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The poor widow argument against land value taxes has been a mainstay of the landowning class for over a century. [Winston Churchill had had enough of it back in

The poor widow argument against land value taxes has been a mainstay of the landowning class for over a century. [Winston Churchill had had enough of it back in 1909.](https://web.archive.org/web/20010728120002/http://home.vicnet.net.au/~earthshr/winston.html https://web.archive.org/web/20010728120002/http://home.vicne...) Guaranteeing that people can take up the same space that they did when the population was half its current level is a great way to ensure that future generations have nowhere to live.

lolinder 4y ago
The person you're replying to isn't arguing against land value taxes in the abstract, they're arguing against an implementation of LVTs that would force most homeowners to decide between overpaying taxes by a wide margin or suddenly losing their home.
- raldi 4y ago
  Perhaps I'm not stating the proposal clearly. Nobody would suddenly lose their home. If you understated its value, and someone made an offer, you'd have the opportunity to restate the property's value, keep the home, and pay the appropriate property taxes from then on.
  - krustymeathead 4y ago
    Hypothetically, let's say I owned a modest home. Then, what if a very wealthy person who grew up in that home wanted to buy it for a grand sum of money? In that case, I'd be torn between revaluing my house to a huge amount (that no one except this one person would be willing to pay) and being forced to sell. It's an interesting scenario, because that wealthy person could lower their valuation almost immediately after the sale, since no one else would pay what they paid.
    - raldi 4y ago
      C'mon, even setting aside the fact that the victim here walks away with a giant pile of money, there are countless ways to address this extremely unusual special-case scenario. For instance, you could be free to decline to sell as long as your declared valuation was >= the local neighborhood average.
      - horsawlarway 4y ago
        > C'mon, even setting aside the fact that the victim here walks away with a giant pile of money Money is a medium of exchange. There are items that are literally not for sale, and the excuse of "but they got money!!!!" is completely unacceptable as a replacement. How are you going to value the writing on the walls of the home my neighbor from her now-deceased son? How are you going to value the 6 (six!) graves of the dogs she's buried in her back yard, Each with a custom stone statue. How are you going to value that she's memorized her current home layout, so that large cataract in her right eye doesn't bug her as much when she's in the familiar layout? How do you value the extra time and expense it would take her to find a new home, given she's wheelchair bound? ---- and your "new plan" is devolving into trying to add all sort of extra conditions and rules around this - which gets us right back to: implement this and people will literally try to kill you.
        raldi 4y ago
        Huh? In the scenario you describe, someone is paying below the neighborhood average in property tax, so someone makes an offer on their property, and they decline by raising their declared valuation to match the neighborhood average. Then they stay in their house and pay their fair share of property tax.
        horsawlarway 4y ago
        You've never lived in a transitional neighborhood, pretty clearly. > and they decline by raising their declared valuation to match the neighborhood average. First - this is not in line with the previous posts. What stops me from simply declaring my value is 0 until someone makes an offer and then suddenly it's the right value. Until next year when it's 0 again because that buyer has gone away. If I only have to declare at time of potential sale, the declaration is useless. Second - having lived in a transitional neighborhood, if your house is valued at the neighborhood average, it will be bought in 30 seconds, sight unseen, usually by a corporation that plans to rehab it (because it was last updated in the 70s) and then rent it forever. And that second point isn't a hypothetical, it's literally already happening: https://www.cbs46.com/2022/06/03/its-an-everyday-occurrence-now-corporate-investors-flooding-atlantas-housing-market/ https://www.cbs46.com/2022/06/03/its-an-everyday-occurrence-... Basically - money isn't everything, and maximizing utility in a purely capitalistic sense is not a set of values shared by enough people to make this work. If you limited this to only commercially zoned land, then maybe - but you have a social contract with all those people who bought their houses, and violating that social contract, especially in a way like this, is a recipe for disaster.

lolinder 4y ago

The person you're replying to isn't arguing against land value taxes in the abstract, they're arguing against an implementation of LVTs that would force most homeowners to decide between overpaying taxes by a wide margin or suddenly losing their home.

raldi 4y ago
Perhaps I'm not stating the proposal clearly. Nobody would suddenly lose their home. If you understated its value, and someone made an offer, you'd have the opportunity to restate the property's value, keep the home, and pay the appropriate property taxes from then on.
- krustymeathead 4y ago
  Hypothetically, let's say I owned a modest home. Then, what if a very wealthy person who grew up in that home wanted to buy it for a grand sum of money? In that case, I'd be torn between revaluing my house to a huge amount (that no one except this one person would be willing to pay) and being forced to sell. It's an interesting scenario, because that wealthy person could lower their valuation almost immediately after the sale, since no one else would pay what they paid.
  - raldi 4y ago
    C'mon, even setting aside the fact that the victim here walks away with a giant pile of money, there are countless ways to address this extremely unusual special-case scenario. For instance, you could be free to decline to sell as long as your declared valuation was >= the local neighborhood average.
    - horsawlarway 4y ago
      > C'mon, even setting aside the fact that the victim here walks away with a giant pile of money Money is a medium of exchange. There are items that are literally not for sale, and the excuse of "but they got money!!!!" is completely unacceptable as a replacement. How are you going to value the writing on the walls of the home my neighbor from her now-deceased son? How are you going to value the 6 (six!) graves of the dogs she's buried in her back yard, Each with a custom stone statue. How are you going to value that she's memorized her current home layout, so that large cataract in her right eye doesn't bug her as much when she's in the familiar layout? How do you value the extra time and expense it would take her to find a new home, given she's wheelchair bound? ---- and your "new plan" is devolving into trying to add all sort of extra conditions and rules around this - which gets us right back to: implement this and people will literally try to kill you.
      - raldi 4y ago
        Huh? In the scenario you describe, someone is paying below the neighborhood average in property tax, so someone makes an offer on their property, and they decline by raising their declared valuation to match the neighborhood average. Then they stay in their house and pay their fair share of property tax.
        horsawlarway 4y ago
        You've never lived in a transitional neighborhood, pretty clearly. > and they decline by raising their declared valuation to match the neighborhood average. First - this is not in line with the previous posts. What stops me from simply declaring my value is 0 until someone makes an offer and then suddenly it's the right value. Until next year when it's 0 again because that buyer has gone away. If I only have to declare at time of potential sale, the declaration is useless. Second - having lived in a transitional neighborhood, if your house is valued at the neighborhood average, it will be bought in 30 seconds, sight unseen, usually by a corporation that plans to rehab it (because it was last updated in the 70s) and then rent it forever. And that second point isn't a hypothetical, it's literally already happening: https://www.cbs46.com/2022/06/03/its-an-everyday-occurrence-now-corporate-investors-flooding-atlantas-housing-market/ https://www.cbs46.com/2022/06/03/its-an-everyday-occurrence-... Basically - money isn't everything, and maximizing utility in a purely capitalistic sense is not a set of values shared by enough people to make this work. If you limited this to only commercially zoned land, then maybe - but you have a social contract with all those people who bought their houses, and violating that social contract, especially in a way like this, is a recipe for disaster.