Comment by seiji | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seiji | Hacker News Reader

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NGDP level targeting says during economic downturns, the government should fill the gap between the downturn and the previous economic output level (creating jobs, buying things, paying people to do things, etc). Basically, don't let an economic downturn interrupt people's lives—always give them something to do and opportunities to grow.

land value tax comes from the idea nobody should be able to "own" land, you should rent land. When there's a more profitable use for your land than you are current exploiting, you must give the land up. The UK enjoys things like 99 year leases on land instead of in the US where you "buy" land and own it until the heat death of the universe.

negative wage taxes is like basic income if you make the "negative wage limit" really high. The government pays you because you don't make enough (maybe for reasons outside your control, like all jobs you are qualified for are now done by robots).

Singapore has free computerized centralized healthcare that doesn't cost a million dollars a person-year like in the US.

Estonia lets you get something resembling a "mini passport" with no international recognition (perhaps some cross-EU identity recognition, but no residency benefits), but with legal ties to an Estonian "e-residency" so you can verify your identity online electronically (chipped smart cards verified by government records, etc).

> NGDP level targeting says during economic downturns, the government should fill the gap

NO. It says the central bank should fill the gap, and that there's absolutely no point in the government's fiscal policy trying to fill the gap when it can be filled by creating enough money to keep NGDP on a level path.

For my (slightly outdated) sceptical take on this idea, see http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Market_monetarism

> land value tax comes from the idea nobody should be able to "own" land, you should rent land. When there's a more profitable use for your land than you are current exploiting, you must give the land up. The UK enjoys things like 99 year leases on land instead of in the US where you "buy" land and own it until the heat death of the universe.

That sounds like the scariest solution to the problem of land ownership. There are plenty of cases where the government decides that somebody must give their land up to expropriate more value from it with Eminient Domain laws. Who gets to decide when land is not extracting enough value? Politicians who are bought out by private corporations controlled by a board of directors, none of whom live anywhere near the land being expropriated? Land should be collectively owned by the people living on it and producing from it.

It would fix a lot of things like e.g. San Francisco. Imagine if all those two story, single family homes were taxed at their land value (40 story condos! condos everywhere!) where 3,000 people could live in the space currently occupied by 2 to 6 people.

Living in a place shouldn't grant you the right to obstruct progress forever just because you got there first. In the same vein, just because you got somewhere first also shouldn't mean you get unlimited profit potential just because... you got there first.

It would be accompanied with democratic process of the people who currently use that land. If the community of land users decided it would not hurt them for whatever progress somebody else proposes, they would democratically decide among themselves whether or not to do that.

Nobody would vote to gentrify and therefore forcibly remove themselves from their homes.

Again, you just attached value to the very loaded term progress. What is progress for one person might not be progress for the people who use that land for their own sustenance, whether that be a house or a farm or an enterprise.

>with democratic process of the people who currently use that land

Why only the people who currently use that land? Why don't the other 3000 people who could be living there have a say?

Land value tax sounds like a proposal to return directly to feudalism.

"Using land the most profitably" (ie. extracting the most tribute) will become de facto ownership for the controlling entity through tribute, while everyone else will be tenants of the few controllers.

I think what the grandparent meant was that if you were not using the land profitably you are going to want to 'sell' the land to someone who can use it more profitably and is therefore willing to pay a high price for it. If you didn't do that and just rented the land you would lose money because of the high land tax.

I think 'selling' here means "giving the other guy the privilege of having to pay lots of taxes instead of you".

I think renting land in any fashion is morally reprehensible. Though I don't fit in with much the neoliberal HN crowd as an anarchist communalist.

Ownership should be restricted to the community of inhabitants of the land. The processes around controlling the land would be voted on democratically, and a federation of community ownerships with local representation would deal with extra-community processes around broader land decision making.

yes, it's scary indeed.

Feudalism is a word that has been applied to such a wide variety of historical situations that it almost has no meaning, like the word "liberal". Please explain what is bad with having to pay rent to the government, given that we already pay taxes, and land value tax would reduce the need to levy other taxes, other than socially-advantageous sin taxes such as carbon taxes.

If you own land, you would owe land value tax, regardless of what you have done to the land. If you just hold the land and do nothing you still owe tax. No one forces you to sell the land.

This:

>When there's a more profitable use for your land than you are current exploiting, you must give the land up

is not accurate.

> Land should be collectively owned by the people living on it and producing from it.

Why should this be the case?

>is not accurate.

From wikipedia on eminent domain: "The property may be taken either for government use or by delegation to third parties, who will devote it to public or civic use or, in some cases, to economic development." The government, using eminent domain, literally forces you to sell the land. That is what the law is.

What part of that isn't true? They can take private land for public or "economic" development.

> Why should this be the case?

Private property is theft. Private property is a tool used to expropriate value from producers (workers) and give it to the property owners (capitalists). If you have a mine, a person or a corporation owned by a small group of people, buys the deed for the mine. They pay workers to extract the resources from the land for a wage. The wage is necessarily less than the value the workers create by mining the resources. That surplus goes into the pockets of the capitalist owners, even though they did no work. The miners are likely paid pennies, live in poor conditions, and now their home land is ruined by the ecological effects of the mining operation.

Resource extraction happens to be the easy one to describe, but the exact same principle holds in all manifestations of private property.

If you disagree, please at least read some Karl Marx first. Criticism of capitalism is well examined, and has been done for a long time.

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