10 ms·

then that city would die and everything around it would flourish

by newaccount2021 4y ago

Wowfunhappy 4y ago
Isn't the idea that a LVT would improve the use of land? If that premise is correct, it could cause the city to flourish and grow ahead of its neighbors. Implementing the change more narrowly would allow you to test that assumption.
- SllX 4y ago
  That’s optimistic. You’re reframing tax-policy to shape landowner behavior towards your desired outcome on the presumption that this will be an improvement of the land by increasing the cost of owning it by fiat. Sin taxes exist for a similar reason and have similar problems. Taxes should not be conceded as an instrument of power to reorient society into a form viewed by a subset of society as correct, but recognized as what they are sold as: a levy to provide revenue for an unprofitable but necessary organization (“the government”) to raise revenue in order to service its obligations to society. To the extent that this shapes behavior, it is as an unavoidable side effect. When you treat the side effect as the goal, you lose sight of the fact that regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all.
  - zip1234 4y ago
    Like it or not, property taxes already exist and are not going away. LVT is considered to be vastly more efficient than taxing based on improved values of properties. Where LVTs have been introduced they have decreased taxes for most residents: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-gains-the-pennsylvania-land-tax-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-g...
    - SllX 4y ago
      I did not write an argument against property taxes. I wrote one against abusing the properties of taxes to achieve goals beyond the primary purpose of taxation. I will read your link this evening.
  - Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    > Taxes should not be conceded as an instrument of power to reorient society into a form viewed by a subset of society as correct Why? If taxes are going to have side effects anyway, I think we should try to make those effects positive instead of negative. > Regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all. I don't think I agree with that. For example, I also think we should have a (revenue neutral) carbon tax. Part of the tax's purpose would indeed be to fund the government, but the other purpose would be to make people pay for the actual social cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere, as opposed to passing them on to the broader public. This would allow the free market actually work properly.
    - SllX 4y ago
      > Why? If taxes are going to have side effects anyway, I think we should try to make those effects positive instead of negative. Simply put: it’s a moral hazard. When the goal of the tax is in service to something other than the cost of government, then the tax rate can be arbitrary, and manipulated to the benefit of those in political favor. That sort of arbitrariness is intolerable in a free and just society as we should aspire to be. >> Regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all. > I don't think I agree with that. > For example, I also think we should have a (revenue neutral) carbon tax. Part of the tax's purpose would indeed be to fund the government, but the other purpose would be to make people pay for the actual social cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere, as opposed to passing them on to the broader public. This allows the free market to work properly. You are free to disagree, but what is the purpose of the disagreement here? It is possible to both recognize taxes as both a taking of assets (often cash, but historically could be anything) and a necessity. You can view this on your own paycheck: every single dollar that goes to your government is a dollar that you personally earned and was taken from you (“withheld”) by your employer and paid to your government. You have some influence over how those dollars are then expensed by your government, by only to the extent allowed by the law through a power-sharing agreement (“the Constitution”, both Federal and your State’s). The larger the government, the less influence you have, and the more likely a higher percentage of the earnings which were taken from you will go to benefit folks you would rather it didn’t (“wasted”). But you raise a good point about the side effects: we are going to have taxes anyway, and the side effects are going to matter in the discussion. Where they matter though is not in the purpose of the tax—that is and should remain to cover the cost of government—it matters in which taxes are implemented to cover the cost of government. As long as that remains the basis, there is much room for improvement in the way we levy taxes.
  - yellowapple 4y ago
    > by increasing the cost of owning it by fiat You're ignoring the reductions/eliminations of other taxes. For example, replacing property taxes with LVT is the usual "first step", and would reduce costs for most homeowners (whose land is typically less valuable than the house sitting on it). Same with sales tax, or income tax, or any other non-LVT tax; non-LVT taxes are less efficient than LVT, so replacing them with LVT would maximize tax revenue while reducing individual tax burdens for all but the largest landowners (namely: landlords, be they residential or commercial/industrial). > taxation is a taking of assets from its owners The private ownership of land is itself theft from the commons, and is itself the product of state power and authority. A tax on the value of that land is therefore compensation for that theft, and is more than fair. Modern society has gone on long enough letting land owners have their cake and eat it too. If land owners expect society to respect their exclusive claims over land, then it's on them to compensate society accordingly.
    - SllX 4y ago
      > You're ignoring the reductions/eliminations of other taxes. For example, replacing property taxes with LVT is the usual "first step" I’m not against replacing other taxes with LVT. I’m against the misapplication of tax authority for purposes which are not subordinate to covering the cost of governance. > The private ownership of land is itself theft from the commons, and is itself the product of state power and authority. No.
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        > No. Yes. Or do you believe land titles to be magical artifacts that the rest of society obeys for the hell of it? Land ownership would not exist (and therefore wouldn't need taxed) if not for the state using its monopoly on violence to enforce your piece of paper; given that state-issued privilege, it should be entirely unsurprising that you might be called upon to pay accordingly.
        SllX 4y ago
        You only need society and weapons and as it turns out, the thing we build most is societies with the intent of providing for our posterity, closely closely seconded by weapons. The absence of the State as we know it isn’t the absence of private property. If you want to imagine life without the State but with modern technology, try something more akin to a cross between Europe in the Middle Ages and drug cartels. I think Neal Stephenson wrote a book about it, but in any case private property rights are recognized by the State by custom (or “common law” if you prefer), not derived from the State, even though they can be deprived from you by the State by due process per the compromises we made in our Constitutional order.
yellowapple 4y ago
The precise opposite would happen.

then that city would die and everything around it would flourish

Isn't the idea that a LVT would improve the use of land? If that premise is correct, it could cause the city to flourish and grow ahead of its neighbors. Implementing the change more narrowly would allow you to test that assumption.

SllX 4y ago
That’s optimistic. You’re reframing tax-policy to shape landowner behavior towards your desired outcome on the presumption that this will be an improvement of the land by increasing the cost of owning it by fiat. Sin taxes exist for a similar reason and have similar problems. Taxes should not be conceded as an instrument of power to reorient society into a form viewed by a subset of society as correct, but recognized as what they are sold as: a levy to provide revenue for an unprofitable but necessary organization (“the government”) to raise revenue in order to service its obligations to society. To the extent that this shapes behavior, it is as an unavoidable side effect. When you treat the side effect as the goal, you lose sight of the fact that regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all.
- zip1234 4y ago
  Like it or not, property taxes already exist and are not going away. LVT is considered to be vastly more efficient than taxing based on improved values of properties. Where LVTs have been introduced they have decreased taxes for most residents: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-gains-the-pennsylvania-land-tax-experiment https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-g...
  - SllX 4y ago
    I did not write an argument against property taxes. I wrote one against abusing the properties of taxes to achieve goals beyond the primary purpose of taxation. I will read your link this evening.
- Wowfunhappy 4y ago
  > Taxes should not be conceded as an instrument of power to reorient society into a form viewed by a subset of society as correct Why? If taxes are going to have side effects anyway, I think we should try to make those effects positive instead of negative. > Regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all. I don't think I agree with that. For example, I also think we should have a (revenue neutral) carbon tax. Part of the tax's purpose would indeed be to fund the government, but the other purpose would be to make people pay for the actual social cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere, as opposed to passing them on to the broader public. This would allow the free market actually work properly.
  - SllX 4y ago
    > Why? If taxes are going to have side effects anyway, I think we should try to make those effects positive instead of negative. Simply put: it’s a moral hazard. When the goal of the tax is in service to something other than the cost of government, then the tax rate can be arbitrary, and manipulated to the benefit of those in political favor. That sort of arbitrariness is intolerable in a free and just society as we should aspire to be. >> Regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all. > I don't think I agree with that. > For example, I also think we should have a (revenue neutral) carbon tax. Part of the tax's purpose would indeed be to fund the government, but the other purpose would be to make people pay for the actual social cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere, as opposed to passing them on to the broader public. This allows the free market to work properly. You are free to disagree, but what is the purpose of the disagreement here? It is possible to both recognize taxes as both a taking of assets (often cash, but historically could be anything) and a necessity. You can view this on your own paycheck: every single dollar that goes to your government is a dollar that you personally earned and was taken from you (“withheld”) by your employer and paid to your government. You have some influence over how those dollars are then expensed by your government, by only to the extent allowed by the law through a power-sharing agreement (“the Constitution”, both Federal and your State’s). The larger the government, the less influence you have, and the more likely a higher percentage of the earnings which were taken from you will go to benefit folks you would rather it didn’t (“wasted”). But you raise a good point about the side effects: we are going to have taxes anyway, and the side effects are going to matter in the discussion. Where they matter though is not in the purpose of the tax—that is and should remain to cover the cost of government—it matters in which taxes are implemented to cover the cost of government. As long as that remains the basis, there is much room for improvement in the way we levy taxes.
- yellowapple 4y ago
  > by increasing the cost of owning it by fiat You're ignoring the reductions/eliminations of other taxes. For example, replacing property taxes with LVT is the usual "first step", and would reduce costs for most homeowners (whose land is typically less valuable than the house sitting on it). Same with sales tax, or income tax, or any other non-LVT tax; non-LVT taxes are less efficient than LVT, so replacing them with LVT would maximize tax revenue while reducing individual tax burdens for all but the largest landowners (namely: landlords, be they residential or commercial/industrial). > taxation is a taking of assets from its owners The private ownership of land is itself theft from the commons, and is itself the product of state power and authority. A tax on the value of that land is therefore compensation for that theft, and is more than fair. Modern society has gone on long enough letting land owners have their cake and eat it too. If land owners expect society to respect their exclusive claims over land, then it's on them to compensate society accordingly.
  - SllX 4y ago
    > You're ignoring the reductions/eliminations of other taxes. For example, replacing property taxes with LVT is the usual "first step" I’m not against replacing other taxes with LVT. I’m against the misapplication of tax authority for purposes which are not subordinate to covering the cost of governance. > The private ownership of land is itself theft from the commons, and is itself the product of state power and authority. No.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > No. Yes. Or do you believe land titles to be magical artifacts that the rest of society obeys for the hell of it? Land ownership would not exist (and therefore wouldn't need taxed) if not for the state using its monopoly on violence to enforce your piece of paper; given that state-issued privilege, it should be entirely unsurprising that you might be called upon to pay accordingly.
      - SllX 4y ago
        You only need society and weapons and as it turns out, the thing we build most is societies with the intent of providing for our posterity, closely closely seconded by weapons. The absence of the State as we know it isn’t the absence of private property. If you want to imagine life without the State but with modern technology, try something more akin to a cross between Europe in the Middle Ages and drug cartels. I think Neal Stephenson wrote a book about it, but in any case private property rights are recognized by the State by custom (or “common law” if you prefer), not derived from the State, even though they can be deprived from you by the State by due process per the compromises we made in our Constitutional order.

yellowapple 4y ago

The precise opposite would happen.