4 ms·

You need to read books on LVT and Georgism, it's been around for going on 150 years with praise from such diverse figures as Einstein or Tolstoy. Hardly invente

You need to read books on LVT and Georgism, it's been around for going on 150 years with praise from such diverse figures as Einstein or Tolstoy. Hardly invented by Vox, but judging from your tone you have pre-existing qualms about this particular news outlet.

boredumb 5y ago
I absolutely do have qualms with the entire organization and find ezra klein to be a snake. The idea that a self proclaimed anarchist who spoke against the state as being an exploitative entity, promoting increased state taxes on land, is amusing until you realize the context of him living in the period of Russian aristocracy.
- andrepd 5y ago
  Anarchist thought has a long tradition of seeing certain things as "commons" which are illegitimately appropriated by private concerns. This includes things as land, air, natural resources, cultural heritage, etc. But more importantly, the part where you speak of "state taxes" makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about, since the original idea of Henry George was to distribute the LVT in the form of a citizen's dividend, equally among every person regardless of any criteria. A prescient form of UBI if you will.
  - boredumb 5y ago
    If the state is coercing you to pay taxes for the land you live on, it is a state tax. We can all collectively start referring to chickens as horses, we can even refer to aviaries as a prescient form of stables, but it is not going to change the nature of the bird. The naive idea that exchanging all the taxes for a single land tax will result in anything but all of the current taxes with an additional state tax on land is ahistoric to put it kindly. As of the time of writing we do pay taxes on land as well as taxes on labor, taxes on commerce, taxes on investments, taxes on inheritance, taxes on imports, taxes on value added to goods, sin taxes, tax stamps for government services, taxes on energy, taxes on roadways, taxes on gifts, taxes to enter or leave airports, and even taxes to live in certain cities. In the US these did not exist until after the civil war and since then they've become the rule and not the exception, to repeal all of them and replace them with a LVT is great, but to expect the modern state to not feature creep every single one of the current taxes back in place within a few decades gives me a huge pause.
Hammershaft 5y ago
Also Milton Friedman! Important qualification to recognize this is not just a leftist policy.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  It really does seem like an extremely capitalist concept! The idea is to force the market to compete much more thoroughly. Not sure why folks are saying it’s a “leftist redistribution ploy,” when the main benefit is to force owners to make a profit on their land or sell.
  - lcpriest 5y ago
    Exactly. All it's saying is that you can do whatever you want with your land, as long as you can afford to. It forces landowners to account for the opportunity costs they impose on society by not utilizing the land optimally, even if (and especially if) those costs change over time.
  - tdehnel 5y ago
    What if they don’t want to do that with their land?
    - apendleton 5y ago
      ... sucks to be them? No tax scheme is truly neutral, and any tax scheme is going to favor certain behaviors and disfavor others. If the behavior you wanted to undertake isn't the one a given tax system incentivizes, that's probably unpleasant, but somebody had to get the short straw, and as a society we may as well pick a short-straw-holder in such a way that broadly pro-social outcomes are maximized, like increasing the likelihood that more people have places to live.
      - tdehnel 5y ago
        Why not just raise existing taxes across the board to pay for this? Seems a lot more fair since pro-social benefits are distributed among the whole society.

boredumb 5y ago

I absolutely do have qualms with the entire organization and find ezra klein to be a snake. The idea that a self proclaimed anarchist who spoke against the state as being an exploitative entity, promoting increased state taxes on land, is amusing until you realize the context of him living in the period of Russian aristocracy.

andrepd 5y ago
Anarchist thought has a long tradition of seeing certain things as "commons" which are illegitimately appropriated by private concerns. This includes things as land, air, natural resources, cultural heritage, etc. But more importantly, the part where you speak of "state taxes" makes me think you have no idea what you're talking about, since the original idea of Henry George was to distribute the LVT in the form of a citizen's dividend, equally among every person regardless of any criteria. A prescient form of UBI if you will.
- boredumb 5y ago
  If the state is coercing you to pay taxes for the land you live on, it is a state tax. We can all collectively start referring to chickens as horses, we can even refer to aviaries as a prescient form of stables, but it is not going to change the nature of the bird. The naive idea that exchanging all the taxes for a single land tax will result in anything but all of the current taxes with an additional state tax on land is ahistoric to put it kindly. As of the time of writing we do pay taxes on land as well as taxes on labor, taxes on commerce, taxes on investments, taxes on inheritance, taxes on imports, taxes on value added to goods, sin taxes, tax stamps for government services, taxes on energy, taxes on roadways, taxes on gifts, taxes to enter or leave airports, and even taxes to live in certain cities. In the US these did not exist until after the civil war and since then they've become the rule and not the exception, to repeal all of them and replace them with a LVT is great, but to expect the modern state to not feature creep every single one of the current taxes back in place within a few decades gives me a huge pause.

Hammershaft 5y ago

Also Milton Friedman! Important qualification to recognize this is not just a leftist policy.

noahtallen 5y ago
It really does seem like an extremely capitalist concept! The idea is to force the market to compete much more thoroughly. Not sure why folks are saying it’s a “leftist redistribution ploy,” when the main benefit is to force owners to make a profit on their land or sell.
- lcpriest 5y ago
  Exactly. All it's saying is that you can do whatever you want with your land, as long as you can afford to. It forces landowners to account for the opportunity costs they impose on society by not utilizing the land optimally, even if (and especially if) those costs change over time.
- tdehnel 5y ago
  What if they don’t want to do that with their land?
  - apendleton 5y ago
    ... sucks to be them? No tax scheme is truly neutral, and any tax scheme is going to favor certain behaviors and disfavor others. If the behavior you wanted to undertake isn't the one a given tax system incentivizes, that's probably unpleasant, but somebody had to get the short straw, and as a society we may as well pick a short-straw-holder in such a way that broadly pro-social outcomes are maximized, like increasing the likelihood that more people have places to live.
    - tdehnel 5y ago
      Why not just raise existing taxes across the board to pay for this? Seems a lot more fair since pro-social benefits are distributed among the whole society.