This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is the windfall from selling a house + expensive land gone under Georgism? If my land goes from being worth 200K to being worth $5M, I still get to pocket that $4.8M, right? I think so because the check from the buy er has to so somewhere, but maybe LVT breaks this in a way I cannot understand.
No, you wouldn't get to keep that 4.8M unless you improved the land yourself, for instance built out a house/new wing or something similar. And then you'd only keep the portion which you improved.
The whole idea is that the 'land value' which drives most real estate speculation is taxed away.
Okay, so where does the money go?
At the start of 1990 I pay $100K+$100K for land+house by writing a check for $200K to the current owner of land+house.
Land value goes up kind of slowly for the first 15 years (say it goes from $100K to $400K, around 10% a year). I pay LVT of $5000 at the start and $20,000 at the end.
Then it really takes off, going up 50% per year. By 2010 the land is just over $3,000,000, and I decide "fuck this" at the $150K tax bill and sell.
So I sell for $3000K+$250K at the start of 2010 and get a check for $3,250,000 from the guy I sold the land to.
I still get that check. Even retroactively applied against all the back taxes, I come out ahead.
... Unless I decide to keep on living on the the $3 million land for 20 years. But I am choosing to leave nearly $3 million on the table for doing that. Being able to keep on living in one place is nice but not $3 million nice.
The Georgist LVT is 100%. Whatever the value is of that land, you're paying it to the government. So you should buy the $100K house + $100K land in 1990 from the previous owner for $100K. Over the course of the first year you pay whatever the value of holding a piece of $100K land is for a year in taxes. Same for each of the years after that, with the new value of the land. When you sell, you get the $250K for the appreciation of the house, but nothing for the land. Of course, most likely no one else wants a $250K house on land they can't afford to pay the taxes on, so in fact a developer takes it from you for a song or you abandon it to the government, and someone else who is going to fill the land with 400 square foot apartments develops it instead.
If the LVT was done honestly, in this scenario you should be paying $0 taxes on the land because its market value is $0. If the land isn't worth $0, a land value tax makes it worth $0 according to the market--nobody would want to buy land that's priced higher than $0, because they have to pay the sale price plus 100% of the value in taxes, which is a net loss.
(And actually, all land would have negative value. The land is valueless because all the value gets taken away in taxes, plus you have transaction costs.)
The usual way the Georgists put it is taxing 100% of the land rent. The market value of the land is indeed zero under this system, but the land rent is not zero.
I have a hard time, even after Googling it, figuring out what land rent could mean here that's not also zero. The land rent is supposed to be the amount of rent the property would generate. Since all the land rent is taxed away, the land owner should be indifferent to how much land rent anyone would actually pay, which would drive the land rent down to zero as well.
This is where 'highest and best' comes in; it's not the land rent actually charged by the landowner, it's the land rent that a user making the 'highest and best' use of the property would pay.
Trying to phrase my objection correctly:
A user making the highest and best use would always pay zero because the amount that this user would pay affects the amount of taxes that the landowner would pay, and the combination of these would lead to the user paying zero, the landowner making zero, and the taxes being zero.
In order for this to work, you need it to be something like "the amount that the user would be willing to pay if there was someone who would care about raising their price that high, even if there's nobody who'd care". That would be consistent, but I can't see how such a thing could possibly be computed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link