Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sometimes it’s good to admit when your enemies do something smart. I like Mamdanis Pied-a-Terre tax. My gut says most of these are likely tax dodgers which isn’t fair to the rest of the city. Either legally tax-dodging by limiting days or being smaller fish not getting caught. Making them pay a PAT tax or NY income taxes seems fundamentally fair to me.
And if it gets people to sell second homes and instead stay in hotels 2 months out of the year I think that’s a net positive for a city with limited housing.
I’ll disagree with a million things with Mamdani and NYC policy but the concept of a PAT tax feels fair to me. I would be in favor of lower taxes overall but a PAT feels like it would capture a lot of people who use NYC services but dodge their taxes which boost tax fairness in my opinion.
LVT would do this more effectively, efficiently, and fairly.
Ever since Scott posted his review of Georgism I've been increasingly on board as I keep seeing issues with not-LVT. It's not a perfect solution that would fix literally all of society's ills, but like 90% of anything related to taxes (and ~50% of anything related to housing) seems easily solvable with LVT.
I wish we still had enough federalism that proponents of LVT we could have a jurisdiction that had LVT.
I think they're a very good idea, but many things seem like good ideas until they're actually put into practice.
More options
Context Copy link
I am so bad at not taking bait. And in this case for me it’s doing a Georgists/LVT debate. I believe they have a false-model of the world and there are higher deadweight costs than they think. Developers do need incentives and one of them is land appreciation. Best example I have is a developer had maybe 40 acres of land near a major US city. I lived in this development. The first 50-story tower was built in I think 1980. It’s now mostly finished and my guess is there are now roughly 25 fifty story towers with the most recent one being about 100 floors. A lot of their profits were land appreciation and the land appreciation incentivized them to add amenities and parks etc. It also makes sense to build 1 big building at a time instead of of fill the whole site with little buildings and then tear down the little buildings as land values go up that justify bigger buildings. I think land appreciation is an economic incentive to invest in a community. So taking that away is a dead weight costs.
I also think all taxes have a deadweight costs. But taxes are the price we pay for civilization so we must have them. So we should tax land. But we should also tax everything we can. But we should try to keep the taxes on everything low to minimize the disincentives of doing good things. I think income taxes are fine but should be lower. The PAT for NYC I think is fine because in a more globalized world more people are avoiding claiming residency in NYC and not paying the income tax. The rich do live in multiple locations now and many rich do spend 4 months of the year in NYC. They won’t claim NYC as their residence. But they should be taxed and their shouldn’t be an arbitrage of avoiding claiming NYC residency which many people do.
More options
Context Copy link
That was a guest post from Lars Doucet, not Astral Codex Ten's own material.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link