[HN Gopher] Book Review: Progress and Poverty ___________________________________________________________________ Book Review: Progress and Poverty Author : TimPC Score : 49 points Date : 2022-05-13 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (gameofrent.com) (TXT) w3m dump (gameofrent.com) | a9h74j wrote: | FWIW, John Michael Greer recently outlined[1] some alternative | philosophies in political economy (including cooperatism, | distributism and social credit), aiming to spur increased | imagination. He cites numerous alternative resources, enough to | suggest a study list or initial-study guide. | | [1] https://www.ecosophia.net/reimagining-political-economy/ | TimPC wrote: | I think Georgism's main appeal is that if you interfere as best | as possible in the mechanism by which land captures the value | of labour and use that to reduce other capture of the value of | labour you remove the worst excesses of capitalism. You | literally don't have to change the rest of the system. | | Tenants pay the same rents they do now (perhaps slightly lower | due to removal of speculation) but no longer have to pay any | income tax. Property owners pay more in LVT but no longer pay | income tax as well. No one gets to hold land value unearned and | benefit from the work of others except the government who uses | it to reduce other taxes and provide services we've come to | depend on in modern society. | | This is quite different from various radical re-imaginings of | the entire economic system. Those systems are looking to solve | almost entirely different problems and introduce far more new | ones. | ur-whale wrote: | For the horse's mouth: | | https://cdn.mises.org/Progress%20and%20Poverty_3.pdf | | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55308 | at_compile_time wrote: | For the audio-inclined: | | https://librivox.org/progress-and-poverty-by-henry-george/ | jmole wrote: | It seems like the biggest challenge to Georgism is that | municipality/county/state/federal regulations on land use would | have a significant effect on land value. | | A landlord might lobby for restrictive land use policy while | sitting on a parcel, and then lobby for opening those | restrictions when it comes time to sell. Essentially avoiding the | tax by using government policy to suppress the true land value. | | There are solutions to this of course, but they come down to | zoning and land use regulation, which is sort of the core of all | our other problems with real estate in America. | TimPC wrote: | The problem is current speculation on land is relatively easy. | Having to lobby for a change in zoning one-way when you buy the | land and having to take on the risk of not being able to get | the change of zoning back the other way when you sell it is a | significant risk. I'd also argue because LVT rates are much | higher as percentages than property tax rates, holding the land | would still be more expensive than the solution. | | I agree there are also significant issues with zoning, but | zoning alone won't solve the problem. A bunch of people capture | a bunch of economic rents unearned, and it would be much better | for government to capture these economic rents as part of the | system and charge us less tax on things that actually are | earned. | zozbot234 wrote: | > municipality/county/state/federal regulations on land use | would have a significant effect on land value. | | That's not "a challenge" it's a positive side effect. Those | government institutions would be enabled to internalize the | value that they create, which is presently being captured by | random private parties that did not create it. | jmole wrote: | Look at the case of Atherton, CA - multi-million dollar home | values due to city ordinances around minimum lot size and | land usage. The land value here is created by scarcity, and | driven largely by the success of the greater metro area. | | But if you are trying to value this land from a Georgist | perspective, and one that takes into account property zoning | and use requirements, the land is worth much less than it | should be due to the restrictions, and would be taxed lower | than parcels of similar size in nearby cities. | | This seems, in theory, to reward obstinate enclaves of low- | density development within larger metros. The homeowners have | no reason to elect a council that would vote against their | interests in this respect, and their taxes would stay low. | TimPC wrote: | I agree that there is a positive side effect here in that | municipalities now have a strong incentive to rezone in ways | that increase land value since they capture a portion of that | value from their share of the LVT. | MiddleEndian wrote: | On a personal level, I like the LVT as a single tax because then | I wouldn't have to do any paperwork. They give me a bill, I pay a | bill, there's no exceptions, I can improve (or fuck up) my | property, and overall the numbers won't change (unless a ton of | people improve or fuck up their properties around me as well). | Nice and easy. | | But it also seems effective overall. After I quit my last job and | before I got my current job, I did not work for several years | (some due to choice, some due to circumstance). During this time, | I obviously paid no income tax. But I still paid my mortgage | (some of which obviously went to property tax, but mostly to the | bank). Presumably with a land value tax, my payment to my | mortgage company would be notably less less and the tax would | notably be more, so during that time instead of paying a bank I | would be paying taxes that go to infrastructure and welfare and | whatnot. | | I think this sort of thing is more accurate than an income-based | source of taxes, because I obviously wasn't really in the same | economic situation as an underemployed person who truly couldn't | find a job for several years. It also allows you to assess your | own level of taxation. For instance, I could have sold my place | or rented it out, and moved elsewhere to a cheaper place (or I | guess a more expensive place, were I so inclined to do so while | not having a job). | | Of course, the big disadvantage, as mentioned elsewhere in this | thread, is that it is difficult to assess land value sometimes. | It also seems like it may force people to move a bit more often, | and moving is exhausting. And also presumably you'd have to | convince people to pair this form of taxation with more lax | zoning laws (with some stricter exception for farmland or | something to keep the value per square foot low enough for it to | still make sense). | | Even weighing these factors, it seems like an improvement over | the current system. But I guess the real issue is that in the | current world of mortgages and such, even if 90% of the | population decided it truly did make sense as a form of tax, the | transition seems nearly impossible. | TimPC wrote: | The transition is hard. I'm convinced it has to be both gradual | and compensated. | zozbot234 wrote: | Since all taxes are ultimately borne by land (specifically, | by resources in fixed supply), it's not at all clear that | compensation is required for a neutral tax shift. | TimPC wrote: | Some people argue no compensation is required but I think | in reality an LVT at 100% reduces the price of all land to | $0. Given that land is substantial portion of retirement | savings in our current economy, completely obliterating | land prices without any compensation seems morally dubious. | Perhaps if you do it slowly enough that you give everyone | time to adjust and make the market adjustments gradual | enough that people who need to sell land for retirement can | still get something like 90% of the value initially it | could work. | zozbot234 wrote: | Nobody is arguing for a literal 100% LVT. You'd want to | still leave a fraction of land rent (say 10% or so) | untaxed, since this introduces a desirable market | mechanism in property assessment - and George even | acknowledges this. What's nutty is to let land | speculators capture _all_ of that value for no real | reason. | TimPC wrote: | I think the group that is capturing the most value is | actually landlords, followed by speculators. I also agree | that 90% LVT may be better in practice, although I do | know people who still argue for 100% and various auction | mechanisms to determine the LVT. | MiddleEndian wrote: | As much as I think LVT makes sense, having to go to some | sort of annual auction for my own land does seem worse | than just paying taxes. Along with that being a tedious | process, that could put you at the mercy of malicious | actors who may just dislike you and have enough cash to | outbid you. | | Any implementation would have to not include this for | people to be able to have stable lives. | AnimalMuppet wrote: | > Since all taxes are ultimately borne by land ... | | Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence. | | How is income tax ultimately borne by land? Sales tax? | Inheritance tax? Gasoline tax? Corporate income tax on | corporations like SpaceX, Goldman Sachs, and Intel? | | "Ultimately borne by land" may have made sense a century or | three ago, when (almost) all income ultimately came from | the land. That's not the world we live in any longer. | TimPC wrote: | Progress and Poverty was once the most popular economics book | ever written. The Georgist Theory in it, and the land value tax | proposed by it is still endorsed by economists today. | | This review clearly illustrates the ideas from George that land | captures gains that in a more fair society we'd want to go to | labour. | nickff wrote: | > _"... the land value tax proposed by it is still endorsed by | economists today. "_ | | Your comment is somewhat misleading, as it seems to suggest | that all or most economists endorse Georgism, which is not | true. Some vocal minority of economists are pro-Georgism, but I | haven't seen any data suggesting it is the most popular | taxation scheme. | aesh2Xa1 wrote: | I have wondered this, too. "Is/was Georgism really so | popular?" | | Do you have any papers/writing which specifically criticise | Georgism? | TimPC wrote: | It's hard to measure precisely how popular it was | historically but he campaigned for Mayor of NYC as a | Georgist and finished 2nd ahead of Teddy Roosevelt who | finished 3rd. So Henry George at least was well liked. | | The book itself was the best selling economics book of the | 19th century. It inspired art demonstrations and some | governments throughout the world even adopted LVT for a | while. So yes, it was pretty popular. | SilasX wrote: | Paul Birch had a long essay criticizing it. Here's where I | mentioned it on HN to summarize the key points: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17605751 | TimPC wrote: | Thanks for sharing this it's interesting. The first thing | I've noticed is that his estimate of the tax revenue is | far lower than other far more detailed estimates I've | seen by economists. | | But by far my biggest objection to his arguments is that | he ignores the way density impacts land value over time. | If we build huge skyscrapers in the countryside it's | reasonable that businesses will spring up around them. | Various economists have modelled this and land value | increases in proportion to the income of its occupants. | It's one of the reasons cities need to pay developers to | get affordable housing. The allocation of people into | housing that was once affordable in the market sense will | naturally result in rising land values and rising rents. | In no time and no place in history has density made land | cheap. | | If we choose to dot the countryside in huge towers the | land on which those huge towers are built and the land of | the shops immediately beside those huge towers will have | a high value that tapers off quickly as you head further | into the now empty countryside. You end up with a strange | peaky distribution. In practice, the increasing land | rents of the building and the decreased land rents of the | countryside would encourage occupants to leave for | greener pastures. And the developers would know this | would happen before even building a huge building in the | countryside because it is economically well understood. | | He also makes far too big a deal out of the need for a | negative land market. You can keep abandonment if you | just have a 95% LVT instead of a 100% LVT and you now | have a market where land values are overwhelmingly | positive. | bee_rider wrote: | I may have to pick this up -- as someone with no economics | training at all, a land value tax seems extremely appealing and | intuitive to me. I'd already like to become a complete partisan | in favor of this policy, but I guess it would make sense to | read what the actual justification is, for it, haha. | mynameishere wrote: | It seems extremely unappealing to me. It seems like something | a wealthy apartment-dweller in a tall building in a dense | city would come up with to move taxation from himself to the | guy in the country with two acres and a mobile home. | | The more I think about it, the more I'm sure that's the | actual motivation. | dkarl wrote: | The land value tax incentivizes the owner of scarce, | valuable urban land to put it to good social use, such as | building apartments for hundreds of people to live in. You | would have to be astronomically wealthy to own two acres in | a dense city and keep it solely for your own enjoyment. If | you want two acres all to yourself, you can move to the | countryside, where land is cheap, and one person can | conceivably pay the property taxes on an engineer's salary. | danbolt wrote: | Wouldn't a LVT mean that the taxes on the mobile home be | much less than the apartment in the dense city? | mynameishere wrote: | I'm just going by the headline definition: "A land value | tax is a levy on the value of land without regard to | buildings, personal property and other improvements." | That's the basic idea. | | I think people need to keep in mind the actual purpose of | taxation: One group is taking resources from another. | Nobody is pushing this tax (or any) because it's | "efficient" or whatever. They are pushing it because they | will come out ahead. | | A person who lives in a 600 square foot apartment in a 60 | story tower will effectively be paying taxes on 10 square | feet of actual land. That land might be very valuable, | but I suspect no matter how you twist the numbers, it's | going to be less than two acres anywhere in the country. | Especially if you go by the spirit of the LVT, which is | to ignore improvements. | | I could be wrong. I'm just guessing at "who fucks over | whom" here. | TimPC wrote: | Land buildings are on tends to become extremely valuable | due to all the surrounding businesses that emerge due to | a high density of people. If you look at land value maps | of cities you get very noticeable spikes in cities. | | I've seen land as cheap as $489 an acre and land as | expensive as $6,000,000 for a half-lot. Even assuming | $12,000 an acre in the countryside in California which | can be found now on the internet, it's quite believable | that 10 square feet of land beneath a skyscraper is going | to be worth more than $24,000. That 10 square feet is an | underestimate as well because the unit will be | responsible for more than 1/60th of its floor plan. | colinmhayes wrote: | The more I read about LVT the more clear it is to me that | it legitimately solves many, many problems society is | currently facing. The housing price crisis is effectively | solved by LVT. The "greedy landlord" meme is effectively | solved by LVT. Income tax being distortionary is solved | by LVT. NIMBYism caused by people wanting their home to | be worth more is solved by LVT. Yes, some are better off, | some are worse. It's not as clear as you think though. | Rural land is worth very little compared to urban. The | real losers are people who have single family homes in | desirable areas. | zozbot234 wrote: | Correct. Land "in the country" is worth zilch compared to | a similar plot in a dense urban core. GP has it | backwards, they're perhaps thinking of some flat tax on | land based on square footage whereas LVT is based on | assessed value. | its_ethan wrote: | That sort of assumes that the owner of the apartment- | dweller's property doesn't just increase their rent (pass | along that tax). | | As other people pointed out, there should/would have to be | some mechanism to value the land for the LVT. The land the | apartment building is built on in the city would have a | higher value than some 2 acres out in the country. The | owner of that land would have to pay the LVT, and the rent | for an apartment on that land would reflect that - | ultimately making everyone who lives in the apartment pay | that tax, if indirectly. | TimPC wrote: | Interestingly because the supply of land is inelastic its | supply curve is a straight vertical line. If you charge | the tax directly to tenants they lose say $20,000 in LVT | tax. This lowers their demand for land by $20,000. | Because the supply curve is a straight vertical line the | intersection of the supply and demand curve is now | $20,000 lower. They literally pay $20,000 less for land | rent. This doesn't work with anything that has elastic | supply like buildings where the tax would lower the | supply and the new intersection of the supply and demand | curves would result in the tenant and owner sharing the | tax. But it's well understood and accepted in the | economic literature that landlords end up paying the tax | not tenants. | its_ethan wrote: | > Interestingly because the supply of land is inelastic | its supply curve is a straight vertical line. If you | charge the tax directly to tenants they lose say $20,000 | in LVT tax. This lowers their demand for land by $20,000. | | This might sound good in theory, but it is a _very_ hard | sell to say that 's how it pans out in practice. You even | say: "This doesn't work with anything that has elastic | supply like buildings" - so as soon as you put a building | (apartments) on the property, this theory goes out the | window. | | > But it's well understood and accepted in the economic | literature that landlords end up paying the tax not | tenants. | | I don't dispute that there would be some competition | among landlords as to how much of their LVT they can pass | off to tenants - it wouldn't be 100%. But to claim that | there would be no impact to tenants strikes me as | hilariously naive. | mcguire wrote: | Absolutely! The biggest advantage for most, particularly | readers of HN, is described in part II | (http://gameofrent.com/content/can-lvt-be-passed-on-to- | tenant...): "...landlords cannot pass Land Value Tax (LVT) on | to their tenants..." Renting an apartment in SF would | therefore both be cheap, because the LVT encourages high- | density, and tax-advantaged, especially if the LVT is (as it | is supposed to be) the only tax. | | The bottom line is that this idea has literally no downside. | TimPC wrote: | Renting the apartment in SF will not be cheap because the | land has extremely high value. It's just the government | will capture the high value of that land instead of | landlords and that high value land capture will be used to | remove other taxes like income tax and property tax. Land | prices in SF would fall slightly as the LVT removes most | speculation. So likely rents go from $6000/month to | something like $5400/month. But the government might | capture $4500 of that to reduce other taxes. | | If we still had 1870's small government the idea would be | to put most of the LVT into a Citizen's Dividend which | functions like a UBI and helps people pay for their cost of | living (including some of the land taxes). | colinmhayes wrote: | Rental prices would not change, it's just that more of the | money would go to government instead of the landlord, | especially for low density housing. | TheCoelacanth wrote: | They probably would decrease somewhat, because there's no | longer an incentive for landowners to prevent people from | building housing to keep the supply low. | ryukafalz wrote: | This is something I've been wondering about with LVT. | Wouldn't they still have an incentive to stop people from | building more dense housing near them? Even more of an | incentive than now, in fact? Because the more people that | can live and work in the immediate area near them, the | more valuable the land is, and the more they'll pay in | tax. | scythe wrote: | The biggest problem with LVT is surprisingly simple: | accurately assessing the value of land is very hard, and | ensuring that the assessment process is fair is therefore | extremely hard. | | LVT experiments in history tend to run into problems when | people feel that their land has been valued incorrectly, | leading to a vocal minority that despises the law. That | results in something like this: | | https://nassimtaleb.org/2016/08/intolerant-wins- | dictatorship... | bee_rider wrote: | Huh. Property tax is already a thing of course, but I guess | if the LVT was going to replace all taxation the stakes | would be much higher. | | In an urban setting, it seems to me that the land value | should be... reasonably uniform, unlike property, which | should make assessing much easier, right? But that's just | getting the number. Whether people are happy with the | number is a whole 'nother problem. | markdown wrote: | Doesn't work that way. A subway gets built near your | property. The benefit of greater access accrues to you | more than it does someone 10km away. So your LVT has to | go up. | | Now you can't afford the taxes, and you're forced to sell | and move to somewhere with lower LVT. It's bought by | someone who will put it to better use. Maybe an apartment | block instead of your single family home. | | Over time, every piece of land is put to its most | productive use. But before it gets there, there will be | some pain for the individuals who choose (or are forced) | to move because they can't afford to the improvements | made to the infrastructure in their locality. | xboxnolifes wrote: | > Now you can't afford the taxes, and you're forced to | sell and move to somewhere with lower LVT. It's bought by | someone who will put it to better use. Maybe an apartment | block instead of your single family home. | | > Over time, every piece of land is put to its most | productive use. But before it gets there, there will be | some pain for the individuals who choose (or are forced) | to move because they can't afford to the improvements | made to the infrastructure in their locality. | | Which is why I think it makes sense that the LVT | shouldn't be re-evaluated on a rolling basis. It would | only be re-evaluated (or at least put into effect) when | it changes owners (sale, gift, inheritance, etc). | Otherwise you get bad incentives for people to vote | against improvements that price them out of living where | they currently are. | | Corporate land ownership would likely need different | rules, as the owner could theoretically be the same | forever. | | Over time, land is still put to it's most productive use, | there is just a delay introduced that considers the human | condition. | its_ethan wrote: | I would have assumed exactly the opposite in terms of | urban land being uniform in value. | | 10 acres that are 30 minutes from Des Moines, IA are | going to be very similar in value (price people are | willing to pay) compared to 10 acres that are 10 miles | down the road. Rural land is generally quite uniform and | more likely to be functionally the same. In an urban | area, say Los Angeles, 10 acres in Malibu (an area with | very high demand for property) is going to have a totally | different value (again, price people are willing to pay) | as compared to 10 acres 10 miles away in skid row. | | The problem, that other people have highlighted, is how | do you (the government/IRS/agency in charge) determine | the value of each of those land areas? Letting some city | planners in LA decide that those two areas should have | the same LVT, or allowing them to determine what tax each | should have, is gifting a lot of power to people who may | or may not be qualified, and may or may not experience | any sort of consequence for poor decision making/ biased | value assessment/ etc. | | The exact way that sort of value/tax-setting would play | out would be _very_ interesting, but the unintended | consequences could end up being pretty bad. | | I've always thought it was interesting that property tax | assessments don't just use the previous purchase price, | and instead rely on a relatively arbitrary valuation. | That could be one way to more accurately determine an LVT | - make it a set percent of the previous purchase price of | the land, that would allow the taxes to be priced in to | land transactions. | | I still just don't love the idea at its core. | colinmhayes wrote: | Now you've brought the horror that is prop 13 to a tax | that is supposed to replace all other taxes. Things | change in value, we have to account for that. | bee_rider wrote: | With a land value tax we could at least come up with | pretty straightforward equations, right? Some starting | value from being in town, then add something for | oceanfront property, then add something some extra bump | based on distance from some set of amenities provided by | the community (parks, subways, etc). It is at least | possible to come up with something, unlike, what, the | assessor's gut feeling about how nice your house is? This | seems like it is putting much more arbitrary power in the | hands of some random person. | its_ethan wrote: | > Some starting value from being in town, then add | something for oceanfront property, then add something | some extra bump based on distance from some set of | amenities provided by the community (parks, subways, | etc). | | How do you know you weren't also supposed to take the | floor plan or exterior paint color into consideration? | How do you account for the value lost from having | obnoxious neighbors? What happens when, in the future, a | nice bookstore/coffee shop is opened up down the street, | or alternatively a liquor store? Ultimately, how do you | know if whatever equation you've constructed is | exhaustive or "correct"? | | It might sound like "well then you just adjust the | equation" but this wouldn't be without consequence. One | outcome of getting that equation incorrect is that a home | is valued at a point where the imposed tax prices out | anyone from purchasing the home - it would sit | empty/foreclosed for as long as it takes a local | government bureaucracy to come in and attempt to re- | assess its value. So you could effectively be removing | houses from a competitive home buying market, which is | going to increase the price of other homes until they too | have priced people out of the area. Multiply that by | entire zip codes, and while you're working on adjusting | that equation, you could end up having a real shit show | on your hands with a bunch of people being displaced or | in worse financial positions. | | > It is at least possible to come up with something, | unlike, what, the assessor's gut feeling about how nice | your house is? This seems like it is putting much more | arbitrary power in the hands of some random person. | | I agree with the point that a home assessment is strange | and arbitrary, but you're really just saying we should | replace the assessor who goes and visits a property with | a group of assessor's that just come up with an equally | arbitrary equation that gets blanket applied to entire | cities? Why is that preferable to something like just | using the previous home sale price or, honestly, just | staying with the current system that we know is generally | very functional? | lordnacho wrote: | Someone came up with this delicious game: | | Landowners decide for themselves what value their land | has, and pay tax accordingly. But whatever they say the | value is, someone else is allowed to buy it for. | its_ethan wrote: | It's certainly a fun game, but does that mean if I decide | my property is worth $100,000, accurate or not, I am | forced to sell it just because someone comes along and | decides they want to buy it? Also, is this a game that | happens every year to allow for appreciation? | | For a realistic implementation, why not just use the fact | that the landowner already decided what the value their | land has when they purchased it and/or paid people to | develop it. Why not just use those values? | notahacker wrote: | The biggest problem with it as presented in _Progress and | Poverty_ (i.e. as a Single Tax to fund the government | budget, not some small supplementary levy to fund something | like local services) is that the size of the tax bears | relatively little relation to the ability of someone to pay | it (at least, to pay it without selling their house). | Turfing pensioners out of their house because the land it | sits on gained in value faster than their pension whilst | others earn millions virtually tax free obviously isn 't a | natural vote winner. | colinmhayes wrote: | Maybe Im heartless, but I don't see why people should be | allowed to stay in a home they can't afford just because | they've been there a while. Especially when the reason | they can't afford it is because the community thinks it | should support high density housing but they have a low | density home. | TimPC wrote: | Most modern day versions proposed allow you to defer the | tax until the sale of your home or pay it as part of the | settling of your estate. | zozbot234 wrote: | > Turfing pensioners out of their house because the land | it sits on gained in value faster than their pension | | This is a well-known canard. If someone can't pay their | tax on a primary residence, you put a lien on the | property that becomes enforceable when the ownership | changes hands, whether by sale or inheritance. No one | gets "thrown out" of their homes. | mrob wrote: | People who disagree with their assessed value should be | given the option to declare whatever value they like. If | they take this option, the state should have the option of | buying their property at the declared value, plus some | extra to cover transaction costs. | colinmhayes wrote: | The problem is that most land has stuff on top of it. The | government can't buy the land without the building that | comes with it. | CuriousSkeptic wrote: | At the surface it seems there should be a market solution | for this. | | One approach might be to do something clever with | mortages and property rights. Basically keep trying to | keep the current mechanics of borrowing and just shifting | around the parties involved so that the all the interest | gets collected as LVT. | | Might even let the central bank handle both collection | and dividends of it all. | | Another option might be to create economic incentives for | some party to get the assessment right. Like insurance | companies and banks loose either customers or revenue | when getting it wrong. | | Perhaps can play with some margin for speculation such | that lender and borrower get to share some profit. | | Or just make lenders outbid each other on who can extract | most rent for the property. | | I guess one concern here is to make sure the commons have | a representation, so that not all land get appropriated | to private use | bee_rider wrote: | This is a 'clever' solution to property taxes. But a land | value tax _specifically_ just taxes based on the value of | the land. This is supposed to incentivize people to use | their land as productively as possible -- with a property | tax, any improvements you make increases your tax bill, | with a land value tax, it doesn 't. | | A moral argument for it is, if you own an empty lot which | is gaining in value as the community grows around it, you | are essentially leeching extra value from the community | through no work of your own. This sort of behavior is | punished heavily with an LVT, as your taxes go up but you | don't get any extra revenue from your empty lot. | TimPC wrote: | My city already does a two-factor assessment that includes | land value and structure value for assessing my property | tax. I don't think just doing the land value component is | substantially harder although I do agree it's slightly | harder. | notacoward wrote: | Focusing on that one issue presents an incomplete picture, | to say the least. LVT has been tried many places, and has | been no less successful than other tax systems. Here's a | pretty thorough analysis and discussion of empirical | results. | | https://www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/as | s... | | _Of course_ there are secondary and /or orthogonal | problems that need to be solved. _Of course_ there are some | people who complain, either because they are truly being | overtaxed or (more often) because they think they | personally would do better under some other system. Just | like literally every other tax system including the ones | most of us live under right now. LVT is no panacea, but | there are legitimate reasons to believe it 's a | fundamentally better starting point than the mishmash of | income, sales, and property taxes we have now. | markdown wrote: | Could you tell us where these experiments were held, and | how far they went? For example, were other taxes eliminated | at the same time? | notacoward wrote: | See my sibling comment to yours. The most notable | examples are in New Zealand, Australia, and several towns | in Pennsylvania. Some of those ran into problems with | execution, others were abandoned for purely | ideological/selfish reasons, but overall it's not a bad | record. | teach wrote: | These were previously published on AstralCodexTen and discussed | here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29493005 | | GameOfRent is a new site by the author to collect these and | similar writings by him and others. | simonebrunozzi wrote: | I suggest to view Scott Alexander's (Astral Codex Ten) review of | the same book [0]. | | https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr... | rufus_foreman wrote: | For those who think a Georgist tax makes sense, why not apply the | same type of logic to income? | | If someone is employed as say, a teacher making $75,000 a year, | but would be most productive as a software developer making | $200,000 a year, should we tax them on $200,000 a year? | TimPC wrote: | Georgists get around this issue by abolishing income taxes | entirely. | | Regardless, I think there are fundamental differences between | the two cases. Most notably land doesn't have freedom of choice | the way people do. | | We also currently tax land based on its market value which | corresponds to the most productive use of the land so LVT | doesn't change this. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-13 23:00 UTC)