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Land Value Taxes are an immediate nonstarter for anyone who cares about the environment or conservation. Imagine wanting to start an urban community garden and

by caeril 5y ago

Land Value Taxes are an immediate nonstarter for anyone who cares about the environment or conservation. Imagine wanting to start an urban community garden and make your city a nicer place to live, but the taxes are prohibitive because you could have built a concrete monstrosity there instead. Taxes predicated on the money you could have hypothetically made by paving over everything is a great way to ensure that you'll pave over everything.

francisofascii 5y ago
Simple fix. Community gardens are tax-free. A big reason why much of America is covered with mostly empty asphalt parking lots is because is costs very little in land taxes.
BirdieNZ 5y ago
Isn't increased density good for the environment? Georgism/LVT would encourage increased density, which means fewer roads, more compact cities, and probably less driving.
aeternum 5y ago
Cities can use the tax revenue to create community gardens or parks. Property taxes in many places currently tax improvements, so if that concrete monstrosity wanted to build a nice community garden on the premises it would often result in a tax bump. That typically isn't the case with LTV. In contrast, if the land owners surrounding the concrete monstrosity build higher density housing with gardens and public areas then they may drive up the LTV such that the concrete monstrosity is no longer economically viable and must be torn down and updated.
- caeril 5y ago
  Right. And the political process being what it is, it sounds great that you need to have pull with the city council or county government to do what you'd like with your property. I'm sure we all look forward to a world in which buying hookers for the Mayor's son and keeping it all on the DL, or contributing to a few Town Selectmen's "nonprofits" is what you have to do to in order to inject a half-acre of greenery into an otherwise desolate dystopian concrete hellscape.
Qub3d 5y ago
Consider that LVT prevents urban sprawl (which happens because speculation drives people out of urban centers). But yes, that is a consideration that must be made. Georgism is a very logical, mathematical train of thought, and as such does not effectively (in isolation) address human subjective needs, which certainly includes living in beautiful (or at least, non-terrible) places.

by caeril 5y ago

francisofascii 5y ago

Simple fix. Community gardens are tax-free. A big reason why much of America is covered with mostly empty asphalt parking lots is because is costs very little in land taxes.

BirdieNZ 5y ago

Isn't increased density good for the environment? Georgism/LVT would encourage increased density, which means fewer roads, more compact cities, and probably less driving.

aeternum 5y ago

Cities can use the tax revenue to create community gardens or parks. Property taxes in many places currently tax improvements, so if that concrete monstrosity wanted to build a nice community garden on the premises it would often result in a tax bump. That typically isn't the case with LTV. In contrast, if the land owners surrounding the concrete monstrosity build higher density housing with gardens and public areas then they may drive up the LTV such that the concrete monstrosity is no longer economically viable and must be torn down and updated.

caeril 5y ago
Right. And the political process being what it is, it sounds great that you need to have pull with the city council or county government to do what you'd like with your property. I'm sure we all look forward to a world in which buying hookers for the Mayor's son and keeping it all on the DL, or contributing to a few Town Selectmen's "nonprofits" is what you have to do to in order to inject a half-acre of greenery into an otherwise desolate dystopian concrete hellscape.

Qub3d 5y ago

Consider that LVT prevents urban sprawl (which happens because speculation drives people out of urban centers). But yes, that is a consideration that must be made. Georgism is a very logical, mathematical train of thought, and as such does not effectively (in isolation) address human subjective needs, which certainly includes living in beautiful (or at least, non-terrible) places.