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Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society. This p

Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society. This policy only makes sense where zoning is also loosened enough to actually build on the land though...if zoning doesn't allow you to do anything with the land to make more money (building apartments, subdividing, etc.), this just becomes a tax on poor landowners.

giantg2 5y ago
"Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society." I doubt the affected person feels it's good. Quite frankly, the land value tax ideas seem absurd to me. It's just another redistribution scheme - work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax. It seems it's the government's and everyone else's desire to just drain people until they have nothing. Make other's lives harder to make your own easier, seems to be the motto of today. It feels like mob rule to me.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  It's not solely a redistribution scheme. It's based on the fundamental principle that the government is the ultimate owner of all land, and private individuals are simply renters. If you accept this to be true and good, then it makes perfect sense. If you are the type that wants to be non dependent on the government, it is deeply grating.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "If you accept this to be true and good oh, then it makes perfect sense." One can accept that the government owns the land while simultaneously believing that the government can abuse that power, just like a bad landlord can.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      I don't disagree, But I do think the idea that the government, not individuals, is the ultimate owner of the land is a fundamental assumption of LVT. Not all people believe this.
      - mistrial9 5y ago
        "ultimate owner" is too broad a brush. Long and detailed debates went on for generations over this. The origin of the USA is in the right of States to determine quite a lot of the details. Federal taxation is only a hundred years old here. Texas and the mid-west are different than California which is different than Florida.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        Nevada for a short time had the option of getting allodial title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Nevada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Nevada Proper use of allodial title and homeowner's exemptions could go a long way.
        cascom 5y ago
        I had never heard of this, super interesting, thanks.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        The fundamental assumption of LVT is that society should be the owner of the land - i.e. that the land is commons. Government can be a manager of that land, but it only has such powers because the shareholders (everyone) vest that power in it. The basis for this assertion is that land supply is fundamentally very scarce, so this is zero-sum game. If some have too much, others have little, and the former can extract substantial economic rent from the latter.
  - 8note 5y ago
    I don't think you can avoid the government ownership of land, at least within the US. If its not the governments, it still belongs to the natives the government stole it from. The individual's legitimacy comes from the government's claims over the land
    - giantg2 5y ago
      "it still belongs to the natives" Even that could be debated. Some tribes also subscribed to the right of conquest, such as the Lakota. Not a pretty thought but just thought it was worth mentioning.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      Why can't a government have a legitimate claim then sell it to an individual?
  - mynameishere 5y ago
    Your "fundamental principle" is fundamentally illegal in the US, at least according to the Fifth Amendment (leaving aside the fact that the Constitution is a dead letter).
- uoaei 5y ago
  Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?
  - dismalpedigree 5y ago
    The masses are asses. We shouldn’t just do things because the most people want it. Thats called tyranny by the majority.
    - uoaei 5y ago
      I personally believe it'd be great if people like you could completely divest themselves from nation-states. You don't want to contribute to a commonwealth, that's fine, you can rough it over there and live a sad, cold, hungry existence. The vast majority of the comforts of modern life are afforded specifically and only because other people contribute to the common cause. You reject your responsibility to contribute to same but gleefully consume the benefits which are allocated to you. What an ass. Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists. Very few appreciate the level of knowledge and skill needed to do it alone. Even fewer can ever gain all that knowledge and all those skills. There's a reason humans organize into packs: division of labor is nothing less than a paradigm shift in productivity for groups of people. Civilization today is that same basic concept scaled up to support your consumptive ass along with the rest of humanity.
      - dismalpedigree 5y ago
        I personally feel it’d be great if people like you could stop thinking that all property is inherently society’s property and that I should be thankful society allows me to reside on it. We are all in it together, but we will all be better off when others stop trying to appropriate everything from me and give it to others just because they want it. I work hard for what I have. I shouldn’t have to have it taken away if I don’t continue to work (add value) into perpetuity.
        uoaei 5y ago
- aperson_hello 5y ago
  The affected person doesn't feel it's good when an apartment building gets built next door to their single family if the land isn't theirs either. NIMBYism around density gives us the situation that we're in now - where low density can't support city services and no one wants to allow higher density.
- ricree 5y ago
  >It's just another redistribution scheme More starkly, it seems to me that it's a redistribution scheme that exists primarily to enrich those who already have abundant capital. Who's going to be building and owning those high density structures afterwards? Not the people who are getting displaced from their homes, I suspect. In short, it feels as though we're being told that it is right and just that you should be driven from your own home, so long as there exists some millionaire who would like to tear it down and build an apartment building in its place.
  - closeparen 5y ago
    People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. They are pretty successfully standing athwart capitalism’s most powerful firms, going toe to toe with people who have hundreds of billions of dollars on the line (in terms of Silicon Valley’s capacity grow and add headcount, not just the real estate firms who would participate in that) and conceding a battle here or there but largely winning the war. At the same time their wealth increases tax free year over much more than a FAANG senior engineer or middle manager makes pre tax. These are not sympathetic underdogs.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. This is about as far from true as it can get. Ordinary working class people who just happened to buy a cheap house in a place that many decades later became a hot-spot of real estate development.. are still ordinary working class people. Often very poor, even.
      - closeparen 5y ago
        I’m sympathetic to the view that having millions of dollars “doesn’t count” when they’re all tied up in living in an ordinary home. But then we would have to apply the same cost of living adjustment to tech workers, which most people think is ridiculous. (“I’m not rich, you see, there is no money left after I have spent it all.”) They have the option to walk away with millions. They choose not to. That is a form of spending. These millions are both absolutely larger than what “high income” workers can accumulate, and from a higher-class source (investment and politics vs. labor).
- Manuel_D 5y ago
  No, I think the affected person is happy making a killing on their real estate investment. Property taxes are linked to property values, if the value of your home goes up so high that property taxes are unaffordable then their must have seen significant gains in their real estate values.
- midasuni 5y ago
  > work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax. That’s not how it works. The more you get paid, the more you can pay land owners. When demand is higher than supply prices rise to capture all excess income.
- ScottBurson 5y ago
  You seem to be overlooking that in that scenario, your land has appreciated considerably. If you sell, you'll net a gain; if you don't want to sell despite the gain, you can borrow against the property to pay the tax. Here's the thing to understand: anyone buying property now in a popular area, where prices have been increasing rapidly for the last two or three decades, is effectively paying an LVT. The thing is, they're not paying it to the locality, which could use it for infrastructure and services; they're paying it to the previous owner, because the higher purchase price means a higher mortgage payment. That's redistribution too.

giantg2 5y ago

"Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society." I doubt the affected person feels it's good. Quite frankly, the land value tax ideas seem absurd to me. It's just another redistribution scheme - work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax. It seems it's the government's and everyone else's desire to just drain people until they have nothing. Make other's lives harder to make your own easier, seems to be the motto of today. It feels like mob rule to me.

s1artibartfast 5y ago
It's not solely a redistribution scheme. It's based on the fundamental principle that the government is the ultimate owner of all land, and private individuals are simply renters. If you accept this to be true and good, then it makes perfect sense. If you are the type that wants to be non dependent on the government, it is deeply grating.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "If you accept this to be true and good oh, then it makes perfect sense." One can accept that the government owns the land while simultaneously believing that the government can abuse that power, just like a bad landlord can.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I don't disagree, But I do think the idea that the government, not individuals, is the ultimate owner of the land is a fundamental assumption of LVT. Not all people believe this.
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      "ultimate owner" is too broad a brush. Long and detailed debates went on for generations over this. The origin of the USA is in the right of States to determine quite a lot of the details. Federal taxation is only a hundred years old here. Texas and the mid-west are different than California which is different than Florida.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Nevada for a short time had the option of getting allodial title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Nevada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Nevada Proper use of allodial title and homeowner's exemptions could go a long way.
      - cascom 5y ago
        I had never heard of this, super interesting, thanks.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      The fundamental assumption of LVT is that society should be the owner of the land - i.e. that the land is commons. Government can be a manager of that land, but it only has such powers because the shareholders (everyone) vest that power in it. The basis for this assertion is that land supply is fundamentally very scarce, so this is zero-sum game. If some have too much, others have little, and the former can extract substantial economic rent from the latter.
- 8note 5y ago
  I don't think you can avoid the government ownership of land, at least within the US. If its not the governments, it still belongs to the natives the government stole it from. The individual's legitimacy comes from the government's claims over the land
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "it still belongs to the natives" Even that could be debated. Some tribes also subscribed to the right of conquest, such as the Lakota. Not a pretty thought but just thought it was worth mentioning.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Why can't a government have a legitimate claim then sell it to an individual?
- mynameishere 5y ago
  Your "fundamental principle" is fundamentally illegal in the US, at least according to the Fifth Amendment (leaving aside the fact that the Constitution is a dead letter).
uoaei 5y ago
Do you have an argument against redistribution that isn't "I disagree with what the public wants"?
- dismalpedigree 5y ago
  The masses are asses. We shouldn’t just do things because the most people want it. Thats called tyranny by the majority.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    I personally believe it'd be great if people like you could completely divest themselves from nation-states. You don't want to contribute to a commonwealth, that's fine, you can rough it over there and live a sad, cold, hungry existence. The vast majority of the comforts of modern life are afforded specifically and only because other people contribute to the common cause. You reject your responsibility to contribute to same but gleefully consume the benefits which are allocated to you. What an ass. Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists. Very few appreciate the level of knowledge and skill needed to do it alone. Even fewer can ever gain all that knowledge and all those skills. There's a reason humans organize into packs: division of labor is nothing less than a paradigm shift in productivity for groups of people. Civilization today is that same basic concept scaled up to support your consumptive ass along with the rest of humanity.
    - dismalpedigree 5y ago
      I personally feel it’d be great if people like you could stop thinking that all property is inherently society’s property and that I should be thankful society allows me to reside on it. We are all in it together, but we will all be better off when others stop trying to appropriate everything from me and give it to others just because they want it. I work hard for what I have. I shouldn’t have to have it taken away if I don’t continue to work (add value) into perpetuity.
      - uoaei 5y ago
aperson_hello 5y ago
The affected person doesn't feel it's good when an apartment building gets built next door to their single family if the land isn't theirs either. NIMBYism around density gives us the situation that we're in now - where low density can't support city services and no one wants to allow higher density.
ricree 5y ago
>It's just another redistribution scheme More starkly, it seems to me that it's a redistribution scheme that exists primarily to enrich those who already have abundant capital. Who's going to be building and owning those high density structures afterwards? Not the people who are getting displaced from their homes, I suspect. In short, it feels as though we're being told that it is right and just that you should be driven from your own home, so long as there exists some millionaire who would like to tear it down and build an apartment building in its place.
- closeparen 5y ago
  People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. They are pretty successfully standing athwart capitalism’s most powerful firms, going toe to toe with people who have hundreds of billions of dollars on the line (in terms of Silicon Valley’s capacity grow and add headcount, not just the real estate firms who would participate in that) and conceding a battle here or there but largely winning the war. At the same time their wealth increases tax free year over much more than a FAANG senior engineer or middle manager makes pre tax. These are not sympathetic underdogs.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. This is about as far from true as it can get. Ordinary working class people who just happened to buy a cheap house in a place that many decades later became a hot-spot of real estate development.. are still ordinary working class people. Often very poor, even.
    - closeparen 5y ago
      I’m sympathetic to the view that having millions of dollars “doesn’t count” when they’re all tied up in living in an ordinary home. But then we would have to apply the same cost of living adjustment to tech workers, which most people think is ridiculous. (“I’m not rich, you see, there is no money left after I have spent it all.”) They have the option to walk away with millions. They choose not to. That is a form of spending. These millions are both absolutely larger than what “high income” workers can accumulate, and from a higher-class source (investment and politics vs. labor).
Manuel_D 5y ago
No, I think the affected person is happy making a killing on their real estate investment. Property taxes are linked to property values, if the value of your home goes up so high that property taxes are unaffordable then their must have seen significant gains in their real estate values.
midasuni 5y ago
> work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax. That’s not how it works. The more you get paid, the more you can pay land owners. When demand is higher than supply prices rise to capture all excess income.
ScottBurson 5y ago
You seem to be overlooking that in that scenario, your land has appreciated considerably. If you sell, you'll net a gain; if you don't want to sell despite the gain, you can borrow against the property to pay the tax. Here's the thing to understand: anyone buying property now in a popular area, where prices have been increasing rapidly for the last two or three decades, is effectively paying an LVT. The thing is, they're not paying it to the locality, which could use it for infrastructure and services; they're paying it to the previous owner, because the higher purchase price means a higher mortgage payment. That's redistribution too.