3 ms·

Both are benefiting from the labour and value created by the rest of society, outsized to their contributions. Land receives its value due to all the infrastruc

Both are benefiting from the labour and value created by the rest of society, outsized to their contributions. Land receives its value due to all the infrastructure, people, businesses, and so on that are around the land, and everyone who owns land benefits from this as their land value increases. Owner-occupiers benefit just as much as landlords (they are, in fact, lords of their land too, but their tenant is themselves). They should return to society the value that society created for them, in the form of a land value tax. This should of course be offset by a reduction in other taxes, but it is a supremely just and efficient tax and far preferred to most other taxes.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
That’s a lot of assertions but one could also make the argument that vacant spaces have far lower land value because there aren’t large numbers of families living there. If this is true, it seems questionable that the people living there are benefiting only in a one-way manner.
- BirdieNZ 4y ago
  Yes, everyone contributes to society in some way, hence "outsized to their contributions." If you sit on a piece of land and wait 10 years in my city, you might have made $500,000 of tax-free land value gains, but without needing to contribute anything to achieve it. In fact, if you do nothing but sit on the land, you're a net negative on society because you deny access to that land from everyone else.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    I just don’t see the “outsized to their contributions” part. The bureaucracy is built off the tax dollars of the people who first decided to settle there but you could probably reduce that tax burden and bureaucracy by a large percentage and the people living there, as long as they felt a good reason to do so, would continue to create a decent quality of lives for themselves. Either way, we’re basically just debating ideology at this point.
    - BirdieNZ 4y ago
      The easiest way to compare is to look at what a family of renters get vs a family of landowners. In a city with growing land values, the renters get nothing but the landowners get a lot, yet their contributions as "families contributing to society" would be equivalent.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago

That’s a lot of assertions but one could also make the argument that vacant spaces have far lower land value because there aren’t large numbers of families living there. If this is true, it seems questionable that the people living there are benefiting only in a one-way manner.

BirdieNZ 4y ago
Yes, everyone contributes to society in some way, hence "outsized to their contributions." If you sit on a piece of land and wait 10 years in my city, you might have made $500,000 of tax-free land value gains, but without needing to contribute anything to achieve it. In fact, if you do nothing but sit on the land, you're a net negative on society because you deny access to that land from everyone else.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  I just don’t see the “outsized to their contributions” part. The bureaucracy is built off the tax dollars of the people who first decided to settle there but you could probably reduce that tax burden and bureaucracy by a large percentage and the people living there, as long as they felt a good reason to do so, would continue to create a decent quality of lives for themselves. Either way, we’re basically just debating ideology at this point.
  - BirdieNZ 4y ago
    The easiest way to compare is to look at what a family of renters get vs a family of landowners. In a city with growing land values, the renters get nothing but the landowners get a lot, yet their contributions as "families contributing to society" would be equivalent.