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Comment by gottorf | Hacker News Reader

> Welcome to the age of generational wealth and wealth transfer much like Europe a century ago.

This inevitably happens as a society grows to the point where it values stability and maintenance over freedom and growth. The chaotic nature of individual liberty encourages both creation and creative destruction, which makes wealth change hands often. When government steps in to save the people from themselves, you get stasis, and it becomes increasingly harder to make your own lot in life, whether upwards or downwards.

> Upward mobility is dead

At least in the US, this still isn't nearly as true as a lot of people think it is. Sure, someone on their first job isn't going to be able to afford a house in any one of the most desirable cities in the world (let alone the country); but in vast areas of "flyover country", people make a living, buy homes with yards, and raise children.

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This trend is starting to reverse. Most suburban areas in the US are being assaulted by investment firms.

The easiest policy decision to fix this would be to stop making housing such a guaranteed (literally, in many cases) investment. Big firms will chase their yields elsewhere if home prices were allowed to go down or even be stagnant for a long time.

And while we're at it, let's implement a Georgist land value tax, so that gains in the value of the land itself, which nobody affects directly in a vacuum, does not inure to the landowner, be it BlackRock, The Rock, or your average Joe.

But a third of all Americans own homes[0], and I guess by now everyone is used to having the full faith and credit of the United States government be a tailwind to their own labor-free enrichment.

[0]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N

Wouldn't landlords simply pass on any tax on the land to their tenants?

No.

Tenants always pay for the land value. If a new train station opens up and the costs of an apartment have not changed, you better believe the landlord will raise prices given the raised demand from the new value associated from the train station. The monthly payment that a tenant pays has nothing to do with costs.

The effect whereby taxes are passed on happen because when you tax something you get less of it, and with less of it it moves along the supply and demand curve and so prices rise. Since the supply of land is fixed, this does not happen with land taxes.

The question then becomes do you pay the value to the landlord, or do you pay it to the community?

> The question then becomes do you pay the value to the landlord, or do you pay it to the community?

This is the precise point, and thank you for elucidating it. With an LVT, the value of a highly-desirable piece of land inures to the community as a whole, and not whoever holds the title to that land. If the landowner wishes to come out ahead of this taxation, they are forced to improve it, whether in the form of tilling the soil, mining the minerals, or (most relevantly to our discussion) building a house or apartments on it.

As a side effect, it prevents the absurdities you see in many North American cities where there's a huge surface parking lot smack dab in the middle of a dense downtown area.

Yes, but that's true of any kind of tax, including traditional property taxes. Landlords are already charging the most the market will bear (including passing on any and all taxes), and similarly tenants are already offering the least amount of rent the market will bear.

More importantly for a Georgist LVT scheme vs. regular property taxes is that with the former, you're only taxed on the unimproved value of the land, vs. the value of the lot plus the improvement (i.e. housing) on it. It's arguably the most economically efficient as well as the most socially just form of taxation, as that which is taxed is the thing that nobody created or made valuable.

1) Be investment firm

2) buy houses

3) lobby govt for more immigrants saying "diversity is our strength"

4) Hire PR firms to say "diversity is our strength"

5) Immigrants need to live somewhere so housing prices go up because of demand

6) Profit

Immigration is not a significant (or at least not top three in significance) factor in the housing crisis. If you believe it is then please cite the data.

No. Please site the data where supply and demand works everywhere else but not when it comes to immigration.

Supply and demand does _not_ work everywhere else. That is a highschool-level interpretation of the astrology we call economics. Complex systems in reality are not defined by two simple lines on a graph.

If you use Google there is plenty of research disproving you from Canadian sources that pander to both Liberal and Conservative readership.

Economics is astrology partly because people like you believe everything at face value. Why on earth would " canadian sources" i.e. PR firms for big business shoot themselves in the foot by letting everyone know that the cheap labor they love is partly a cause of the housing crisis?

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, like the saying goes "the road to ruin is paved in good intentions".

Immigration is far from the biggest factor. Step 3 should be: lobby the government to prohibit new housing construction (aka competition) in in-demand locations

I don't want my forests and open land being used to make high density housing for more people.

High density is not built on open land.

It is where I live. All the farms in my county have been replaced by almost barrack's style townhomes. Its dystopian.

Townhomes are not high density, think mid to high rise buildings. Several stories with shops on the first floor.

The “missing middle” is what we should be building.

Does building the "missing middle" still mean paving what was once forests and making farms into town houses? If it is (which it is) then I'm all against it.

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