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>>I am rather skeptic of land value taxes, but I would like to hear your view of why land value tax is better than simply raising the tax on rent and property s

>>I am rather skeptic of land value taxes, but I would like to hear your view of why land value tax is better than simply raising the tax on rent and property sales. The article goes into the advantages of a land value tax over other types of tax, including a property tax: The big question land value taxes help answer is: How can a government raise funds without distorting choices and possibly leaving people worse off? If you tax income, it provides a disincentive to work. If you tax property, it provides a disincentive to improve the physical buildings on top of the land. Sometimes the tax is intentionally disincentivizing an activity — think carbon taxes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or so-called “sin taxes” on tobacco. But there are also taxes governments want to levy to pay for valuable services without changing behaviors too much (or at all). >>The main argument that I see against land value taxes is that land doesn't generate any income by itself, which forces people to pay money in situation where they might not have any income to do so. Those people should be selling their land. We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. From the article as well: In small towns, vacant lots contribute to decline — and if there’s no valuable structure on a property, its delinquent landlords likely only pay a nominal property tax. This both lowers tax revenue and hurts neighborhood quality for everyone else. ** In Allentown, Pennsylvania, the system worked! According to a 2019 Strong Towns article, after the city adopted an LVT (through a split-rate system that still kept some property taxes in place) in 1996, “construction returned to the city: the number of taxable building permits surged past neighboring Bethlehem, market investment returned and capital improvement reappeared in city budgets. ... The losers in this trade were absentee owners of vacant lots, who had to shoulder much more of the burden.” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) is quoted touting the benefits of the tax: “The number of building permits in Allentown has increased by 32 percent from before we had a land tax.”*

belorn 4y ago
> Those people should be selling their land. We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. From the article as well: If we have that attitude to people owning things, then the first thing should be wealth tax on jewelry, cars, boats, and other luxury items which if you can't afford to pay the tax then you should be forced to sell it. I remember how popular that concept where here in EU when refugees had their jewelry taken by the government in order to pay for expenses and basic living. People have this weird attachment to objects that defy rational thought. I get the sentiment, but in term of winning popular support it has some distinct emotional drawbacks. If we want to specifically address vacant lots within city boundaries, a tax on that seems fair. Not many low income home owners live in their property owned vacant lots located inside city boundaries.
- CryptoPunk 4y ago
  I don't think this necessitates having that attitude toward owning things in general. Owning scarce natural resources is very different than owning man-made resources that have an elastic supply that can be expanded through production. A coherent moral framework can support the former being taxed, while maintaining that the latter should not be. Private ownership of the latter is both just, because the original owners comes to own it by producing it, and economically advantageous, because ownership incentivizes production, which leads to its supply increasing. With land, there is no moral justification for private ownership, as no private party created the land, and private ownership does not have the economic effect of leading to the supply of it expanding, since land cannot be produced.
  - belorn 4y ago
    I have a hard time distinguish between people owning gold and people owning land, and in this discussion, we are not just talking about owning land but people owning a house on that land. Similar in how gold is turned into a jewelry that people form emotional attachment to, a home is built on land which people form emotional attachments to. In both cases we have a man-made resource, ie a jewelry and homes, and in both cases they got created from a scarce natural resources, gold and land. They are also both mental concepts that is a man-made product formed by using a natural resource. Land cannot be produced but homes can be designed, constructed and built. If we want to tax land but not homes, and we want to tax gold but not jewelry, I would find that perfectly consistent. People rarely form attachment to unused land, similar to how people don't form attachment to solid gold bars or ingots. Incentivizes production of unused land and vacant properties is something I would support, while I am rather suspicious of taxing ownership of man-made resources.
    - CryptoPunk 4y ago
      Gold rarely appears in its valuable form in accessible natural settings. It is acquired through the costly process of mining, which increases its supply. So it is not like land with respect to either supply elasticity or the cost of initial acquisition. >>a home is built on land which people form emotional attachments to I would argue people should be encouraged to not form an emotional attachment to a house, because the land it occupies is part of a larger society which may come to need it more than the person does. You may have grown up in a house your grandfather built, but the neighborhood of that house may have changed from a sparsely populated district of a small city, to the densely populated economic core of a major metropolis and regional shipping/trading hub. The land needs to be repurposed to benefit the greatest number of people, and I don't think a perpetual land claim stemming from the principle of first possession should trump that imperative.
jjav 4y ago
> We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land? For example: imagine how many untold billions of extra value and tax revenue could be generated in Manhattan by tearing down Central Park and building it all full of dense housing towers. But would Manhattan be a better place to live as a result?
- CryptoPunk 4y ago
  >>Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land? No, but we can have special provisions for public goods like parks. Outside of properties that generate these kinds of public goods, the revenue a property generates is generally a proxy for social good it does. For example, a condo building with 150 residential units and 10 commercial units on the ground floor will do more social good than a parking lot, and that is easily revealed by how much more revenue it generates.
- meristohm 4y ago
  I think we're significantly undervaluing letting land carry on with low-enough human involvement so as to promote biodiversity and resilience, as has been done in numerous cultures around the world for millenia. Sometimes we get too selfish and exploit resources for short-term gain. We're in a tough spot as a species, borrowing heavily against the wellbeing of future generations (I view the health of the air, water, land, and other life as essential to our wellbeing).
- closeparen 4y ago
  I would much rather have Central Park, an enormous and high-value piece of public land which is a crown jewel of the community and managed by the government as such, than a partial public-ish interest in "open space" or something on each privately owned lot, which is constantly being negotiated between landowners and a planning commission and ends up "meh," and where you aren't allowed to actually go, just look at. I think this would be an important component of a YIMBY or Georgist future, to have public open space and park resources owned and managed explicitly rather than implied on each parcel.
- 4y ago

belorn 4y ago

> Those people should be selling their land. We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. From the article as well: If we have that attitude to people owning things, then the first thing should be wealth tax on jewelry, cars, boats, and other luxury items which if you can't afford to pay the tax then you should be forced to sell it. I remember how popular that concept where here in EU when refugees had their jewelry taken by the government in order to pay for expenses and basic living. People have this weird attachment to objects that defy rational thought. I get the sentiment, but in term of winning popular support it has some distinct emotional drawbacks. If we want to specifically address vacant lots within city boundaries, a tax on that seems fair. Not many low income home owners live in their property owned vacant lots located inside city boundaries.

CryptoPunk 4y ago
I don't think this necessitates having that attitude toward owning things in general. Owning scarce natural resources is very different than owning man-made resources that have an elastic supply that can be expanded through production. A coherent moral framework can support the former being taxed, while maintaining that the latter should not be. Private ownership of the latter is both just, because the original owners comes to own it by producing it, and economically advantageous, because ownership incentivizes production, which leads to its supply increasing. With land, there is no moral justification for private ownership, as no private party created the land, and private ownership does not have the economic effect of leading to the supply of it expanding, since land cannot be produced.
- belorn 4y ago
  I have a hard time distinguish between people owning gold and people owning land, and in this discussion, we are not just talking about owning land but people owning a house on that land. Similar in how gold is turned into a jewelry that people form emotional attachment to, a home is built on land which people form emotional attachments to. In both cases we have a man-made resource, ie a jewelry and homes, and in both cases they got created from a scarce natural resources, gold and land. They are also both mental concepts that is a man-made product formed by using a natural resource. Land cannot be produced but homes can be designed, constructed and built. If we want to tax land but not homes, and we want to tax gold but not jewelry, I would find that perfectly consistent. People rarely form attachment to unused land, similar to how people don't form attachment to solid gold bars or ingots. Incentivizes production of unused land and vacant properties is something I would support, while I am rather suspicious of taxing ownership of man-made resources.
  - CryptoPunk 4y ago
    Gold rarely appears in its valuable form in accessible natural settings. It is acquired through the costly process of mining, which increases its supply. So it is not like land with respect to either supply elasticity or the cost of initial acquisition. >>a home is built on land which people form emotional attachments to I would argue people should be encouraged to not form an emotional attachment to a house, because the land it occupies is part of a larger society which may come to need it more than the person does. You may have grown up in a house your grandfather built, but the neighborhood of that house may have changed from a sparsely populated district of a small city, to the densely populated economic core of a major metropolis and regional shipping/trading hub. The land needs to be repurposed to benefit the greatest number of people, and I don't think a perpetual land claim stemming from the principle of first possession should trump that imperative.

jjav 4y ago

> We should not have a scarce natural resource sitting idle or under-utilized. Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land? For example: imagine how many untold billions of extra value and tax revenue could be generated in Manhattan by tearing down Central Park and building it all full of dense housing towers. But would Manhattan be a better place to live as a result?

CryptoPunk 4y ago
>>Does it make sense to always optimize for nothing but maximum ROI for each plot of land? No, but we can have special provisions for public goods like parks. Outside of properties that generate these kinds of public goods, the revenue a property generates is generally a proxy for social good it does. For example, a condo building with 150 residential units and 10 commercial units on the ground floor will do more social good than a parking lot, and that is easily revealed by how much more revenue it generates.
meristohm 4y ago
I think we're significantly undervaluing letting land carry on with low-enough human involvement so as to promote biodiversity and resilience, as has been done in numerous cultures around the world for millenia. Sometimes we get too selfish and exploit resources for short-term gain. We're in a tough spot as a species, borrowing heavily against the wellbeing of future generations (I view the health of the air, water, land, and other life as essential to our wellbeing).
closeparen 4y ago
I would much rather have Central Park, an enormous and high-value piece of public land which is a crown jewel of the community and managed by the government as such, than a partial public-ish interest in "open space" or something on each privately owned lot, which is constantly being negotiated between landowners and a planning commission and ends up "meh," and where you aren't allowed to actually go, just look at. I think this would be an important component of a YIMBY or Georgist future, to have public open space and park resources owned and managed explicitly rather than implied on each parcel.
4y ago