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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

Just some possibly ill-thought out comments:

> Unlike income or consumption taxes, an LVT is non-distortionary. It doesn't discourage productive activities like work, saving, or investment

It's not great for anyone who chose to invest in land based on the current rules, and then the rules change.

> Many landowners hold onto vacant or underutilized land as a speculative investment, waiting for its value to increase

This is a symptom, not a root problem.

> encouraging landowners to develop or sell their land

The land may now be worth less than it was, as it has an instant and recurring negative sign attached to it.

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>> Unlike income or consumption taxes, an LVT is non-distortionary. It doesn't discourage productive activities like work, saving, or investment

>It's not great for anyone who chose to invest in land based on the current rules, and then the rules change.

Taxing land is intended to change current land investment behavior.

a symptom of rent-seeking?

speculation... wasteful monopolization and other rotten externalities ARE the problem.

and since when are prices of land decreasing suddenly a terrible thing?

Due to the way you phrase your comments, I'm struggling to pull any neutral points out to respond to. Maybe this one:

> and since when are prices of land decreasing suddenly a terrible thing?

Because if it decreases, then it will discourage people from selling. You think it will increase selling (and for some reason think that's good); I'm saying that this might counteract that.

No, if the price of land decreases, it only discourages people from selling if they think that the price will come back some time in the future. A permanent tax change won't make people think that.

More: If the tax rate has gone up enough that the price has gone down, then if I hold it, I'm also having to pay the higher taxes year after year. That's going to encourage selling, not discourage it.

I don't like Georgism for other reasons, but I think that part will work as advertised.

> other reasons

What might those be? Can you expand on why you don't "like" it...

1. The whole thing has a "one weird trick to fix your economy" vibe to it. On that ground alone, it feels like snake oil. (If you want to argue that "vibe" is not an intellectually rigorous criticism, I will admit the truth of that point.)

2. Why land, specifically? Why land only? It's not the 1800s anymore, and land is not either the primary asset or the primary source of wealth. Why single it out as the thing to tax? It feels like a theory stuck in the past. It needs to explain why, in 2023, land is the one thing that should be taxed. I've seen handwaving, but nothing that feels all that solid. (The one argument that has at least some merit is that no more land can be created, unlike everything else. True, but so what? There's a maximum number of bitcoin, but Georgism doesn't say to tax them. Why is land the one magic thing to get taxed?)

3. It is easy for the rich to have a smaller proportion of their assets in land than it is for the middle class. (Unless they rent - and then they wind up getting charged for the tax without having the benefits of owning the land.) LVT - if it's the only tax - means that the rich can easily wind up paying little or no tax. I'm not of the "confiscate all the rich's assets" crowd, but letting them pay almost nothing doesn't sit right with me, either.

Re:2: Why should LABOUR in lieu of land be taxed? What's more Adam-and-Evey than making everyone suffer under the sweat of their brows for the rest of the days or tax the fewer far better resourced landowners and everyone lives happily ever after

How about we don't pick one thing? How about we pick income, including capital gains, and land, and buildings, and IP? And maybe set the rates low enough that nobody gets crushed?

Some would argue you're describing the status quo, which is crushing young people and the disadvantaged. How 'bout making capital gains equivalent to laboearned income?

Except this tax everything scheme did not crush young people and the disadvantaged, at least not so much, in prior decades. The tax regime has changed, along with other parts of the economy. Maybe it's worth revisiting earlier years and analyzing all of their parameters to see what has changed.

That won't happen because capital gains and tax-free selling of real estate is the source of the power and inequality. Might as well demand reps sign their own economic death warrant or at least their own demotion to regular plebian socioeconomic class who needs to actually earn and be big boy taxed on their earnings to cover "their share" and attitudes towards how they are able and also required to spend their time

That's not why. It's because a system of private ownership means that the state shouldn't take away stuff people have.

> How about we pick income, including capital gains, and land, and buildings, and IP?

Only one of those is income.

Re:1 - a lot of abstraction here to simply say this is merely your conjecture. Just cuz it sounds like a meme doesn't mean its not totally on the money, so to speak. Sometimes art really does imitate life and vice versa

Also: There's this one annoying trick where "they" (the rich) constantly get whatever they want whenever the thought pops up and thats normal but any small step taken to roll back the trend and that is often popular or at least a cult-fave is radical and insane.

Edit: Family Guy already did this and they did it the best (frivolous difference in belief or opinion -> This man is insane -> custody -> comedy)

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