Housing Costs Reduce the Return to Education

People like to live near amenities, transportation hubs, and so forth. And many types of jobs fundamentally cannot be remote. And even if hypothetically everywhere became equally viable to live, then rents would adjust to take that into account. Of course, those with special skills will always do better. And geo-arbitrage opportunities exist during interim periods for early adopters of new folkways and new technologies.

I disagree with the rebuttals, but along a different line of reasoning:

1) The article repeatedly leans on the concept that the municipal tax itself is insignificant and unimportant, that it's ability to grow or shrink is bounded, and that implementing an LVT will raise taxes overall.

An LVT is supposed to supplant other forms of tax - you aren't supposed to be paying income tax, school tax, etc. in addition to it. The increased property tax should be a wash at the individual level unless you're making poor use of land.

His own priors indicate that municipal taxation is not LVT-like, but he claims that it is.

2) He claims that the rich won't care about the tax increase (so why not increase revenue there?) but that seniors that are land-rich but wealth poor will get liquidated.

He doesn't bother to think about what this means - land values decrease as non-productive land is returned to the market. He claims renters will get squeezed stating that there's only housing supply where there are profits. Sure, but how would it look? Would we be out popping medium size detached dwellings in suburbs that create net-negative income for cities in the long term (but are profitable for developers and speculators), or would it favour densification in areas already served by infrastructure? No argument is provided.

Basically the key point made that is decently supported is "there will be pain during a transition between the two systems", but I don't think anyone believes otherwise.

Good points, all. It is important to keep in mind the difference between the Georgist position that:

1) "LVT is a positive good and governments should try to collect the entire site value of every property."

vs the more moderate one that:

2) "LVT is the least bad tax and much preferable to taxing positive economic activity like labor, investment, and exchanges."

I think Birch makes a good point that LVT, like all other taxes, will cause horrible distortions once it's high enough. I agree that it's hard to dispute 2), but that's a long way from the 1) promoted in Progress and Poverty.

His other good point, I think, was that you don't actually want to tax the site value, but the site value's net contribution from the other sites (i.e. subtract off the positive externalities the site throws onto others), which in practice is hard to calculate, since you only observe O(n) values (land and structure prices) but need to observe a data point for every pair of properties, O(n^2), to calculate the net improvement.

With the exception of last year, my heater only runs 3 months a year, and not very often at that.

Boise gets down to around mid-20s (F) in the winter, which isn't that cold. Humidity is also pretty low, so it tends to feel quite crisp.

It's not a bubble if the economy is growing at the same or faster rate, though.

Getting 7% isn't that hard in other parts of the developing world that don't have a preference for gold.

It hurts a bit seeing a saving account that has better performance than my risky equities investments.

So? What is the argument exactly?

its called gentrification. Nothing new.

When the value proposition no longer makes sense; move?

"Money based system" is a bad sci-fi. State managed distribution is real history, at least for me. It did not work well

equal political representation and in general equal rights no matter where you come from.

Democracy says nothing about everyone being poor or something. Its a political system, not an economical one.

Yes, but how much of the housing price is physical maintenance and how much is "location location location"? With the latter eliminated, I'm guessing the concordant increase in taxes will far from compensate for the fall in the price of a positional good. Also, even if the taxes were equal to the current price, but things got fixed faster than most landlords, that's still a win. Don't forget about how much harder it will be to evict someone and ruin their life when there isn't a profit motive involved. So many benefits.

How are those choices different from money? The money version is only more liberating if you're rich. First-come-first-serve does suck for newcomers, but do they have a right to displace someone that has lived there forever on a whim? It's not obvious at all. It would make sense to attempt to build enough to keep people moving though.

1) Practically speaking, that wouldn't happen. 2) Ask yourself how ethnocentrism and nationalism led to that genocidal outcome. Could we have instead invited the native americans to work together in a democratic system? Imagine the possibilities. 3) If you're the minority in the world, what justifies you keeping others down? 4) Why are Central and South Americans leaving their homes? Investigate the brutal CIA coups, military invasions, arms dealing, and drug smuggling the united states has inflicted on this hemisphere since before the Monroe Doctrine. If we stopped destroying whole societies, we might not have to clean up our own messes.

EDIT: Also, our institutions have been shown by recent history to be a complete farce. Maybe new people would rebuild them better without the taint of authoritarianism, hierarchy, and corruption.

I am suggesting that. I think that perhaps we might want to check for certain types of criminal charges, but we are seeing in real time how that is abused. However, yes, the concept of nations, standing armies, and the whole lot is built on hierarchy, deprivation, and violence, and undemocratic process. We should be working towards a world in which borders are not necessary, or at least, expand that zone maximally up to the teeth of imperialist enemies that would try to take it from us.

Socialists are not coming for your toothbrush. We ask for a world in which people are free to live and work where they please. A world where people are not thrown in cages or separated from their families because they cross an invisible line. We don't need to walk into your personal space to have that, but if we did for some reason, hi, how are you doing? :)

>Are you really suggesting that anybody in the world who wants to walk into the USA should be allowed to?

Maybe block known criminals and bad actors, but otherwise yes. If your argument as to why we should exclude people is based on the idea that it would make standards of living worse for people here, that's a) probably not true and b) only makes sense if you think the wellbeing of the people here is more important the wellbeing of people elsewhere.

>It seems like that nullifies the existence of the nation itself. Why have a border?

Not really, there'd still be a government and a system of laws that apply within the border.

But beyond that, why specifically do you think it would be bad to nullify the existence of a nation?

>Why have a military to protect that border?

In as far as a military is necessary, it is to protect against other militaries, not non-violent civilians entering the country.