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I bang on this drum a lot. We need Land Value Taxes to incentivize productive use of land, and we need to eliminate (or greatly reduce the burden of) Zoning (Ja

I bang on this drum a lot. We need Land Value Taxes to incentivize productive use of land, and we need to eliminate (or greatly reduce the burden of) Zoning (Japan has zoning but a great model that really allows building housing efficiently). When it costs $50k in permits and takes 2 years just to put a shovel in the ground, to build a single family home, and millions to build an apartment building, of course homes are expensive. Inefficiently taxed land, and artificial scarcity via laws, turned housing into an asset class. This problem will not go away, in any country, as long as those two things are not resolved.

epistasis 4mo ago
Land Value Taxes are the perfect economic solution, however they have the disadvantage of being nigh-on politically impossible to implement and keep, if they are implemented at the local level. The political power base of a city is usually the land-owning class. Everyone from homeowners to commercial landlords that also live in the city. Roughly, every single person gets one vote when it comes to elections, but in the reality of local politics, the homeowners dominate due to their long-established social networks and the low-information environment of most local elections. Large landlords have barely any more influence than the random homeowner, and renters as usual are completely disorganized and are nearly impossible to organize. We need both a much stronger organized tenant movement, and enough class-traitors in the homeowning class in order to get an LVT to stick. Ideally it would legally imposed at the state or federal level, and administered somewhat locally, with a mixture of funds going to the municipality, county, and state levels of government, IMHO. Without a broader base of strong political support, LVTs eventually get voted out by the land owners, like in Vancouver in the 1970s.

epistasis 4mo ago

Land Value Taxes are the perfect economic solution, however they have the disadvantage of being nigh-on politically impossible to implement and keep, if they are implemented at the local level. The political power base of a city is usually the land-owning class. Everyone from homeowners to commercial landlords that also live in the city. Roughly, every single person gets one vote when it comes to elections, but in the reality of local politics, the homeowners dominate due to their long-established social networks and the low-information environment of most local elections. Large landlords have barely any more influence than the random homeowner, and renters as usual are completely disorganized and are nearly impossible to organize. We need both a much stronger organized tenant movement, and enough class-traitors in the homeowning class in order to get an LVT to stick. Ideally it would legally imposed at the state or federal level, and administered somewhat locally, with a mixture of funds going to the municipality, county, and state levels of government, IMHO. Without a broader base of strong political support, LVTs eventually get voted out by the land owners, like in Vancouver in the 1970s.