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0 pointsyellowapple4y ago0 comments

> Yes but there is a way to fire anyone who sets an arbitrarily high LVT

Yes but that requires a majority to want to abolish said LVT, whereas the majority would stand to benefit from an LVT as close to 100% (of economic rent) as possible.

> Property taxes do go into the cost of business by the way; and that would be true for an LVT as well.

Most businesses (last I checked) lease from commercial landlords, which means property taxes and LVT would both be part of rent - which, again, can't be raised to account for LVT without violating supply v. demand constraints and hurting profits as a result.

Even for those businesses which do own land outright, land prices are also currently a factor in the cost of business; they're no worse off by replacing a giant lump sum with LVT.

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SllX4y ago· 2 in thread

> Yes but that requires a majority to want to abolish said LVT, whereas the majority would stand to benefit from an LVT as close to 100% (of economic rent) as possible.

I mean as close to 100% is probably like maybe 4-5% at most, if the LVT on the land and the property tax on the structure were added up to that going by this Strongtown article someone linked me somewhere in this comment chain about how some PA towns have done it.

I think you’re reading me and getting the wrong idea about what it is I’m arguing against. LVT’s as a tax are okay in lieu of other taxes, provided they’re in lieu of other taxes and also the rate is not set arbitrarily high to accomplish nebulous other social goals. That last part is requirement for every sort of tax, and excessive government revenue should dollar for dollar be returned to the people it was levied from.

yellowappleOP4y ago

> I think you’re reading me and getting the wrong idea about what it is I’m arguing against.

I don't think I am. Rather, I think our disconnect is that I disagree with your implication that fully internalizing the negative externalities produced by the ownership of land as property is a "nebulous other social goal".

The endgoal - i.e. the full internalization of those opportunity costs externalized onto every other member of society - is 100% LVT with all surpluses disbursed evenly as a citizens' dividend (a.k.a. "UBI" in more modern parlance). Anything short of that is theft by landowners from everyone else (including other landowners, but especially those without land at all); the question is how much theft the general public will continue to tolerate, and for how much longer.

SllX4y ago

Ah, in that case you should have just said so.

We are fundamentally at odds then with irreconcilable differences of opinion on private property. The protection of private property is a core justification for the State, because as I replied to you elsewhere, private property doesn’t cease without the State but the situation around it becomes more volatile. I do not seek to re-base the State on the socialization of land value and you probably couldn’t with an extreme amount of State violence.

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