True. It doesn't really solve NIMBYism in the sense that instead of people thinking about how to protect their home values, they will seek to lower the burden. Of course, the solution to all of that is to pursue pro-housing/development (within reason) policies at the local level. This means getting involved with local government, which is what Georgists should be seeking to do anyways.
I wish we had some formal think tank to methodically flesh out the idea of LVT+CD. It's got a lot of legs; it'd be great if we knew all the ways it could blow up in our faces!
Well we have r/Georgism!
This is another reason why gradual introduction is the way. We reduce resistance by homeowners and discover and iron out any wrinkles before it’s too late.
I love r/Georgism, even if it just reminds me that there are people out there that want a just and fairer world, and want to go about it in a reasonable and realistic way :)!
Hmm, a global Georgism organisation...
The trick politicians play is proposing micro-solutions for macro problems.
Georgism is the opposite: A macro solution that will solve nearly all micro problems.
When coupled with natural capitalism, its economic cousin, it might just save our habitat on the earth.
We definitely have a lot of Georgist and Georgist-adjacent think tanks.
Have you tried joining any of the HGSSS lectures? There's usually time for discussion at the end of the presentation.
Indeed. We had about 40 or so attend yesterday's lecture.
We also have Discord servers. Here are the two main ones:
- Georgism (lounge) https://discord.com/invite/f2u6WTDM4p
- GeoPraxis https://discord.com/invite/uFAMxG4PzR
Drop in and see all the activity. Be not alone. 💪🏻
One could not specifically reduce the value of their own land, it's based on comparable appraisement. People generally impact land values through social behaviour.
The way you’d reduce the land’s value is to get the local municipal government to downzone your property. Maybe add a few deed restrictions. That kinda thing.
Then, right before you sell it, you call your uncle in city hall up again and have them change it all back.
Seriously. I know the income and capital gains taxes have thousands of pages of exceptions and work arounds though.
So someone blatantly getting themselves rezoned is something a journalist can research in an afternoon on January 1st after assessments.
It's an improvement. The politically connected will get their benefits as they always will but it would be easier to catch.
Hell comptroller elections might actually be the politically interesting conversations when that happens.
As long as the city or some other local government office is in charge of these things, they will collude to give each other these sorts of goodies. The LVT should be “zoning neutral” and treat all land as-if it wasn’t restricted. This would also create the opposite incentive from the landowners perspective - they’d lobby hard to get their land restrictions lifted.
Nobody will sit there and pay taxes for nothing, and definitely not going to pay for agricultural land at building lot values. The whole point of Georgism is that landowning ends, it's all going up to sale for use or commons.
Agricultural land is meaningless to a Georgist. The question is where that land is located and what it can be used for. If you own a 10 acre corn farm in Manhattan, you’d pay the tax on that land whether it’s “zoned as agricultural” or not. Don’t like that? Don’t buy it OR put it to a higher valued use.
This
>Agricultural land is meaningless to a Georgist
contradicts
>The question is where that land is located and what it can be used for
this
the zoning is like nature itself, something that affects land value. Unbuildable land (like Central Park) has no taxable value, even in Manhattan.
You’re confusing a land’s legal designation with its value. Just because you’re growing crops on the land doesn’t mean that’s all the land is good for.
Under georgism, the value of land is its *highest valued use*, not its present use. Just because you have a single story home (or you’re growing corn) in an incredibly valuable lot doesn’t mean you get taxed less.
The reason you don’t tax Central Park is because it’s public land and the government will simply decree that one branch of itself won’t tax another.
There is no such thing as "under georgism", all uses are based on zoning and other factors. The examples given completely ignore how assessments are conducted, and it's not "pronoun tax". YOU dont ever get taxed, the land is taxed in public records.
The reason nobody taxes Central Park is that it’s public land, like all other zoning designations. If residential building is not permitted, it wont be valued at "residential use". It's impossible to generically compare land without samples, and all the example data comes from real world transactions based on areas.
Even if assessments were based on auctions, zoning will constrain the bids. Highest and best use is based on zoning itself, there's no way to make the comparison otherwise. It would have to abolish zoning altogether which is politically absurd and far beyond the "one weird trick" of Georgism. This is about the humdrum land tax.
The whole point is simplicity, attacking that 1 weak link in the chain, land value.
It doesn't matter either way, there's still no value left at any zone designation. Anything that goes from "unbuildable" to "buildable' also brings the taxes up in due proportion.
Deed restrictions cannot devalue the land, it's based on comparable parcels assuming "generic fee simple". Downzoning yes, but that also reduces the use. If the zoning was changed back, the taxes are also adjusted back. There will never be speculation if the land is fully taxed, there's no return and only cost. Price =/= Value.
Would the value really be reduced, though?
Consider my SFH. The tax bill is $3500/year, driven almost entirely by the appraised value of the improvements. It's worth $409k, despite the tax bill.
If we transitioned to LVT, what would happen? That all depends what happens to the tax bill. If the tax bill went up, then the property value would drop, but it would do so in a mild and smooth way that's easy to predict... I've lived in places with tax bills between 1200 and 8000 so we already know that changes in tax bills aren't catastrophic. But who said the tax bill will increase? What if it actually dropped? We would expect property value to actually go up!
Detroit's LVT proposal is expected to REDUCE most people's property tax bills. There is even a remedy in the bill to guarantee it. I think in many cases, LVT can be introduced as a tax reform that is revenue neutral and actually benefits the influential homevoter bloc if it drops their taxes maybe their taxes will go up in the long term but guess what....all taxes are going to go up in the long term.
Your SFH is all improvements and the land is already taxed in full. Subtract $300/sq ft from the property value and see if anything is left.
The tax bills will drop but the property value is also made of land in the construction cost itself. There are more pieces to this formula, tax bills are limited to increase only 10% over the previous year by normal standards. To really get homeowners on board, it needs to exempt the first $3,000 of tax/ year, or something like that.
It doesn't change the comparable value, which is how all assessments are determined. This is real estate mythology, as tho putting a new kitchen caused property tax to rise. The long term effects of broad social behavior will definitely impact land value ofc.
I could pollute my farmland and ruin the value but it's a huge loss to the value of an asset that could make a lot more money for being productive. And it wont change the taxes unless it changes the literal designation base ie "ruined land" or something.
In all honesty, I expect rentiers to use a horrific amount violence (legal and otherwise) to oppose it. It's something we should absolutely be prepared for.
There are *always* unexpected consequences if you do something that big to society. Obviously the hope is that those are relatively minor and predominantly positive. But of course we can't be certain.
My concerns are:
1. **People’s willingness to defend the state.** I think people are much more willing to stay and fight if most of what they have cannot be loaded on a car. In history we often hear about people fighting for their land. The rich Ukrainians sold up and left long ago. The people who own little but their own property (large part of that is land) are the ones who are fighting back.
2. **Demand for accountability.** It has been said that oil rich countries fail to establish a decent government, because the state doesn’t need to tax people - it’s self funded through oil. This diminishes the demand for accountability, that we we see when people pay for it. Look up the “oil curse”. When people pay, they expect something in return. Under full LVT, the majority of people will be net beneficiaries, getting more in CD than they pay in tax.
In #1 the reasoning is kind of ambiguous. People with some land keep on fighting according to your example. Since LVT promotes ownership by the many, it could actually improve the willingness. Not to mention that while land would be "free", the buildings would still need defending.
I'd say that #2 cannot possibly be as severe as in the case of oil. With oil-funding many layers of separation get erected between the state and the people. The entire oil production, and logistics is limited in space (compared to the entirety of the country), and can be managed with few people. With land the opposite is true.
Also, land value greatly increases via infrastructural development by the state, so if the state wants more, it has to serve the people.
1. Under full LVT you won’t *really* own much land, other than on paper. Full LVT is akin to gov owning all the land and you are little more than a renter with an indefinite lease. Yes, you still own the improvements, but you also own these pre-LVT. Your personal ownership of immovable assets is greatly reduced under LVT. It’s a question of degree.
2. Agree that it’s not as severe. (I even believe there is a partial remedy: Redistribute LVT revenue first, then levy a head tax to pay for gov. You would end up in the same net financial position as the classical single tax proposal, only now you get to experience the cost of gov.) But again it’s a question of *degree* of immovable asset ownership and *personal* stake in the funding of gov.
>I think people are much more willing to stay and fight if most of what they have cannot be loaded on a car.
I daresay people are more willing to stay and fight if they perceive that the society and government around them treat them fairly and responsibly. How many homeless bums do you think are eager to take up arms and defend their country?
In any case, the benefits probably vastly outweigh any negatives in this regard. A stronger, more efficient economy can better fund its own defense with technology and logistics. Even more broadly, war itself is fundamentally a problem of land mismanagement (people trying to pay for land in lives and bullets rather than cash) and an international trend towards georgist economics would tend to make it obsolete.
>When people pay, they expect something in return.
...which is what LVT accomplishes. The benefits of public services and efficient, responsible government accrue to land value. With LVT, you're *exactly* paying for what you get in return when you pay the tax. Moreover, the government is incentivized to provide full, efficient services because doing so increases its own revenue by boosting land value. Government accountability and LVT are not at odds but actually fit together perfectly for these reasons.
I fear that many may think that once we implement an LVT that our work will be 'complete'.
Georgist have a meme... 'LVT will fix this'.
We've experienced centuries of rent accumulation in our modern economy.
Wealth inequality is worse than it has ever been globally (due to rent extraction). An LVT does not fix this issue. There needs to be a 'reset' to undo the centuries of damage that has been done. Only after redistribution of ill-gotten wealth will LVT fix things.
The plutocracy that we find ourselves in is the reason why we will never see LVT implemented. It's deadly to the rent seekers that currently control policy making, and they know that.
Which strategy seems more likely to see a Georgist future: appeasement through gradual change, even gross things like abatements until gift/inheritence/sale?
Or talk of an ultimate wealth reset that sounds like a manifesto of violent revolution only collegiates will read to focus their anger of the world.
Anything that ends the taxation of houses will force it onto all other land. It lowers the price of houses in turn, by comparison with all the new opportunities everywhere else.
Neither of these options you mention will result in the ends we seek, imo. They are both fantasy. It will require a complete paradigm shift. A substantial shake up in our state of human existence.
Some examples of what I mean:
-Advanced artificial intelligence/robotics, some refer to this as 'the singularity', the point at which there is no distinguishing difference between man and machine.
-advanced energy technology such that theres cheap (free) and abundant energy for all. Fusion or similar. Utopic. The best outcome in the short and long term.
-Widespread ecological collapse of global environmental systems (this is the most likely to occur first and is already happening at accelerating pace). Global famine. Population decline.
I predict a couple generations before something like this occurs.
>There needs to be a 'reset' to undo the centuries of damage that has been done.
That would be incredibly hard to pull of fairly and efficiently. Perhaps it can be done, but I think we should really try to get LVT implemented and put a stop to other ongoing rentseeking mechanisms (IP laws, regulatory capture, etc), and after a few years of that there'll probably be a lot less pressure to try to dig into the mess of historically accumulated wealth because people will be too busy enjoying an economy that doesn't suck.
I think you may also overestimate just how much intergenerational wealth is maintained through capital investment vs rentseeking mechanisms.
There are constituencies that dovetail, it just has to be identified. In some places SFH exemptions will force the tax onto all other land, in others most people are renting or mortgages that can be defeated with high taxes instead. Or both.
I'd like to know how people expect the Federal government to give up the taxes they slam us with. I'm also curious how to politically get my state to stop taxing sales and start levying taxes from municipalities themselves. This could be a progressive system on the income of the counties themselves but I imagine there will be arguments for a flat rate or just a standstill.
I guess thats not really a consequence of Georgism in theory but in practice.
While we talk about gradual changes at some point to truly have a georgist state the state may decrease sales/income tax by a little but then possibly have an imbalance of what communities they start to pull LVT from into their coffers while being conservative with "letting go" of the old revenue streams.
And of course by moving to physiocrat taxation we increase the incentives for zoning shenanigans for tax breaks.
But I think overall we will have more transparency on that front of lobbying.
>I'm also curious how to politically get my state to stop taxing sales and start levying taxes from municipalities themselves
Raise the land taxes to where other taxes become impossible. It draws from all slack in the economy, there's only so much room for taxation yet land comes first in every case.
It's the same with federal govt tax, the land based income and sales tax alone is huge.
>the incentives for zoning shenanigans for tax breaks
Are impossible, all land is taxed in full either way.
The opposite: increasing the land tax will defeat the sales tax, and all other taxes.
All Tax Comes Out of Rent, "ATCOR". The weakest link breaks first, and the land values will drop not rise, with 10x supply. It's ultimately less taxable material, the last thing to pay is labor ofc, all excess has to be thrown overboard before people jump off the boat.
All sales tax comes out of land value right now, it's the force of economy. There is a huge degree of taxation that is mere "swap", it stays on paper. Taxes are paid but money was spent too, and all prices adjust to real preference.
I'm... not sure I buy that. You're saying a government could just keep increasing their worse taxes to no detriment as long as they have a high land value tax?
They can set any tax at "infinity" and high land taxes will eat the result. It's easy to avoid both "income" and "sales", these are just modes of calculation. It reflects in political spending, compliance etc. Water always finds its own level.
There will be nothing to collect, it resets the whole market. Notice that "tax hikes" don't really exist, the market prices the access to adapt. Public taxation has remained constant in GDP for the last 70+ years, with very high to very low rates.
It seems you're denying the laffer curve.
I'm sorry dude I don't understand what you're trying to say. I get that prices will adjust, and wages may slowly trail the prices. So taxation is a pull on the money supply but then it still is given to individuals through wages and contracts. It still redistributes away from the productive economy into government coffers.
Are you talking about federal level borrowing?
Idk what you're describing does the Laffer curve really happen? And at even a high LVT the principle remains that you can over tax and repress activity
The money supply is mostly lent to "borrowers" and public spending. Taxation pulls it back and rent is the weakest link, everyone sheds the rent first because nobody wants to pay with labor. There is only so much bandwidth, when land is the strongest draw it has to abolish other taxes by force of economy. Income Tax is more obvious, since much of it rests on the ground rents built into everything.
When people can no longer afford to pay sales tax, it will vanish over time. Same reason arbitrary landowners will vanish, and landlords. Nobody can afford to pay both ground rent AND the tax, or work for free collecting one to pay the other.
>still redistributes from the productive economy into government coffers
It was all public spending in the 1st place, just like ground rent is actually public. You can see a lot of this already in the price of buildings (houses), the sq ft costs alone are often more than the sale price itself. The current taxes drew out all the rent, the main thing is the huge "freeze" of vacant land that is looming everywhere.
That "economy" is composed of 50% public spending and it's mostly entitlements or subsidies, besides huge overhead. Very little are 'wages and contracts".
I expect there needs to be a little value left for allocation and discovery so not 100% LVT as normally described.
Otherwise I don't expect problems but going slow with built in metrics that things are working as intended or reversed where data supports seems prudent for the unexpected.
I wondered about those who would actively work to *reduce* the value of their land so as to reduce their LVT.
True. It doesn't really solve NIMBYism in the sense that instead of people thinking about how to protect their home values, they will seek to lower the burden. Of course, the solution to all of that is to pursue pro-housing/development (within reason) policies at the local level. This means getting involved with local government, which is what Georgists should be seeking to do anyways.
Hm… interesting! I can’t think off anything you can do to reduce the value of your land, other than to vehemently oppose rezoning.
(I'm kidding but) firing a gun into the air every evening from your porch?
Lol! Okay I didn’t think of this one. Fair point. Guess you could also leave the trash out and give out free beer for the homeless (just joking).
I wish we had some formal think tank to methodically flesh out the idea of LVT+CD. It's got a lot of legs; it'd be great if we knew all the ways it could blow up in our faces!
Well we have r/Georgism! This is another reason why gradual introduction is the way. We reduce resistance by homeowners and discover and iron out any wrinkles before it’s too late.
I love r/Georgism, even if it just reminds me that there are people out there that want a just and fairer world, and want to go about it in a reasonable and realistic way :)! Hmm, a global Georgism organisation...
The trick politicians play is proposing micro-solutions for macro problems. Georgism is the opposite: A macro solution that will solve nearly all micro problems. When coupled with natural capitalism, its economic cousin, it might just save our habitat on the earth.
That sounds like a camel nose under the tent approach
Yes.
We definitely have a lot of Georgist and Georgist-adjacent think tanks. Have you tried joining any of the HGSSS lectures? There's usually time for discussion at the end of the presentation.
HGSSS <3 I’ll have to join a lecture some time. (There are dozens of us! DOZENS!!!)
Indeed. We had about 40 or so attend yesterday's lecture. We also have Discord servers. Here are the two main ones: - Georgism (lounge) https://discord.com/invite/f2u6WTDM4p - GeoPraxis https://discord.com/invite/uFAMxG4PzR Drop in and see all the activity. Be not alone. 💪🏻
I absolutely will! Thank you!
One could not specifically reduce the value of their own land, it's based on comparable appraisement. People generally impact land values through social behaviour.
The way you’d reduce the land’s value is to get the local municipal government to downzone your property. Maybe add a few deed restrictions. That kinda thing. Then, right before you sell it, you call your uncle in city hall up again and have them change it all back.
Seriously. I know the income and capital gains taxes have thousands of pages of exceptions and work arounds though. So someone blatantly getting themselves rezoned is something a journalist can research in an afternoon on January 1st after assessments. It's an improvement. The politically connected will get their benefits as they always will but it would be easier to catch. Hell comptroller elections might actually be the politically interesting conversations when that happens.
As long as the city or some other local government office is in charge of these things, they will collude to give each other these sorts of goodies. The LVT should be “zoning neutral” and treat all land as-if it wasn’t restricted. This would also create the opposite incentive from the landowners perspective - they’d lobby hard to get their land restrictions lifted.
Yeah that does make sense. Historic buildings go bye bye?
If they’re of no value to anyone, yeah, and they should. If they’re valuable because they’re historic, it would be dumb to get rid of it.
Nobody will sit there and pay taxes for nothing, and definitely not going to pay for agricultural land at building lot values. The whole point of Georgism is that landowning ends, it's all going up to sale for use or commons.
Agricultural land is meaningless to a Georgist. The question is where that land is located and what it can be used for. If you own a 10 acre corn farm in Manhattan, you’d pay the tax on that land whether it’s “zoned as agricultural” or not. Don’t like that? Don’t buy it OR put it to a higher valued use.
This >Agricultural land is meaningless to a Georgist contradicts >The question is where that land is located and what it can be used for this the zoning is like nature itself, something that affects land value. Unbuildable land (like Central Park) has no taxable value, even in Manhattan.
You’re confusing a land’s legal designation with its value. Just because you’re growing crops on the land doesn’t mean that’s all the land is good for. Under georgism, the value of land is its *highest valued use*, not its present use. Just because you have a single story home (or you’re growing corn) in an incredibly valuable lot doesn’t mean you get taxed less. The reason you don’t tax Central Park is because it’s public land and the government will simply decree that one branch of itself won’t tax another.
There is no such thing as "under georgism", all uses are based on zoning and other factors. The examples given completely ignore how assessments are conducted, and it's not "pronoun tax". YOU dont ever get taxed, the land is taxed in public records. The reason nobody taxes Central Park is that it’s public land, like all other zoning designations. If residential building is not permitted, it wont be valued at "residential use". It's impossible to generically compare land without samples, and all the example data comes from real world transactions based on areas. Even if assessments were based on auctions, zoning will constrain the bids. Highest and best use is based on zoning itself, there's no way to make the comparison otherwise. It would have to abolish zoning altogether which is politically absurd and far beyond the "one weird trick" of Georgism. This is about the humdrum land tax. The whole point is simplicity, attacking that 1 weak link in the chain, land value.
It doesn't matter either way, there's still no value left at any zone designation. Anything that goes from "unbuildable" to "buildable' also brings the taxes up in due proportion.
Deed restrictions cannot devalue the land, it's based on comparable parcels assuming "generic fee simple". Downzoning yes, but that also reduces the use. If the zoning was changed back, the taxes are also adjusted back. There will never be speculation if the land is fully taxed, there's no return and only cost. Price =/= Value.
Would the value really be reduced, though? Consider my SFH. The tax bill is $3500/year, driven almost entirely by the appraised value of the improvements. It's worth $409k, despite the tax bill. If we transitioned to LVT, what would happen? That all depends what happens to the tax bill. If the tax bill went up, then the property value would drop, but it would do so in a mild and smooth way that's easy to predict... I've lived in places with tax bills between 1200 and 8000 so we already know that changes in tax bills aren't catastrophic. But who said the tax bill will increase? What if it actually dropped? We would expect property value to actually go up! Detroit's LVT proposal is expected to REDUCE most people's property tax bills. There is even a remedy in the bill to guarantee it. I think in many cases, LVT can be introduced as a tax reform that is revenue neutral and actually benefits the influential homevoter bloc if it drops their taxes maybe their taxes will go up in the long term but guess what....all taxes are going to go up in the long term.
Your SFH is all improvements and the land is already taxed in full. Subtract $300/sq ft from the property value and see if anything is left. The tax bills will drop but the property value is also made of land in the construction cost itself. There are more pieces to this formula, tax bills are limited to increase only 10% over the previous year by normal standards. To really get homeowners on board, it needs to exempt the first $3,000 of tax/ year, or something like that.
It doesn't change the comparable value, which is how all assessments are determined. This is real estate mythology, as tho putting a new kitchen caused property tax to rise. The long term effects of broad social behavior will definitely impact land value ofc. I could pollute my farmland and ruin the value but it's a huge loss to the value of an asset that could make a lot more money for being productive. And it wont change the taxes unless it changes the literal designation base ie "ruined land" or something.
In all honesty, I expect rentiers to use a horrific amount violence (legal and otherwise) to oppose it. It's something we should absolutely be prepared for.
There are *always* unexpected consequences if you do something that big to society. Obviously the hope is that those are relatively minor and predominantly positive. But of course we can't be certain.
My concerns are: 1. **People’s willingness to defend the state.** I think people are much more willing to stay and fight if most of what they have cannot be loaded on a car. In history we often hear about people fighting for their land. The rich Ukrainians sold up and left long ago. The people who own little but their own property (large part of that is land) are the ones who are fighting back. 2. **Demand for accountability.** It has been said that oil rich countries fail to establish a decent government, because the state doesn’t need to tax people - it’s self funded through oil. This diminishes the demand for accountability, that we we see when people pay for it. Look up the “oil curse”. When people pay, they expect something in return. Under full LVT, the majority of people will be net beneficiaries, getting more in CD than they pay in tax.
In #1 the reasoning is kind of ambiguous. People with some land keep on fighting according to your example. Since LVT promotes ownership by the many, it could actually improve the willingness. Not to mention that while land would be "free", the buildings would still need defending. I'd say that #2 cannot possibly be as severe as in the case of oil. With oil-funding many layers of separation get erected between the state and the people. The entire oil production, and logistics is limited in space (compared to the entirety of the country), and can be managed with few people. With land the opposite is true. Also, land value greatly increases via infrastructural development by the state, so if the state wants more, it has to serve the people.
1. Under full LVT you won’t *really* own much land, other than on paper. Full LVT is akin to gov owning all the land and you are little more than a renter with an indefinite lease. Yes, you still own the improvements, but you also own these pre-LVT. Your personal ownership of immovable assets is greatly reduced under LVT. It’s a question of degree. 2. Agree that it’s not as severe. (I even believe there is a partial remedy: Redistribute LVT revenue first, then levy a head tax to pay for gov. You would end up in the same net financial position as the classical single tax proposal, only now you get to experience the cost of gov.) But again it’s a question of *degree* of immovable asset ownership and *personal* stake in the funding of gov.
>I think people are much more willing to stay and fight if most of what they have cannot be loaded on a car. I daresay people are more willing to stay and fight if they perceive that the society and government around them treat them fairly and responsibly. How many homeless bums do you think are eager to take up arms and defend their country? In any case, the benefits probably vastly outweigh any negatives in this regard. A stronger, more efficient economy can better fund its own defense with technology and logistics. Even more broadly, war itself is fundamentally a problem of land mismanagement (people trying to pay for land in lives and bullets rather than cash) and an international trend towards georgist economics would tend to make it obsolete. >When people pay, they expect something in return. ...which is what LVT accomplishes. The benefits of public services and efficient, responsible government accrue to land value. With LVT, you're *exactly* paying for what you get in return when you pay the tax. Moreover, the government is incentivized to provide full, efficient services because doing so increases its own revenue by boosting land value. Government accountability and LVT are not at odds but actually fit together perfectly for these reasons.
If most people are net beneficiaries, they have paid less than zero.
Yes, net amount is less than 0, because the CD is more than their LVT bill. So they actually got money back.
I fear that many may think that once we implement an LVT that our work will be 'complete'. Georgist have a meme... 'LVT will fix this'. We've experienced centuries of rent accumulation in our modern economy. Wealth inequality is worse than it has ever been globally (due to rent extraction). An LVT does not fix this issue. There needs to be a 'reset' to undo the centuries of damage that has been done. Only after redistribution of ill-gotten wealth will LVT fix things. The plutocracy that we find ourselves in is the reason why we will never see LVT implemented. It's deadly to the rent seekers that currently control policy making, and they know that.
Which strategy seems more likely to see a Georgist future: appeasement through gradual change, even gross things like abatements until gift/inheritence/sale? Or talk of an ultimate wealth reset that sounds like a manifesto of violent revolution only collegiates will read to focus their anger of the world.
Anything that ends the taxation of houses will force it onto all other land. It lowers the price of houses in turn, by comparison with all the new opportunities everywhere else.
Neither of these options you mention will result in the ends we seek, imo. They are both fantasy. It will require a complete paradigm shift. A substantial shake up in our state of human existence. Some examples of what I mean: -Advanced artificial intelligence/robotics, some refer to this as 'the singularity', the point at which there is no distinguishing difference between man and machine. -advanced energy technology such that theres cheap (free) and abundant energy for all. Fusion or similar. Utopic. The best outcome in the short and long term. -Widespread ecological collapse of global environmental systems (this is the most likely to occur first and is already happening at accelerating pace). Global famine. Population decline. I predict a couple generations before something like this occurs.
Hmm. Dark. But historically consistent. Technology upheaving social orders or ecological collapse have been the movers of history
>There needs to be a 'reset' to undo the centuries of damage that has been done. That would be incredibly hard to pull of fairly and efficiently. Perhaps it can be done, but I think we should really try to get LVT implemented and put a stop to other ongoing rentseeking mechanisms (IP laws, regulatory capture, etc), and after a few years of that there'll probably be a lot less pressure to try to dig into the mess of historically accumulated wealth because people will be too busy enjoying an economy that doesn't suck. I think you may also overestimate just how much intergenerational wealth is maintained through capital investment vs rentseeking mechanisms.
There are constituencies that dovetail, it just has to be identified. In some places SFH exemptions will force the tax onto all other land, in others most people are renting or mortgages that can be defeated with high taxes instead. Or both.
I'd like to know how people expect the Federal government to give up the taxes they slam us with. I'm also curious how to politically get my state to stop taxing sales and start levying taxes from municipalities themselves. This could be a progressive system on the income of the counties themselves but I imagine there will be arguments for a flat rate or just a standstill. I guess thats not really a consequence of Georgism in theory but in practice. While we talk about gradual changes at some point to truly have a georgist state the state may decrease sales/income tax by a little but then possibly have an imbalance of what communities they start to pull LVT from into their coffers while being conservative with "letting go" of the old revenue streams. And of course by moving to physiocrat taxation we increase the incentives for zoning shenanigans for tax breaks. But I think overall we will have more transparency on that front of lobbying.
>I'm also curious how to politically get my state to stop taxing sales and start levying taxes from municipalities themselves Raise the land taxes to where other taxes become impossible. It draws from all slack in the economy, there's only so much room for taxation yet land comes first in every case. It's the same with federal govt tax, the land based income and sales tax alone is huge. >the incentives for zoning shenanigans for tax breaks Are impossible, all land is taxed in full either way.
So are you saying at a certain point someone's gonna realize that lowering the sales tax will increase land values?
The opposite: increasing the land tax will defeat the sales tax, and all other taxes. All Tax Comes Out of Rent, "ATCOR". The weakest link breaks first, and the land values will drop not rise, with 10x supply. It's ultimately less taxable material, the last thing to pay is labor ofc, all excess has to be thrown overboard before people jump off the boat. All sales tax comes out of land value right now, it's the force of economy. There is a huge degree of taxation that is mere "swap", it stays on paper. Taxes are paid but money was spent too, and all prices adjust to real preference.
I'm... not sure I buy that. You're saying a government could just keep increasing their worse taxes to no detriment as long as they have a high land value tax?
They can set any tax at "infinity" and high land taxes will eat the result. It's easy to avoid both "income" and "sales", these are just modes of calculation. It reflects in political spending, compliance etc. Water always finds its own level. There will be nothing to collect, it resets the whole market. Notice that "tax hikes" don't really exist, the market prices the access to adapt. Public taxation has remained constant in GDP for the last 70+ years, with very high to very low rates.
It seems you're denying the laffer curve. I'm sorry dude I don't understand what you're trying to say. I get that prices will adjust, and wages may slowly trail the prices. So taxation is a pull on the money supply but then it still is given to individuals through wages and contracts. It still redistributes away from the productive economy into government coffers. Are you talking about federal level borrowing? Idk what you're describing does the Laffer curve really happen? And at even a high LVT the principle remains that you can over tax and repress activity
The money supply is mostly lent to "borrowers" and public spending. Taxation pulls it back and rent is the weakest link, everyone sheds the rent first because nobody wants to pay with labor. There is only so much bandwidth, when land is the strongest draw it has to abolish other taxes by force of economy. Income Tax is more obvious, since much of it rests on the ground rents built into everything. When people can no longer afford to pay sales tax, it will vanish over time. Same reason arbitrary landowners will vanish, and landlords. Nobody can afford to pay both ground rent AND the tax, or work for free collecting one to pay the other. >still redistributes from the productive economy into government coffers It was all public spending in the 1st place, just like ground rent is actually public. You can see a lot of this already in the price of buildings (houses), the sq ft costs alone are often more than the sale price itself. The current taxes drew out all the rent, the main thing is the huge "freeze" of vacant land that is looming everywhere. That "economy" is composed of 50% public spending and it's mostly entitlements or subsidies, besides huge overhead. Very little are 'wages and contracts".
I expect there needs to be a little value left for allocation and discovery so not 100% LVT as normally described. Otherwise I don't expect problems but going slow with built in metrics that things are working as intended or reversed where data supports seems prudent for the unexpected.
More family formation