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Why do you want to punish anyone? What's that strange obsession. Land Value Tax is simply an efficient tax system that minimalises dead weight losses. Yes, H

by eru 1y ago

Why do you want to punish anyone? What's that strange obsession. Land Value Tax is simply an efficient tax system that minimalises dead weight losses. Yes, Henry George was a big fan of them, but he was just one proponent. LVT does not live and fall with Henry George. > Borrowing and taxation are completely different concepts. Unless I am the only idiot who hasn't asked for their tax back with interest. Possible. I am saying that your specific objections to taxing unrealised gains do not apply. > They aren't poor in that they have at least one valuable asset. The kind of asset that helps people stay afloat when they have issues with income or domestic violence. Regressive taxes are regressive because they simply do not look at income. Someone can be retired, living on nearly no income, and have a single valuable asset. It is not the role of government to significantly disrupt peoples lives because they have 1 good thing going. IIRC home ownership is the single best indicator of mental health. You are proving too much. Holding down a steady job is also a great indicator of mental health. So the government shouldn't tax your job either? Ie income tax bad? You have to tax something to run the government. Btw, you could run a land value tax but give everyone a universal basic income equivalent to the LVT paid by the median person. That means only people who sit on more than the median amount of land (by value) would pay a net tax. Everyone else would see a net income from the system. That would immediately knock out all of your arguments about those poor widows and orphans. (In taxation and income, medians tend to be lower than averages, so the above system would leave money left over to use for general government revenue. If you want more of that, instead of paying the median amount, you could pay UBI at eg the 20%-ile level. That would still protect those people who only 'have 1 good thing going' from net outflowing payments.)

protocolture 1y ago
>I am saying that your specific objections to taxing unrealised gains do not apply. I dont see how referencing borrowing is relevant to taxation. >Ie income tax bad? Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. People can become wealthier. People without income dont pay the tax so arent negatively affected. If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. >Btw, you could run a land value tax but give everyone a universal basic income equivalent to the LVT paid by the median person. I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals.
- orthoxerox 1y ago
  > If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. Again, that's the whole idea behind LVT: it minimizes non-productive use of land, like housing.
  - eru 1y ago
    No, LVT does not minimise non-productive use of land at all. I like LVT just as much as the next guy, but we can't have it both ways: _either_ LVT has no deadweight losses, because it doesn't change any opportunity costs for land use and thus has no (direct) influence on land use. _Or_ LVT does have an influence, and you want to argue that it's the 'correct' one. However: with or without LVT, the opportunity cost differences in different land uses are exactly the same. The same amount of LVT is due no matter what you do with the land or who owns it. LVT might have an indirect influence on land use, because financing your government via LVT means you can potentially lower other less efficient taxes. Removing these other more distorting taxes can have an influence on land uses.
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    I am having a hard time understanding your last sentence. How is housing a non-productive use of land? Why would housing be something to be minimized?
    - eru 1y ago
      They probably means something like some poor single person sitting on a very valuable plot of land and not doing much with it. Maybe? I'm not exactly sure. But see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482
- eru 1y ago
  > I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals. What's with you and punishment? LVT should be set to approximately tax all land rents. Given current prevailing interest rates, setting LVT to, say, a yearly 10% of land value should accomplish that. (But the exact value doesn't matter too much, because of arbitrage. I can explain that, if you want to. Basically, as LVT goes up, market prices for land go down. So even setting an LVT of 50% per year won't get you more of a tax take then saner values.) Just to be clear, I don't propose the UBI above as something anyone could live off. I proposed to mechanically set it to eg the 20%-ile of LVT payments, so that the land-poorest 20% of the population have no net LVT payments to make. Thus forestalling only your very specific objection. That suggestion was not meant to pay for any specific living standard on its own. > Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. Why are you so obsessed with income that's measured in money? There's also plenty of in-kind income. Eg when you have an apple tree, you get apples. If you have a house, you get housing. It's generally good, if the tax system doesn't care, if you rent his house and she rents yours, or if both of you live in your own home. (Neither scenario has any net flows of money, but the first one has gross flows of money.) Interestingly, in Switzerland people actually pay taxes on the imputed rental income they get from being owner-occupiers.

by eru 1y ago

protocolture 1y ago

>I am saying that your specific objections to taxing unrealised gains do not apply. I dont see how referencing borrowing is relevant to taxation. >Ie income tax bad? Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. People can become wealthier. People without income dont pay the tax so arent negatively affected. If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. >Btw, you could run a land value tax but give everyone a universal basic income equivalent to the LVT paid by the median person. I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals.

orthoxerox 1y ago
> If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. Again, that's the whole idea behind LVT: it minimizes non-productive use of land, like housing.
- eru 1y ago
  No, LVT does not minimise non-productive use of land at all. I like LVT just as much as the next guy, but we can't have it both ways: _either_ LVT has no deadweight losses, because it doesn't change any opportunity costs for land use and thus has no (direct) influence on land use. _Or_ LVT does have an influence, and you want to argue that it's the 'correct' one. However: with or without LVT, the opportunity cost differences in different land uses are exactly the same. The same amount of LVT is due no matter what you do with the land or who owns it. LVT might have an indirect influence on land use, because financing your government via LVT means you can potentially lower other less efficient taxes. Removing these other more distorting taxes can have an influence on land uses.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I am having a hard time understanding your last sentence. How is housing a non-productive use of land? Why would housing be something to be minimized?
  - eru 1y ago
    They probably means something like some poor single person sitting on a very valuable plot of land and not doing much with it. Maybe? I'm not exactly sure. But see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482
eru 1y ago
> I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals. What's with you and punishment? LVT should be set to approximately tax all land rents. Given current prevailing interest rates, setting LVT to, say, a yearly 10% of land value should accomplish that. (But the exact value doesn't matter too much, because of arbitrage. I can explain that, if you want to. Basically, as LVT goes up, market prices for land go down. So even setting an LVT of 50% per year won't get you more of a tax take then saner values.) Just to be clear, I don't propose the UBI above as something anyone could live off. I proposed to mechanically set it to eg the 20%-ile of LVT payments, so that the land-poorest 20% of the population have no net LVT payments to make. Thus forestalling only your very specific objection. That suggestion was not meant to pay for any specific living standard on its own. > Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. Why are you so obsessed with income that's measured in money? There's also plenty of in-kind income. Eg when you have an apple tree, you get apples. If you have a house, you get housing. It's generally good, if the tax system doesn't care, if you rent his house and she rents yours, or if both of you live in your own home. (Neither scenario has any net flows of money, but the first one has gross flows of money.) Interestingly, in Switzerland people actually pay taxes on the imputed rental income they get from being owner-occupiers.