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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38049 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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Great post! In my view property taxes are by far the best tax, land tax especially. There’s no deadweight loss, it’s very difficult to game/avoid, and if done right is quite equitable. Clearly the UK does it wrong.

Texas is a great example of property tax done right. Yearly reassessments for most jurisdictions, and property valuations must be with 10% of the market price of the properties, as determined by state ratio studies, or the county will lose millions in local school funding.

Tying taxation/accuracy of valuation to school funding is a brilliant stroke because it cuts through so much of the BS and whinging around taxation to get to the heart of why it’s important. I wish more places would follow that model.

Also, could you explain what a gilt is in your post?

Texas’s property tax is incredibly unpopular and that’s probably something that needs to be noted in any discussion of Texas doing people taxes right.

"Eating vegetables is incredibly unpopular with kids, which should be noted in any discussion of doing childhood nutrition right."

This sort of low-effort comment that doesn't really explicitly state your objection, just draws a sneering equivalence ("people who object to property taxes are like children who don't like eating vegetables") is just what @naraburns was talking about.

We do not want these kinds of comments. We want you to discuss, debate, and elaborate. This place is not for seeing how cleverly you can score a zinger or how pithily you can express your disdain.

If you think that property taxes are a necessary and appropriate requirement in maintaining a well-functioning civil society, that no reasonable person should object to them, and that people who do are essentially spoiled, entitled and ignorant and should be treated like children who are too immature to realize what's good for them - this is my best shot at charitably rephrasing your one-liner into a coherent position - then you need to actually state that and defend that, not just mockingly rephrase the person you are disagreeing with a statement of the obvious that's supposed to imply that their statement was so absurd as to need no meaningful rebuttal.

Fair point… but I stand by my claims. People are stupid about taxes.

Gilts are UK versions of American Treasuries. So government bonds.

There’s no deadweight loss, it’s very difficult to game/avoid,

Property taxes very much have a deadweight loss - you may choose not to put your property to it's most efficient use since that would increase it's assessed value. Gaming is also reasonably straightforward - make improvements off the books (i.e. to interiors of your house and don't get permits).

That's why an LVT is so much better than a property tax - a vacant lot, a burned out husk, a single family home or a 20 story condo, either way you pay the same tax but more improvements -> more value for you and others.

Gaming is also reasonably straightforward - make improvements off the books (i.e. to interiors of your house and don't get permits).

Or make improvements legally, but pick improvements that don't change or reduce the resale value of the house. Modelling your living room like the Starship Enterprise is nicer when it saves you a few thousand a year.

From my post:

land tax especially

I think we’re in agreement! Land value tax would solve an immense amount of problems, people really sleep on how many issues stem from poor use and distribution of land/property.

Homelessness for one would be far cheaper and easier to solve if we could just reform our zoning and property tax codes. It would also do a lot to help increase fertility, young couple often say buying a house is one of the main reasons they delay having children.

But people love to get theirs and pull up the ladder behind them unfortunately.

Yeah guess I misinterpreted your post as saying both property tax and LVT have this property, as opposed to just the latter. My bad!

Urbanists like LVT (any LVT, not just the Georgist one) because municipal expenses scale more with people (related to improvements) than area (land), so if you're paying for municipal expenses with an LVT then one landowner's improvements effectively raise the taxes on everyone else's land, thus giving them an incentive to improve to keep up.

Homelessness -- that is, the problem of the unsheltered homeless -- has nothing to do with zoning or property taxes, but rather the characteristics of the homeless themselves.

young couple often say buying a house is one of the main reasons they delay having children

They say a lot of things. Then you look in the past and see fertility was much higher when people were living 10 to an apartment with only cold water if you were lucky, so maybe what they say isn't accurate.

one landowner's improvements effectively raise the taxes on everyone else's land, thus giving them an incentive to improve to keep up.

Exactly. This is good because everyone else benefits from higher economic activity and more value being generated around them. Otherwise you have situations where poorly run businesses can skimp by because they have a prime location and are surrounded by good businesses that actually provide a lot of value. I don’t see the issue.

They say a lot of things. Then you look in the past and see fertility was much higher when people were living 10 to an apartment with only cold water if you were lucky, so maybe what they say isn't accurate.

I agree that sometimes people have revealed preferences, but I think generally it’s good to take folks at their word. Also, it’s disingenuous to act like these situations are equivalent - if people in poor conditions in the past had access to birth control, they would probably have less kids. The aristocracy did this frequently. Humans just like sex.

Do you think that a lack of housing is not a major driver in having kids? If not what is your list of causes for the fertility crisis?

Exactly. This is good because everyone else benefits from higher economic activity and more value being generated around them. Otherwise you have situations where poorly run businesses can skimp by because they have a prime location and are surrounded by good businesses that actually provide a lot of value. I don’t see the issue.

I don't have it as a value that every square inch of land should be put to its highest economic use. And I don't think the taxes on one parcel should go up because improvements on another parcel resulted in an increase in municipal expenses.

Do you think that a lack of housing is not a major driver in having kids?

No.

If not what is your list of causes for the fertility crisis?

One is that there's no longer any economic reason to have kids. That's not particularly new, of course. Two is that the cost of having kids -- not just the economic cost in dollars, but the non-delegable cost in time -- for middle class and above parents just keeps going up. Helicopter parenting is tiring, expensive... and expected. Three is birth control (also not particularly new).

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