I guess if you aren't working over a period of years, you are just increasing commute times by occupying the densest areas and Georgism is incentivizing you to move farther out or build vertical (it's on land, not structures).
In the maximal form of LVT there is 0 value of owning land, the LVT becomes in effect rent to the state (which can be redistributed in a dividend to the people), and rather than assess at all land can be simply rented at at auction.
If I sell my land to someone for a dollar, does that mean the land is worth a dollar? Or is a county assessor pulling a magic number out of his hat that I would have to fight in court? I would say that so long as there isn't a dollar figure attached to the very atoms or molecules that make up the ground beneath one's feet, assessment will always be a blackbox.
>>In the maximal form of LVT there is 0 value of owning land, the LVT becomes in effect rent to the state (which can be redistributed in a dividend to the people), and rather than assess at all land can be simply rented at at auction.
In essence, this is Communism.
Or, you know, he can look at what the land around yours is going for to determine what the LVT should be.
> I would say that so long as there isn't a dollar figure attached to the very atoms or molecules that make up the ground beneath one's feet, assessment will always be a blackbox.
Considering that this is true for all atoms and molecules why is it a problem in this case and not in all the other cases where we figuratively attach dollar figures to atoms or molecules?
> In essence, this is Communism.
I would love to hear why you think that.
And who determines what the land around me is worth? Or the land around that land ad infinitum? In all cases, there is an assessor pulling a magic number out of his hat. The only fair assessment is an agreed upon flat percentage multiplied by the sale price (what one has already paid) with depreciation factored in. Not what a "reasonable person" would want to pay on the basis of what my next-door neighbor pays (property taxes as currently calculated) nor what the government expects to extract from the ideal "best person" (land value tax). These latter two taxes are speculative (that is if they aren't worked backwards as sneaky graduated taxes on top of paying for local services) and ultimately punitive to the people who rightly purchased their property but somehow live "economically wrong" to the county/government. It's the burden of a country club without any of the benefits.
>>Considering that this is true for all atoms and molecules why is it a problem in this case and not in all the other cases where we figuratively attach dollar figures to atoms or molecules?
LVT assumes that land has a tangible and intrinsic value and that ownership provides solely to its the owner opportunity to derive a monetary value that is upto and including its "best use". Does that assumption hold? If we are discussing fiefs and manors. Yes. Mines and riverways? Yes. 19th century factories? To a lesser degree, but still yes. Thus there would be a basis in multiplying a dollar amount by some base unit of hydrocarbon, nitrogenous compound, water, or metal ore. But these days what constitutes a "best use" of land is completely divorced from where people derive their monetary value. In one year, people can make more money with a laptop in a tiny cubicle in New York than they do running a corn farm in Idaho. Does one then come to the conclusion that corn farming is an inefficient use of the land compared to an office tower and ought to be taxed as such? If you do, you're being consistent (to the possible detriment of the national diet). But if you don't, the only way to settle the value of a corn farm is the price at which someone makes a voluntary real sale (by private contract or open market) or by fiat. And that brings us to your next point.
>In essence, this is Communism
>>I would love to hear why you think that.
If an LVT was administered by a private group of individuals and was backed by some sort of resource value table with reassessments made every 2-5 years reflecting market value, I wouldn't have as strong an opposition as I do (although I would still have reservations). However, the scenario posited by the previous poster is that (from what I understand) a maximal land tax allows for a de facto monopoly over the land by government while private individuals merely become renting stewards of the soil they supposedly own. Should the net value of owned land being zero be a good thing to achieve as a policy? If so, how is this any different than collectivization in results, if not means? My statement wasn't a remark on LVT per se but what the previous poster expected to see achieved with it.
LVT, while ostensibly fair if one only looks at the separation between land and real estate, possesses many of the same problems as regular property tax. Ultimately it's not a much of a difference so long as the government is both assessor and rentier. I'd rather have a verifiable and justifiable reason to pay a fee based on what I own and my usage of it rather than quibble over the kinds of financial weapons that government uses to extract value from its citizens as though owing taxes at all was a forgone conclusion. A motive behind the tax must justify itself on its terms before justifying it's means or ends.