsy/Craigslist. You can charge whatever you like for it. Whether someone will buy it is another thing entirely. Everyone needs food, too, but ironically it's the unneeded food (like Starbucks) that's expensive.

ethanbond 6y ago
Today how that goes is you get huge tax cuts for not making money and keeping valuable resources off the market. How that should go is you get taxed at the same rate as if you had set it at a price it could be rented at, therefore encouraging you to set your price correctly. That’s the LVT, that’s basically the entire thing.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > huge tax cuts for not making money Nobody pays income tax if they aren't making money. That's why they're called "income" taxes.
  - ethanbond 6y ago
    Yep, and that’s why I’m advocating a “land value” tax instead.
anxcv 6y ago
Well, Starbucks (overpriced garbage coffee) is something like 50 times more expensive than making coffee at home. If you work in an expensive city, pay $2000 for one room, good luck finding a room for $40. It is precisely the problem that you cannot opt out of the housing market, at least when you need a calm and safe environment to think. Even when you don't, it is probably illegal to set up a tent somewhere, and legal camping sites are pretty expensive and horrible, too.

bpatel576 6y ago

You have to think of it in a deeper context than it being binary. It has very similar properties to oil. It's also fixed, but technology has done some phenomenal things to extract more of it with greater efficiency. The same is true for land and housing. UBI, self driving cars, and a greater shift away from working in offices are all going to change how we live and the type of land we will want to live on.

onion2k 6y ago

Land is in fixed supply and everyone needs land to work, sleep, and exist upon. Density of land use isn't fixed. We can build in three dimensions. Also there's tons of land that's hardly used at all in the form of golf courses. We should build cheap housing on them.