So, I made a mistake. I dared criticize georgism on reddit. I even posted a previous article to really drive home the math on it, and this led to the georgist subreddit posting my comment and subsequently brigading me.
Seriously, it happens every time I criticize georgism, it's one of the reasons I can't stand georgists so much. I've never run into such ideologically obsessed people in my life. And the second you argue with them, they're like pit bulls, they won't get go. I know, I shouldn't crap on them too hard, but yeah, I find them annoying. I feel like they're up there with ancaps and socialists in terms of annoying people with really ideologically extreme and bad ideas. Maybe their ideas aren't as "bad", but they make up for it in their fanaticism.
Anyway, I spent some time responding to people directly before I just blocked them all to force stop all conversations on the topic (we weren't really getting anywhere, and just like they accuse me of not understanding georgism, they dont understand my article or my own ideological perspective and kept trying to shove their views down my throat with little to no self awareness). But, I did feel like responding to some top level comments from their sub's thread on it. And maybe a few interesting comments from people I debated with. So this is going to be one of "those" articles with me responding to things other people said.
at best they did the math on one or two very specific percentages of LVT, and I'm not sure why they limited their math to the very minimum LVT necessary to fund the current US government
Because my critiques of georgism are mostly limited to the more fanatical elements, ie, the single taxers who want to replace all taxation with a massive LVT, and the LVT supporters who want to fund a UBI with it. The whole point of that article was to demonstrate why those specific ideas are bad. Believe it or not I'm not opposed to ALL georgism or georgist philosophy. I think in some limited instances, that their ideas are actually quite good. But I would limit those implementations to things like replacing local property taxes or specifically targetting landlords and other rent seekers. I have written a follow up article to the original one presented that has addressed these instances.
The classic, "land prices are x, tax y percent, that means replacing taxes on income and capital with LVT will only give us revenue x*y/100."
That's not how economics works. Changing taxes changes prices, and efficiency. The economic theory behind LVT is sound, and that math is meaningless. Also, I find it hilarious they find the LVT to match US budget and not the current US revenues. Like why are current taxes allowed to have huge deficits but not LVT.
I mean, I honestly aint big on having a massive budget deficit and I am hawkish in my stance on the debt. Our current national debt is a result of democrats wanting to fund things and republicans not wanting to tax things. And while some national debt is good, I generally aim for a balanced budget approach to my policies. And I have been quite critical of past UBI policies for their inability to be properly funded in a balanced way.
Either way, this guy's concerns are getting away from the point of my discussion, which is to point out where the tax burden would fall. Who pays and how much? And while I've had a lot of clamoring on both r/basicincome and r/georgism screaming about how I didn't talk about how LVT is basically unimproved land value, for the sake of discussion, I assumed 30% of property value because that's the general "rule" from what I've looked up. Granted, it can vary, with some properties having more land value and some having less, but again, the purpose of my article is a simplified demonstration. Sorry I didn't go into the kinds of wonkish details georgists seem to care about to make their policy LOOK GOOD.
The funny thing is it ignores how real estate taxes actually work. However I do blame the Georgians in this, failing to keep it simple and putting way too much effort into theories of ground rent.
Uh, land assessors determine how much your property is worth and then tax that. Assessors do the same with land. I've also seen this mentioned in other threads on georgism on how LVT is calculated. You generally get a tax bill once a year in the mail telling you to pay up and if you don't they seize your house. I'm quite aware, thank you.
But yes, some georgists seem way too obsessed with specific theories. The purpose of my article was to give a simplified demonstration close enough to the actual thing to give you an idea of how it would work.
I mean, he was going to "do the math" regardless of Georgist theory because I doubt he has actually even read or understands Georgist theory.
I admit I never read all of progress and poverty, but I am familiar enough with georgism to have a baseline understanding of what they are for. Again, maybe my analysis lacked the specific trappings of georgists putting all of this detail into how LVT would actually work, but I'm a UBI guy, not an LVT guy. My primary purpose was to look at LVT in the context of UBI and the "single taxer" fantasy. It was a simplified layman's analysis. Admittedly LVT isn't my specialty because if I'm unimpressed with it on such a basic level and have so many issues with georgism, I'm not going to be wowed by adding more details to the plan. Again, the purpose was "say I want to raise this much revenue for specific purposes, this is what this would look like". And that's roughly where the tax burden would fall.
Right. I was guilty of this too at one point. But yeah, for anyone reading, current real estate taxes are usually based on appraisals and a revenue goal. They simply apportion the out the desired revenue goal based on the appraisals.
And LVT wouldn't be used in the same way? if anything LVT as implemented by the georgists I talked to in trying to "correct" me didn't seem better. They were talking like 100% value of the rental value of land, which basically means paying rent to the government. Which...isn't appealing to me.
Personally I'm in favour of a heavily geospatial appraisal model with some human modification. It would first give a rough estimate based on proximity to, cost of, and presence of LVT funded projects (schools, roads, electricity, water, emergency services, judiciary) and land size, and then factor in some other details (land shape, frontage, sun, water proximity, corner lots, land grade, zoning(hopefully not bad zoning laws) etc) before having a human modify it based on societal values.
This is a continuation of the above train of thought. but let's think about this. How the hell am I supposed to calculate all of this as a matter of a simplified policy? like even scarier about georgists is they seem to support their tax not as a means to an end, but an end to itself. Meaning they believe so strongly about the concept of taxes and what's fair to them that they care little about how this would work in practice.
Again, given the purposes of my article, was my desire to tax at a certain rate to achieve certain revenues bad? No. It was necessary IMO. It was enough of a demonstration to address the purported goals of georgism (fund the government/fund UBI using ONLY a LVT), and I believe I made my point.
I hope they rewrite their blog post to be heavier on the solid reasoning and lighter on the emotions and sloppy arguments because I'm still looking for good critiques of LVT.
Im gonna be honest the reason I crap on georgists so much is the fanaticism. They actually, in limited doses, have not terrible ideas. I could see LVT being targetted toward specific groups of people to be a good policy to help resolve the housing crisis. HOWEVER, the single taxers and the like are the target here. In the context of the original discussion, I was specifically talking about funding UBI.
Anyway, this guy seems to come off as someone who believes in georgism and is looking for critiques from a specifically georgist point of view, and they're not gonna be convinced. Many of my arguments are normative. The problem is georgists dont understand their values and framing are also normative and are equally as ineffective on me. I dont agree with the core ideological assumptions and goals of georgism, I just don't.
'Critique' is one word for it. The commenter clearly has no idea what he's talking about. (I actually tried to respond to that thread earlier, but Reddit kept erroring out on me.)
No real arguments presented but I've argued with this poster before and haven't been convinced by them.
The blog post isn't very good. The takes are surface level at best.
I've already addressed why. This was intended to critique the policy used in two specific contexts. I believe it is adequate at doing that.
My view probably won't be popular here, but while their reasoning may not be air-tight, I think I can sense a bit where they're coming from, and how "regular citizens" may share the same feelings. I think adjusting our advocacy (or how we present it) to avoid "triggering" those emotions/thoughts may have value.
Yeah, I'm glad some people have some self awareness. To make my interest clear: I am the son of homeowners. I live in my parent's home with them. We paid our house off but are on fixed income. An LVT would be devastating to our living standard and make us homeless. And the last thing I want when I die is to be also made homeless through being hit with inheritance type taxes (which several of these guys expressed support for too). Seriously, I'm not some evil landlord. I dont rent my home out. I LIVE IN IT. That's what houses are for. I too express sympathy for renters in this housing market. I've been actually doing some research trying to find some good solutions based on previous articles I've done, but it's a hot mess and would require a hodge podge of different solutions including deregulating zoning, dealing with nimbyism, housing programs, and also, maybe a limited application LVT targetted at rent seekers. If you own a home, then buy a second home and try to rent it out for profit, yeah, maybe THAT should be taxed. We should also target house flippers and the like. I have nothing against any of THAT. But when you're hitting normal homeowners (65% of people own their own homes by the way), i'm going to have an issue.
For example, as hinted at/mentioned in the thread, we could advocate for LVT on land ownership above and beyond one's "fair share", and/or UBI minus the benefit landowners already get from not paying LVT on their fair share.
Well, here's the thing with UBI. UBI is a policy that is attractive to many for different reasons. Conservatives want to abolish the rest of the welfare state. Liberals want a universal safety net. Geolibs use it as a refund to their tax thing.
And here's the thing, being a UBI advocate, I am FULLY AWARE that the citizens dividend would likely offset my LVT. HOWEVER, and this is the big but, UBI is intended to be a universal safety net that you can LIVE ON. And if your UBI is canceled out by the LVT, then that undermines the LVT. So for me, as a UBI advocate with a strong "indepentarian" bend, it isn't good enough for me that UBI merely compensates people for LVT. UBI should be large enough to free people from coercion to participate in the labor market. UBI funded via LVT would not do that.
Heck just for the sake of even more transparency, to elaborate more on my specific situation. I estimate my home value as roughly 1/2 the median. So like $150k. Which means the land value is likely around $45k. And with the 18% LVT i estimated we would need, I would pay $8100 in LVT, reducing my UBI to $6300 for all other expenses. If I lived alone, which I might some day, I would be screwed. $8100 a year translates to $675 a month. I saw an opening for an apartment 3 blocks away a few weeks back for around $700 a month. So basically I'm paying rent for the privilege of living in my own home.
Even not living alone, if UBI replaced say, social security and the like, $8100 would still be a very significant hit to our living expenses. And if single taxers got their way and all taxes were based on land, yeah, you can see where I'm going with this. And keep in mind this is a BELOW AVERAGE case where I "benefit" from this policy. Compared to my own UBI plan, this plan is a joke. Like you gotta keep in mind, that is my bar here. Their UBI plan vs my own plan. my plan is better. For a working family the tax burden would come out about the same, but income tax allows a lot more labor market flexibility as it taxes you based on earnings.
This plan sucks. I mean, i feel bad for renters. We should be looking to expand home ownership and reduce the predatoriness of the current housing market. but forcing people to pay rent to the government just to live in their own home isn't an answer.
NOW, if, on top of UBI you allowed a personal exemption, I could get behind that. In my companion article, I put it at $1 million for a home, so $300k in land value. I feel like that's fair. Also, any home beyond one's primary residence would also be excluded from the personal allowance.
I mean, that's the inherent problem with LVT. You're hit with this large unavoidable tax and you have to pay it or you're kicked out of your home. I honestly feel like taxing labor is far more fair, even though every time I explained this to georgists they would give me like 5 arguments against the idea. Those arguments only make sense in their moral perspective, and it's a perspective i dont share.
We need to sort this out with real numbers. We could use Zillow/other public sources and create an LVT estimate for every address in the USA. From there a person could input their address and see the tax savings/costs.
I’ve posted about this before but if anyone is interested, we should collaborate.
That's literally the point of my article. You could scale my numbers to any value. Just like I did with my own situation above. Take your property value, multiply by 0.3, and then figure out the tax from there.
This is what I read. If the poster noted that LVT only taxes the value of bare/unimproved land, it seems that they handwaved it as impossible. The poster's main focus was people like my mom: a bog-standard homeowner who could be screwed by a Single Tax (not realizing that present-day geoism went full Pigou some time ago).
First of all, I explicitly estimated the value of land and did NOT focus on property in line with that LVT advocates often claim. Second of all, yeah I kind of am a homeowner who could be screwed by this policy. At best it would help me a little bit (yay to getting less than half of a UBI....-_-). At worst, it could hurt me. Compared to my UBI plan structured more like an LVT, this plan is far inferior at helping a lot of people. Georgists just assume home owners are rich and have a lot of liquidity on hand if they don't well screw you you don't deserve to live in your house. That's my problem.
LVT, UBI, and properly-considered Pigouvian taxes will, I think, make work (for another employer) optional in the long run -- as the other reason amounts to r/antiwork rhetoric (which ignores the centuries of influence that 2 Thess. 3:10 - the TANSTAAFL scripture has on most of human culture -- b/c said scripture or some variant is the basis of "work ethic", along w/the fact that we need to work to live even w/o having employers and rent-seekers).
Oh god, here we go.
First of all, as an ex christian, screw your stupid Bible verse.
Second of all, yes, I literally am anti work, as I'm quite explicit about on this blog. UBI is intended to give people an income that serves not just as a safety net, but also is intended to liberate people from being coerced to work. Screw your moralizing.
Like, wouldn't normally by this harsh, but when people quote bible verses at me as a matter of objective morality, as an ex christian I have zero respect for that.
But yeah, if you're NOT anti work, georgism is an okay system. UBI simply offsets the LVT and a lot of people pay far less or nothing in practice and it only impacts rich homeowners blah blah blah.
But I AM anti work, and my UBI advocacy is closely related to that. So yeah, I see pro work georgists with a different take on LVT and I can't help but disagree with them. And of course they moralize at me, and I moralize at them, but at least I know I aint likely to convince them. That's fine. They have their ideology and they have mine. And we're ideological opponents.
I discussed it with that user years ago. I think it's one of those things... "It's impossible to explain something to a man that interferes with his salary". He'll have a significant vested interest.
And this is one of my reasons I spent so much time going into my own situation. I estimated my own LVT tax burden and Im someone who actually benefits in net from their policy. I just dislike their policy relative to my own for ideological reasons.
But yes, being a homeowner I see how LVT is actually an awful policy if you're also a UBI supporter. It completely undermines the UBI.
If you don’t want to work much and want to pay little to no land taxes, you can either live in a dense urban area where your share of land is small (this will happen to most urban land under LVT), or you can live out in the country where the land is cheap. If you expect to live in a single family home in a desirable suburb or an urban townhouse and pay little to no taxes, that isn’t going to happen. You can own a nice home under LVT while paying low taxes. You can’t take up a lot of a valuable land.
I hate how these guys just lecture their morals at me. I don't care where YOU think I should live. My family owns a home, I would explain how the policy would benefit me. And while compared to the status quo I would actually benefit on paper, I just think it's an awful policy compared to a proper UBI funded by income taxation.
This guy thinks incentives and disincentives are stupid so I wouldn't take much out of their comment.
For the record, these guys were going around screaming at me in the basic income thread about how LVT is so much better than income taxes because no distortions and the like, and I'm like, I don't care.
Because their distortions are what I call liberating people from coercion.
While not all incentives under capitalism are bad and a lot of my continued support for capitalism is retaining somewhat of an incentive structure to encourage work, LVT advocates look at it like this.
If you tax income, people might decide to work less. We shouldn't cause a perverse incentive (distortion) that causes people to reduce their work effort.
Now, if you're a follower of my blog, what's the problem with this? THE LVT'S LACK OF DISTORTIONS AMOUNTS TO COERCION!
If you have an LVT, it doesnt matter how much you work or dont work, you owe a specific sum of money. And as such, it doesn't distort the labor market the way an income tax would. if you tax income it slightly reduces work incentive as there's less reward, and also UBI itself could disincentivize work. This is why i keep saying there is a balance to be reached with UBI where we cant allow people to quit all at once or too much or it could cause an economic death spiral, but at the same time I find some level of work reduction to be acceptable.
Georgists tend to be like neolibs in that they look at every interaction in human life through the lens of economics. And I just feel like that isn't a good way to view life. Literally every decision shouldnt be an economic calculation. If you live in a home, you shouldnt think about the economic value of that one room you dont use in your attic and how you could rent it out to someone for $500 a month. LVT advocates are like neoliberals and right libertarians in that they do think like that. And honestly, I'm the kind of guy who wants to minimize my coercion to participate in the economic system. So when they talk about all of these incentives, i see a system of economic pulleys that influence my behaviors in certain ways to make end meet. And the goal of economics seems to be to make everyone as productive as possible, all the time. Every minute of rest must be calculated vs its economic advantage and how I could instead use that time to increase GDP and my own income. And I HATE that. Like, that isn't what life should be. We evolved to live in the jungle collecting nuts and berries and hunting wooly mammoths while spending the rest of our time just screwing off, and in the past few thousand years civilization has thrown us for a loop. And modern society is just so guided by economics we have a mental health crisis because the idea of working in offices and stores for 8+ hours a day under the guide of a profit hungry boss is LITERALLY MAKING US DEPRESSED AND ANXIOUS.
So yeah, with all due respect, screw your incentives. I don't care if LVT has no deadweight loss, because im not looking for the way to maximize GDP growth at all costs and turn every human action into an economic calculation. Sometimes these types just ignore the toll that their economics has on actual people.
UBI funded by LVT is a self-balancing policy, unlike UBI funded by income or consumption taxes.
If people stop working, land values will plummet while wages will go up. If it gets to a point where not enough people work to sustain everyone, it will mean there's enough land available to sustain yourself and you'll be able to retain all of it.
I mean I guess this is the one point that the georgists were trying to correct, how if we had this LVT it would cause land values to drop until a new equilibrium is reached. But as land prices drop, so does tax revenue. Meaning it undermines the very UBI and it would need to be even higher to compensate if were seeking to fund a UBI.
While there might be some new balance reached in the process millions will be thrown out of their homes, society will play a massive game of musical houses while the housing market crashes and burns and creates a recession that makes 2008 look mild. I don't think people really understand what this would do to actual people. Again, too much free market economic theory about how "well if they can't afford it they would move somewhere else". Like, bruh, BRUH. You'd have millions thrown out overnight. It would strain family budgets. The american people would bear the weight of this tax, and any correction made would be because it is so devastating it literally drove homelessness through the roof by throwing people out on the street.
And would this new equilibrium be more favorable than what we have? No, probably not. Housing costs would be as insane as they always are. Except now people can't own homes outright, everyone would have to bear them, and not much would change.
Keep in mind, I discussed stuff like profit margins among banks and landlords with the housing market. They're not living high on the hog like people think they are. Maybe the biggest institutions own so many homes that they can bring in major profit simply by sheer volume, but individually it's only driving housing costs up a few hundred dollars.
So, I honestly don't see this idea as making the housing market better. it just replaces landlords with the government somewhat and the housing market remains as insane as it always does. It just introduces a lot more instability and the threat of homelessness if you ask me. In other words it makes capitalism worse and more stressful.
At some point it seems like the UBI movement lost the reason for its existence and turned into a "the government should pay for everything while I play video games". It's there to remove inequalities caused by rent, so the only reasonable funding us from rent.
Another snarky comment degrading my anti work views. Dude, you geolibs don't have a monopoly on UBI as a concept. And most UBI advocates AREN'T Georgists. Thank God, because if they were I never would've signed up for the concept.
But yeah this is what I deal with. And this is why I don't get along with them. They love to shove their morality down my throat and then crap on my own morals and ethics. It's a waste of time to argue with them. Even though I like commenting on their ideas here.
It's the fault of Georgeists because you have made it over complicated. Any amount can be levied against real estste allocated by land value alone, like it was open ground.
The only limit to tax collection in any system is what the political market will bear. I think a lot of people (Georgeites included) have completely missed the ball, it's not a generic "tax on land", the whole thing depends on real estate parcel mapping.
The LVT could be set so high as to economically reach "improvements", the allocation by land Value is no bar to higher levels of tax demand. The effect is to maintain a payable tax on developed parcels and force the sale of undeveloped land.
Yeah, to be fair, this guy tends to understand that in reality taxes don't fit their theory. Which is my argument. I looked at LVT from the perspective of "how do we raise $X". Although to be fair, it seems like the amount georgists and LVT advocates want is whatever amount IS that "maximum the market can bear". Because they think it will implode the housing market. Which it would, but they don't seem to understand what that would do to people.
Okay, so that's all the major comments in the thread commenting on it. Now I'll respond to select posts that were addressed to me, which I have mostly responded to, but would like to link here for the sake of this blog and addressing most arguments i've come across.
If you have UBI and maintain income taxes with no LVT, the UBI just goes to landlords
Uh, I discussed inflation and housing before, but the primary factor seems to be the demand for housing. Housing demand goes up as people seek to live alone or have better accomodations, and the housing market can't bear the extra demand.
The solution is more housing, not taxing land.
Let me correct that, the UBI checks going to renters will end up going to landlords. Homeowners will get a nice bonus, and landlords get double (or however many tenants they have), roughly speaking of course
Again, everything with these guys is we gotta own those darned landlords. And they seem to have disdain toward homeowners too.
Again I sympathize with renters, but this isn't the solution.
There was more discussion, but it turned into a lot of moralizing about how great LVT is and how people benefit if they use less land than their UBI is worth.
But then we got to this part:
Don't forget that living requires effort to cover your basic needs. You can't make a tax policy/government program that eliminates the need for labor no matter how hard you try. Sorry if it's a tough pill to swallow.
Yeah, this guy isn't an anti work guy. He's a georgist. He's obsessed with sticking it to landlords, while I wanna free people from all coercion. hell, I ultimately wanna free people from being subject to landlords too. Not that that's the core problem with the housing market (lack of housing relative to demand), but yeah, I believe everyone deserves a place to live. I want to give everyone a place to live in the grand scheme of things. I just dont see this LVT as it. And given it does conflict with my anti work goals, I'm not particularly interested in this ideology.
To have it your way, people who work must provide for those who don't. That doesn't seem fair to me.
But if you want that so much, I sincerely hope you earn as much as you can and give away everything you don't need to the most needy people, otherwise you're either a massive hypocrite, or lazy, because nothing stops you from doing that.
A tax on land changes the price (but not value) of land. Your numbers are literally meaningless.Fact of the matter is that if society is good and the government is doing its job, then the value of land it governs must exceed its tax revenues. If you give the government $100 and it does something with it which does not increase the value of the land it governs by at least $100, then it is failing the people.
In 2021 US homeowners made $6.9 trillion.
https://realtybiznews.com/u-s-housing-market-value-rose-by-6-9-trillion-in-2021/98766450/
That is land appreciation, not housing. That's also enough to give every American $21,000.
There is far more than enough land value to tax annually to provide a large UBI.
Also reductions in taxes on capital and labour will also increase the price (and value) of land by making the US more efficient. All that to say, your numbers are meaningless. All economic theory supports taxing land to fund governments.
There is so much wrong with this one.
First of all a tax on land would change the price of land, but it would end up costing the same in the long term. It would just shift the value from being in the private sector to the public sector. Hence why other posters were talking about taxing at 100% of land values, something that to me sounds insane and would completely destroy the housing market and throw millions out of their homes.
Second of all, just because homes appreciate in value doesnt mean people realize those gains. You're taxing homeowners in hopes that they have the money to pony up and if they don't they're thrown out of their house. Just because houses theoretically have a selling value doesn't mean that you can tap into that value.
And if you do tax wealth like that you tax it at low rates. Like a wealth tax would generally speaking be 1-3%. A Land tax that makes sense would look like that too. But again, these guys basic stated aims is to completely destroy the housing market as we know it by imposing such onerous taxes it essentially creates a massive housing crash so that's what their goal is.
We need to do something about housing. I admit that. And i myself despise how housing has turned into an investment thing. It's a house, you live in it. If you use it for economic activity, that should be taxed. That's fair. Landlords should be taxed, banks should be taxed, businesses should be taxed. Homeowners shouldn't be. They're not trying to make money on their homes. They just wanna live in them and be left alone.
These guys don't get that.
You are basing the LVT off the exchange value of land and NOT as a percentage of land rents. Doing that is fine, but you need to know that taxing based off of exchange value will lower the exchange value because exchange value is based off how much land rent can be collected privately, and taxing land rents inherently means that the land rents that are privately collected are lowered.
Essentially, the formula of the exchange value of land is
X=(R-T)/iWhere X is the exchange value, R is the rent privately collected, T is the tax collected, and i is the cost of capital.
If T>0 (holding R and i constant), X must be lower than when T=0. Effectively, taxing land reduces the price someone will pay the owner to have it. So, if you are taxing based of that price, you will have to understand that today's prices pre-LVT are not reflective of the actual tax bill.
So for your example of a property with a current land exchange value of $300k, after a 30% LVT is introduced, the exchange value drops to $75k and the actual tax bill will be $15k (if we assume the cost of capital is 6%).
If instead you only want to tax 18% (keeping the same cost of capital), the tax bill is $13.5k.
I have made a model of this relationship between R, T, X, and i on desmos if you are interested in playing around with the numbers. https://www.desmos.com/calculator/dbq6geh2l5
Also, to read more about current land values, there is this quite comprehensive article by Lars Doucet that analyzes the different estimates for how much a land value tax would bring in for the government (assuming that ATCOR and EBCOR don't exist which Geogists would say do exist and makes the whole exercise of trying to figure out how much a LVT would bring in today a useless effort). The end result is a total revenue of about 1.10 trillion to 3.34 trillion depending on some variables.
This is literally the smartest comment I got and I wish I addressed it more fully. To be fair he threw a lot of math at me that was above me, but it seems to be the general premise that once again, the LVT should reduce the price of land and throw the housing market into a state of free fall. This might happen but at what cost? Also, again, keep in mind the reason that it works is because the tax burden would be so onerous that it would throw people out of their homes. Keep in mind these guys wanna tax the housing market for as much as it can bear, rerouting speculative value for housing that goes to landlords and banks into a UBI. But, that still also punishes a lot of bog standard home owners who AREN'T in the market of using their homes for housing purposes.
Idk, if you want to tax landlords just tax landlords. Taxing all homeowners makes this policy extremely destructive IMO. Like, my entire issue with LVT would be resolved if we didnt tax normal homeowners. And also if we didnt fund a UBI and/or the government through LVT like the georgists seem to want.
Again, if you engage in economic activity, a lot of these calculations make sense. If you're a homeowner in the current system, they don't.
You could just make a tax exemption for primary residences. That pretty much solves all of your complaints while maintaining the validity of LVT otherwise.
YES THANK YOU. Going to be honest, not everyone i responded to was a complete ideologue.
If you limited LVT for the parties that are actually causing the societal problems, have at it. But dont tax homeowners. And dont use it to fund UBI as it completely undermines the UBI for homeowners. Unless you plan on implementing an LVT to further increase UBI on top of my current taxes.
You don't exempt them, you defer their taxes to either inheritance or when the resident moves out.
So people don't deserve to inherit their parents homes when they die? That's literally the only hope many of us millennials have for ever owning our own home. Of course knowing these guys they probably would think I'm some trust fund kid for daring expect to live in the home I've lived in my whole life when the people who bought it eventually die.
Like seriously, I hate these people sometimes.
This is complete bullshit. How is not taxing labor a coercion, according to you? Imagine if someone hits you in the face every time you drink soda, and, when someone tries to stop the guy hitting you, you respond: "Don't stop him! Because, if you stop him, you would be COERCING me into drinking soda!"
It's just so wrong that it is ridiculous. The single tax (LVT) is not for coercing people into working, but to stop coercing people into not working (or working less). Seriously, think before you write something.
I have thought about it.
But I'll put it this way.
Labor taxes, with the UBI i support, makes working more voluntary. people can then choose to work or not to work. Theyre not forced to. But assuming the choice to work is a choice, then paying taxes is also a choice.
Meanwhile you need a home to live, and if you're not living in a home someone bought, you're living in a home you're renting from someone else. Basically, the LVT under their ideology taxes people for existing and then pays the UBi back to them. but because housing is expensive, basically the UBI is just paying them back for their taxes.
It doesnt actually give people enough to live on or liberate them from the labor market. Taxing labor, however, would. Because you can choose whether to work or not, in theory. You dont pay anything back until you start making money. And you pay back in proportion with what you earn. In the long term the LVT and labor based taxes should give people the same UBI and have break even points that seem roughly the same on paper, but the labor based one will never coerce people into paying more than their fair share, while the land based one just makes all of these assumptions about peoples' income levels and lifestyles and if it's wrong, well, congrats on being homeless.
And then, just for the sake of good measure, here's another post from another user bashing LVT that I feel like is worth discussing as I can see how this would apply to my own community.
It's worse than that. If the city decides that your property would be better utilized as something other than what you're currently got there, they can arbitrarily increase the property tax on it forcing you to sell.
What? Single family home? Naw dog, that needs to be a 4 story multi-unit building. Well just charge you for what we estimate the value of the property if it had what we want on it...that'll be 40k in annual taxes now.
Of course, the developer would ask for and likely get a 10 year deferment on property taxes for the property too.
DING DING DING DING! This is a HUGE problem with LVT that I see none of the critics mention but I could see it happening.
To once again go into my personal situation. I live in a relatively low income area in Pennsylvania. The area is poor, the economy is crap, housing values are relatively low.
But, because the housing values are relatively low, you got these rich people coming in from neighboring NYC and places like that buying up real estate. They take these old run down houses, fix them up, sell them at a massive profit, and in some cases they even try to turn them into apartments.
Generally speaking, these homes are relatively large and have 10 rooms, but they're very densely populated, with literally dozens of these things existing on a single city block. But that isn't good enough, sometimes they take a single family home, wall it off, and turn it into two apartments. You have the downstairs be one apartment, and the upstairs be another. Some of these apartments can exist where on each floor, you have an apartment. One house nearby is actually THREE apartments to my knowledge.
Now, again, these LVT people think in economic terms, assuming every minute of every day people are trying to turn their existence into ways to make more money. So, if all of these houses nearby on the same block as me are turned into multi apartment buildings, and I'm a single family house, then imagine the economic potential I'm losing out on by not literally walling off half of my house and renting it out for $700-1000 a month!
So they might assume that I should be raking in $1500-2000 a month as a landlord just renting out this house to people. or, if i didnt live in it, someone else could move in and turn the house into that. And imagine the economic activity my house could generate.
Except, bruh, i dont care. I just wanna freaking live in my own house. I dont care about how it could be turned into an apartment building and increase economic activity. I think it's BS renters have to pay $700-1000 a month for an apartment with 4-5 rooms (seriously my friends have lived in them growing up and I went over to their houses, I know how they live). Thats fine for poorish people trying to avoid homelessness, but you see how imposing an LVT would not only not necessarily help them, but it would hurt me too?
This is what I'm saying. This land value tax crap is insane. It makes sense in some on paper economic perspective going on about maximizing economic value and blah blah blah, but that kind of way of looking at things ignores how people wanna live. Everyone should have a home, some place to call their own. We should be encouraging more home ownership, not less. And we shouldnt punish homeowners for daring exist in their own home.
Honestly, these LVT people don't get it sometimes. And this is why I hate arguing with them. I respond to one of them and then I get 3 responses in return. Then I respond to those and i get 9 more, and it just keeps going until I'm swamped with responses.
I pretty much ended up blocking most posters from the georgist subreddit responding on my stuff to stop this, but yeah. it's annoying.
I wouldn't have as many issues with these guys if they weren't so intent on pushing my own ideology and pushing these theoretical ideas with real life implications that just seem horrifying in practice. Like a lot of them just don't care about home owners, as I told one batch of them they sound like marxists. They're so intent on owning those landlords they dont care if they screw everyone else if only to punish them. And this whole scheme would be potentially harmful to all of society. At the very least it would undermine my own vision of UBI and at worst it could plunge the country into a deep recession as millions of people are forced out of their homes all at once.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against all LVT, or all applications of the idea. But the georgists and single taxers come off as crazy. And while the UBI advocates aren't as crazy, their ideas still run counter to my own idea of how UBI should work, and our views are inherently in conflict. As such, I am not a fan of the ideology. This is largely due to my own value system, and we're going to have to agree to disagree.
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