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The primary useful function of government is to protect personal safety and property rights[1]. Some property is more expensive to protect than other property.
by jl2718 6y ago
The primary useful function of government is to protect personal safety and property rights[1]. Some property is more expensive to protect than other property. Consider the cost of protecting urban homes vs rural land. Some property, like contracts, debt, copyright etc, is extremely expensive to protect, and some property, like a crypto key, is not protected at all by the government.
From this perspective, there are massive inequities in tax cost:benefit across asset classes. Some of the most expensive assets pay nothing, and the cheapest pay the most. But I don’t think it goes in the direction the author wants it to.
[1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1991/press-release/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1991/pre...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bradleyjg 6y agoThe justification for taxing real property taxes but not chattels is that real property is scarce and capable of producing positive externalities. Taxing it is one way to insure that it is put to efficient use.
- qzw 6y agoThis seems tangential to the NYT article, which is specifically calling out differences in the assessed values of the same type of assets as a function of their actual market value. Particularly they’re comparing houses that are often assessed by the same government entity under what are supposed to be uniformly applied standards. The consistent under assessment of high value homes versus the simultaneous over assessment of low value homes, across a number of different geographical locales would seem to point to some kind of systemic issue. I don’t think we should so quickly dismiss it. And anecdotally, in my area, I see a lot more police patrols in the pricier neighborhoods than the cheaper ones. In most middle class neighborhoods you have speed bumps in the road, the higher end ones get regular police presence to deter speeding so they don’t need to put up with such aesthetic blemishes.