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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

LVT is incoherent, it pretty much only benefits people who are cash rich and land poor. Which is why it gets so much oxygen from tech elites with lots of cash and an inability to buy a house somewhere like mill valley, or wherever.

Essentially taken to the logical conclusion, there will be people competing for more cash to pay their increasing taxes on the same land, it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem. It's such a joke.

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It completely solves the problem. I recommend you read “progress and poverty” to get a better understanding of it.

You don’t seem to understand how it works or what it does.

I do understand how it works, are you saying that the zoning will magically be fixed when the taxes go up or the land becomes more exlusive? because I can tell you which one has precedent and which one is wishful thinking.

Yes, zoning does get magically fixed, because the incentives that led to zoning disappear. Under full LVT, owners have an incentive to maximize their land use. Otherwise, they will go bankrupt. So places with zoning more restrictive than land use demands will be underwater financially. Think SFH tract homes in Cupertino. These homeowners have fought viciously to retain SFH zoning. If LVT was imposed 95% of them would be faced with a tax bill they cannot pay. Their only option would be to surrender their land or rezone to allow development of sufficient scale to pay the tax.

It’s not wishful thinking it’s just a fact. Zoning exists because landowners want it. As soon as they don’t want it, it’s gone.

The idea is that valuable land will be utilized better.

"utilized better" in that context just means that the owner of the land can support the taxes on it, it doesn't mean suddenly we are going to put skyscrapers in el cerrito.

It would most definitely lead to densification in SF and its surroundings.

No, you won't have a skyscrapers in some random village in the middle of nowhere. But maybe the land owner, seeing how high is the LVT tax is, decides to build a 5-stories apartment building with 50 units, instead of 5 single family homes. And that's a win.

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