Hacker News Reader

Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

I'd be tackling housing prices. I think wages (in AU, at least) already render many small businesses unviable.

Historically in Australia, it's seemed like houses have doubled in price every 10 years. More recently, it's seemed like every 5 years. A house I bought 10 years ago would now be 2.5* that as land value alone. A building I bought has apparently doubled in value in five years.

View on HN

>I'd be tackling housing prices.

The government has absolutely no desire to do that. Their voter base is predominantly home owners who think of their house as an asset that should only go up in value.

Yes, I think the best opportunities are incremental changes like phasing out negative gearing, tweaking SMSF rules and so on.

I agree. Also, High streets don't have to 'die' due to excessive rent either, the government could hike taxes on vacant stores 1000% then make possession orders on unpaid premises after 18 months. Then the gov can nationalise shop rents according to reasonable incomes.

I'd advocate for scrapping council tax and business rates, replacing them with a land value tax payable by the freeholder rather than occupant.

I just don't see the current Tory party touching it with a barge pole.

Only issue is that UK politics are dominated by rich landowners...

How does that tax not just passed onto the occupant? When I was renting I was basically paying all my landlords costs for the property + profit on top. If there’s not enough units available or if the landlord class acts as a cartel in pricing then every cost is going to the occupant

The tax incidence depends on the elasticities of demand and supply. Since the supply of land is, for practical purposes, perfectly inelastic, land value tax cannot be effectively passed onto the tenant.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Tax_incidence

I'd love for council tax to be scrapped, but I'd prefer it to be replaced by a risen in income tax, with money dished out by Central government to local councils.

> hike taxes on vacant stores 1000%

That's how you get high streets lined with charity shops. Not that I have anything against charity shops, but is that really what you want to see?

When the average person makes more money sitting in their house than they do working - it's a gift-horse that is hard to look in the mouth...

> I think wages (in AU, at least) already render many small businesses unviable.

Probably an unviable business no matter the wage. People cannot be depended on to subsidize someone's business by accepting crappy wages.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com