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What I guess the parent is implying is that by taxing something, you’re effectively disincentivizing it. Tax land value, you’re punishing people for making land
by strongpigeon 4y ago
What I guess the parent is implying is that by taxing something, you’re effectively disincentivizing it. Tax land value, you’re punishing people for making land valuable. Tax pollution, you’re incentivizing people to pollute less.
- jstanley 4y agoThe value of a piece of land is determined much more by the things around it than by the things that are on it. A land value tax is punishing people for squandering valuable land. If you're not making a sufficiently productive use of your valuable land for it to be worth paying the tax, you should sell it to someone who will, and you should move somewhere cheaper.
- dlp211 4y ago< Tax land value, you’re punishing people for making land valuable. No, quite the opposite. The tax is the same irrespective of the productivity of the land. If you make the land valuable, by making it productive, you've decreased the relative cost of the tax. That is the whole point of a LVT. This is a huge problem where I live. Folks sit on these parcels of land that are taxed at super favorable rates compared to improved properties. This drives up the cost of existing land and makes building additional housing extremely expensive. Their land should be taxed the same rate as my land and they would likely sell as it no longer makes financial sense to hold onto such unproductive land.
- WalterBright 4y ago> Tax pollution, you’re incentivizing people to pollute less. Exactly. Taxing pollution not only raises needed tax revenue, it reduces pollution as a side effect. It's a winner of a way to run things.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoIt also reduces people’s (perceived) quality of life as they can no longer drive their F150s to get groceries and fly to Mexico and Hawaii for vacation every year. Not to mention all the reduction of gadgets and trinkets due to price increases in plastics. And smaller homes and plots of land, if not apartment style living due to needing to be closer to everything. The solution to pollution ($30/gallon gas and $1k/hour flights, or whatever numbers make consumption go down) was obvious a long time ago. The problem is it is not going to be political popular for people to vote to kill their own dreams of future consumption.
- WalterBright 4y agoUm, but their income won't be taxed, which will provide the capital to find all kinds of less-polluting ways to get groceries and vacation in Mexico.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThat is assuming we can find less polluting ways of moving mass with similar cost benefit to fossil fuels. Also, I am assuming the few billion people in developing countries will be happy to pick up the slack in fossil fuel demand in the event developed countries do find an alternative. The Middle East can pump it out for a few dollars per barrel, I imagine it will be tough to compete with that.
- WalterBright 4y agoGive people in a free market an incentive, and they'll find a way.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoEven assuming people are able to accomplish whatever they want, it would have to be within a certain timeframe. Both of these assumptions are too rosy for me. We play within the boundary conditions of nature, and it seems reasonable to assume some things are impossible or exceedingly improbable.
- WalterBright 4y agoIf they're improbable or impossible, how is the government going to do it?
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThe purpose of my proposal to drastically increase fossil fuel taxes was only to decrease pollution. It is possible that humans do not discover an alternative fuel source or way to move mass as cheap and conveniently as gas for a long time.