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Georgism always struck me as a method to shift homelessness onto the elderly and enrich removalists. The absolute ideal method of retirement is home ownership.

Georgism always struck me as a method to shift homelessness onto the elderly and enrich removalists. The absolute ideal method of retirement is home ownership. Its cheap and desirable for the home owner, and it requires the least services provided by the state until things seriously deteriorate. I once met a woman who was being forced out of her home. She bought it when it was behind a naval shipyard covered in rusted warships. The city bought the land off the military, turned it into a lovely park and opened views from her front windows directly to the water. This caused her land valued rates to increase (she said her property had reached 200 times what she paid for it. 30,000 to 6 million. But she also owed quite a decade of rates to the council and wasn't sure what she would have left over) to well beyond what she could afford, and ultimately with only pension for income it became untenable. I really don't mind development, coming to the old lady and offering her a big payday for her to leave that she takes willingly, replacing her inner city house with higher density. But Land value as a mechanism to forcibly move on the elderly and hand their inner city character homes over to richer people who don't increase housing density is completely ass backwards. You get stuck in a cycle of paying taxes -> improving services -> improved services increase land value -> increased land value increases taxes. Its absurd. It honestly becomes an optimal strategy to elect local officials who ruin the neighborhood and decrease value.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
keybored 1y ago
Home ownership rates in socialist and former countries are higher than in the West.
- jhbadger 1y ago
  Only if you count "home ownership" as just owning your apartment (many Eastern-bloc countries sold cheaply their state-owned apartments to their residents after 1989). At least in the US, "home ownership" largely implies owning a single-family house with a yard. That's the (perhaps unsustainable) "American Dream".
  - keybored 1y ago
    > Only if you count "home ownership" as just owning your apartment Why in the world wouldn’t it?
  - keybored 1y ago
    > At least in the US, "home ownership" largely implies owning a single-family house with a yard. That's the (perhaps unsustainable) "American Dream". scoffs At least in my canton, "home ownership" largely implies a three-story house in the hillside overlooking the Alps with the nearest 200K+ city within 15m travel distance. I'm sorry to say that what you present is more comparable to being unhoused.
kubb 1y ago
> The absolute ideal method of retirement is home ownership. I'm sorry, but I have to intervene, because this is a stunningly strong claim. > Its cheap ... for the home owner Homes are unaffordable for most people today, to the point where renting can be more cost effective than buying. Housing consumes a lot of income which acts like a hidden tax - a drain on the economy. > it requires the least services provided by the state until things seriously deteriorate 1) Things deteriorate when people can't afford housing. Labor and services become more expensive. 2) Not requiring the state to be involved is an ideological advantage, not a practical one. > But she also owed quite a decade of rates to the council and wasn't sure what she would have left over This is an anecdote and as such has limited value, but it's made even less useful by you not knowing the exact sums and percentages. It doesn't justify your sweeping claim in the slightest. You also seem to be talking about property tax, not LVT. > Land value as a mechanism to forcibly move on the elderly and hand their inner city character homes over to richer people who don't increase housing density is completely ass backwards. There's not much wrong with moving for retirement. We don't like to do it, and residential property owners should to some extent (for a number of years) be exempt from land value tax, but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse. > You get stuck in a cycle of paying taxes -> improving services -> improved services increase land value -> increased land value increases taxes. Services don't improve just with tax, but with the influx of capital and development to the area, available jobs, etc. You're using an incomplete model to reason about it. Some of the other benefits of LVT worth mentioning are that it 1) incentivises owners to use the land productively (density!), 2) discourages land speculation, 3) reduces urban sprawl.
- adverbly 1y ago
  > There's not much wrong with moving for retirement. We don't like to do it, and residential property owners should to some extent (for a number of years) be exempt from land value tax, but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse. Totally agree. People need to live where jobs are! That's the main determinant of where you live! When you're retired, you don't need to commute any more so forcing others to have to live further away and commute past you is a large burden being placed on productivity. We want to tax unproductive behavior so this is an entirely reasonable thing to me. All things being equal, retired people should be incentivized to move when they retire!
somnic 1y ago
Someone getting forced out of their home in exchange for a few million dollars isn't exactly the most tragic story out there, and increasing tax revenue to pay for better amenities is hardly a bad thing by my reckoning. The aforementioned rich people are a bit less richer, because now they're paying those rates. Most plans to implement LVT at scale that I've seen include provisions to increase the rate slowly over years and decades, and allow deferred payments for the elderly upon sale or from their estate because yeah, a lot of people made plans to retire based on the present tax regime. Younger people saving for retirement can plan on putting retirement savings into productive assets rather than land speculation. I'm also not entirely clear on why a pension that pays for everything except housing is fine, but providing housing for the elderly is a problematic level of state intervention.
- snarf21 1y ago
  I wonder if a scheme where you could "lock in your rates" would work. Instead of just waiting for reassessment or whatever and having no way to know how it will increase in the future or hoping it stays the same for a long time, maybe you could agree to a X% yearly increase and pick how many years. So you lock in 2% increase for the next 20 years. This could be especially nice for the elderly and allow a compromise for tax revenue. Each property owner gets to decide whether to hedge or not. (This would just be for non commercial properties only.) This is just a hair brain idea off the cuff, just thinking out loud.
  - beeflet 1y ago
    Perhaps land ownership could be renewed on different time bases, where the longer deeds have higher taxes? For example, you could own a property for 1 year at a lower rate or 10 years at a slightly higher rate, and 20 years at an even higher rate. This would allow you to pay a premium for a more stable tax rate. Perhaps you could accomplish this in the private sector through some type of "property tax insurance"?
  - avidiax 1y ago
    This is a more reasonable version of California's Prop 13. A fairer system would be to allow unaffordable property taxes to be deferred indefinitely, while accruing fair interest, with the property as the collateral. "Unaffordable" would be means tested. When the owner dies or sells the property, the remaining property tax is paid from the sale of the property. This creates the possibility of properties being underwater, however, so there would have to be provisions to call in the property if the ratio gets too bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
ETH_start 1y ago
Your assessment is deeply flawed. A land value tax does not make home ownership expensive. It makes land consumption expensive. If you live in a condo unit in a 40-story tower, you pay almost zero land value tax because you use very little land. But if someone wants a sprawling estate, they should expect to pay more — especially in areas where that land could otherwise support hundreds of homes, jobs, or services. That’s the point. Land in high-demand areas is a scarce public resource. Using it efficiently — through dense development — lets more people benefit from the opportunity, infrastructure, and services that come with central locations. Land value tax encourages exactly that. It doesn’t punish ownership — it rewards efficient use.
- RandomLensman 1y ago
  It disincentivizes ownership of anything but the most high value land use. Unless there are a lot of regulations (like today) limiting use of land in particular areas, the highest value use version of housing might not be great to live in (if housing were even to be the highest value use in a lot of places). For example, the current condo in a 40-story tower might well be far less valuable than some tiny serviced flats. Efficient use might be a very unpleasant target to go for.
  - immibis 1y ago
    > It disincentivizes ownership of anything but the most high value land use. So basically what we have today already, but at least a little bit fairer (but still pretty unfair, like what we have already today).
    - RandomLensman 1y ago
      Not sure I understand how it is basically like today?
      - immibis 1y ago
        It disincentivizes land ownership for everything but the highest-value use?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

keybored 1y ago

Home ownership rates in socialist and former countries are higher than in the West.

jhbadger 1y ago
Only if you count "home ownership" as just owning your apartment (many Eastern-bloc countries sold cheaply their state-owned apartments to their residents after 1989). At least in the US, "home ownership" largely implies owning a single-family house with a yard. That's the (perhaps unsustainable) "American Dream".
- keybored 1y ago
  > Only if you count "home ownership" as just owning your apartment Why in the world wouldn’t it?
- keybored 1y ago
  > At least in the US, "home ownership" largely implies owning a single-family house with a yard. That's the (perhaps unsustainable) "American Dream". scoffs At least in my canton, "home ownership" largely implies a three-story house in the hillside overlooking the Alps with the nearest 200K+ city within 15m travel distance. I'm sorry to say that what you present is more comparable to being unhoused.

kubb 1y ago

> The absolute ideal method of retirement is home ownership. I'm sorry, but I have to intervene, because this is a stunningly strong claim. > Its cheap ... for the home owner Homes are unaffordable for most people today, to the point where renting can be more cost effective than buying. Housing consumes a lot of income which acts like a hidden tax - a drain on the economy. > it requires the least services provided by the state until things seriously deteriorate 1) Things deteriorate when people can't afford housing. Labor and services become more expensive. 2) Not requiring the state to be involved is an ideological advantage, not a practical one. > But she also owed quite a decade of rates to the council and wasn't sure what she would have left over This is an anecdote and as such has limited value, but it's made even less useful by you not knowing the exact sums and percentages. It doesn't justify your sweeping claim in the slightest. You also seem to be talking about property tax, not LVT. > Land value as a mechanism to forcibly move on the elderly and hand their inner city character homes over to richer people who don't increase housing density is completely ass backwards. There's not much wrong with moving for retirement. We don't like to do it, and residential property owners should to some extent (for a number of years) be exempt from land value tax, but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse. > You get stuck in a cycle of paying taxes -> improving services -> improved services increase land value -> increased land value increases taxes. Services don't improve just with tax, but with the influx of capital and development to the area, available jobs, etc. You're using an incomplete model to reason about it. Some of the other benefits of LVT worth mentioning are that it 1) incentivises owners to use the land productively (density!), 2) discourages land speculation, 3) reduces urban sprawl.

adverbly 1y ago
> There's not much wrong with moving for retirement. We don't like to do it, and residential property owners should to some extent (for a number of years) be exempt from land value tax, but the alternative (hoarding valuable land) is much worse. Totally agree. People need to live where jobs are! That's the main determinant of where you live! When you're retired, you don't need to commute any more so forcing others to have to live further away and commute past you is a large burden being placed on productivity. We want to tax unproductive behavior so this is an entirely reasonable thing to me. All things being equal, retired people should be incentivized to move when they retire!

somnic 1y ago

Someone getting forced out of their home in exchange for a few million dollars isn't exactly the most tragic story out there, and increasing tax revenue to pay for better amenities is hardly a bad thing by my reckoning. The aforementioned rich people are a bit less richer, because now they're paying those rates. Most plans to implement LVT at scale that I've seen include provisions to increase the rate slowly over years and decades, and allow deferred payments for the elderly upon sale or from their estate because yeah, a lot of people made plans to retire based on the present tax regime. Younger people saving for retirement can plan on putting retirement savings into productive assets rather than land speculation. I'm also not entirely clear on why a pension that pays for everything except housing is fine, but providing housing for the elderly is a problematic level of state intervention.

snarf21 1y ago
I wonder if a scheme where you could "lock in your rates" would work. Instead of just waiting for reassessment or whatever and having no way to know how it will increase in the future or hoping it stays the same for a long time, maybe you could agree to a X% yearly increase and pick how many years. So you lock in 2% increase for the next 20 years. This could be especially nice for the elderly and allow a compromise for tax revenue. Each property owner gets to decide whether to hedge or not. (This would just be for non commercial properties only.) This is just a hair brain idea off the cuff, just thinking out loud.
- beeflet 1y ago
  Perhaps land ownership could be renewed on different time bases, where the longer deeds have higher taxes? For example, you could own a property for 1 year at a lower rate or 10 years at a slightly higher rate, and 20 years at an even higher rate. This would allow you to pay a premium for a more stable tax rate. Perhaps you could accomplish this in the private sector through some type of "property tax insurance"?
- avidiax 1y ago
  This is a more reasonable version of California's Prop 13. A fairer system would be to allow unaffordable property taxes to be deferred indefinitely, while accruing fair interest, with the property as the collateral. "Unaffordable" would be means tested. When the owner dies or sells the property, the remaining property tax is paid from the sale of the property. This creates the possibility of properties being underwater, however, so there would have to be provisions to call in the property if the ratio gets too bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

ETH_start 1y ago

Your assessment is deeply flawed. A land value tax does not make home ownership expensive. It makes land consumption expensive. If you live in a condo unit in a 40-story tower, you pay almost zero land value tax because you use very little land. But if someone wants a sprawling estate, they should expect to pay more — especially in areas where that land could otherwise support hundreds of homes, jobs, or services. That’s the point. Land in high-demand areas is a scarce public resource. Using it efficiently — through dense development — lets more people benefit from the opportunity, infrastructure, and services that come with central locations. Land value tax encourages exactly that. It doesn’t punish ownership — it rewards efficient use.

RandomLensman 1y ago
It disincentivizes ownership of anything but the most high value land use. Unless there are a lot of regulations (like today) limiting use of land in particular areas, the highest value use version of housing might not be great to live in (if housing were even to be the highest value use in a lot of places). For example, the current condo in a 40-story tower might well be far less valuable than some tiny serviced flats. Efficient use might be a very unpleasant target to go for.
- immibis 1y ago
  > It disincentivizes ownership of anything but the most high value land use. So basically what we have today already, but at least a little bit fairer (but still pretty unfair, like what we have already today).
  - RandomLensman 1y ago
    Not sure I understand how it is basically like today?
    - immibis 1y ago
      It disincentivizes land ownership for everything but the highest-value use?