The top line of what you just linked me is saying they’re going to drop property taxes on occupied buildings by 17% and raise taxes on unoccupied land. This isn’t about changing the math for renters this is about shrinking the city’s sprawl to save money on infrastructure.
And that’s not to say taxing landlords is going to do anything. My point is about the political economy of going after people whom you give half your money for years and years first (for centuries). Our political system is designed to protect these people. From the constitution on down.
Not quite. The point is to raise taxes on the unimproved value of land. For example, two identical lots with the same underlying land value – one vacant and one with an apartment building – would both pay the land tax, but it would be the same amount. They key idea being to heavily incentivize the owner of the vacant lot to do something with it (like build housing) rather than just sit on it as a speculative investment. It should cost speculators money to keep valuable land idle.
It reveals that much of the anticipated future tax obligations appear to have been already capitalised into lower land prices. Additionally, the tax transition may have also deterred speculative buyers from the housing market, adding even further to the recent pattern of low and stable property prices in the Territory. Because of the price effect of the land tax, a typical new home buyer in the Territory will save between $1,000 and $2,200 per year on mortgage repayments.
How so? Land value tax is just supremely good tax policy, and we should be striving to replace our broken property tax system with it.
Any progressive tax system that incentivizes new housing development, disincentivizes speculative land holding, empirically makes housing cheaper, and cannot be passed on to tenants is an absolute win in my book.
Who gives a fuck how cleverly the administration of ‘free market solutions’ through tax policy is targeted towards ‘incentivizing’ landlords. This is a post about the parasitic relationship between landlord and tenant. I made a (glib) point about how it’s difficult to legislate against landlords because they get to use your money to lobby against you. What does your point have to do with any of that?
It’s difficult, yes, but our society has fought and won battles against vested interests before. Good policy can be fought for and achieved, as evidenced by basically every successful country on earth.
I just want to advocate for good policies in this thread so that we can solve some of our problems. In my experience, a lot of people can identify that there is a problem with the landlording class, but many people don’t know a whole lot about the underlying reasons why this dynamic exists or what we can do policy-wise to fix it.
the parasitic relationship between landlord and tenant
This is also part of the goal of land value taxes. If we all can agree that landlords’ hoarding and monopolization of finite land is what allows them to extract unearned profits from the rest of us, the land value tax is the mechanism to reclaim those rents. The idea is to turn landlording – a position of power and privilege with access to economic rents – into mere property management – a regular job where you earn income based on the labor you do in maintaining properties.
It’s difficult, yes, but our society has fought and won battles against vested interests before.
Yeah back when we had unions that would straight up murder scabs. Your thing, neoliberalism, works in the opposite direction. The results speak for themselves.
The idea is to turn landlording – a position of power and privilege with access to economic rents – into mere property management – a regular job where you earn income based on the labor you do in maintaining properties.
Then seize the land. If that’s your end goal then do it.
Do you think you can trick the landlords into watching you do it slowly enough they don’t notice? You think you can trick capitalists into getting real jobs? Preposterous. You have no sense of class antagonism.
Georgism, also called in modern times Geoism,[2][3] and known historically as the single tax movement, is an economic ideology holding that, although people should own the value they produce themselves, the economic rent derived from land—including from all natural resources, the commons, and urban locations—should belong equally to all members of society.[4][5][6] Developed from the writings of American economist and social reformer Henry George, the Georgist paradigm seeks solutions to social and ecological problems, based on principles of land rights and public finance which attempt to integrate economic efficiency with social justice.[7][8]
Georgism is concerned with the distribution of economic rent caused by land ownership, natural monopolies, pollution rights, and control of the commons, including title of ownership for natural resources and other contrived privileges (e.g., intellectual property). Any natural resource which is inherently limited in supply can generate economic rent, but the classical and most significant example of land monopoly involves the extraction of common ground rent from valuable urban locations. Georgists argue that taxing economic rent is efficient, fair, and equitable. The main Georgist policy recommendation is a tax assessed on land value, arguing that revenues from a land value tax (LVT) can be used to reduce or eliminate existing taxes (such as on income, trade, or purchases) that are unfair and inefficient. Some Georgists also advocate for the return of surplus public revenue to the people by means of a basic income or citizen’s dividend.
Progress and Poverty, George’s first book, sold several million copies,[1] becoming one of the highest selling books of the late 1800s.[2][3] It helped spark the Progressive Era and a worldwide social reform movement around an ideology now known as ‘Georgism’. Jacob Riis, for example, explicitly marks the beginning of the Progressive Era awakening as 1879 because of the date of this publication.[4]
The top line of what you just linked me is saying they’re going to drop property taxes on occupied buildings by 17% and raise taxes on unoccupied land. This isn’t about changing the math for renters this is about shrinking the city’s sprawl to save money on infrastructure.
And that’s not to say taxing landlords is going to do anything. My point is about the political economy of going after people whom you give half your money for years and years first (for centuries). Our political system is designed to protect these people. From the constitution on down.
As they should. Property taxes are broken and enable land hoarding and speculation.
Not quite. The point is to raise taxes on the unimproved value of land. For example, two identical lots with the same underlying land value – one vacant and one with an apartment building – would both pay the land tax, but it would be the same amount. They key idea being to heavily incentivize the owner of the vacant lot to do something with it (like build housing) rather than just sit on it as a speculative investment. It should cost speculators money to keep valuable land idle.
Even a quite milquetoast land value tax, such as in the Australian Capital Territory, has been shown to reduce speculation and improve affordability:
Yeah so I’m even less impressed now
How so? Land value tax is just supremely good tax policy, and we should be striving to replace our broken property tax system with it.
Any progressive tax system that incentivizes new housing development, disincentivizes speculative land holding, empirically makes housing cheaper, and cannot be passed on to tenants is an absolute win in my book.
Who gives a fuck how cleverly the administration of ‘free market solutions’ through tax policy is targeted towards ‘incentivizing’ landlords. This is a post about the parasitic relationship between landlord and tenant. I made a (glib) point about how it’s difficult to legislate against landlords because they get to use your money to lobby against you. What does your point have to do with any of that?
It’s difficult, yes, but our society has fought and won battles against vested interests before. Good policy can be fought for and achieved, as evidenced by basically every successful country on earth.
I just want to advocate for good policies in this thread so that we can solve some of our problems. In my experience, a lot of people can identify that there is a problem with the landlording class, but many people don’t know a whole lot about the underlying reasons why this dynamic exists or what we can do policy-wise to fix it.
This is also part of the goal of land value taxes. If we all can agree that landlords’ hoarding and monopolization of finite land is what allows them to extract unearned profits from the rest of us, the land value tax is the mechanism to reclaim those rents. The idea is to turn landlording – a position of power and privilege with access to economic rents – into mere property management – a regular job where you earn income based on the labor you do in maintaining properties.
Yeah back when we had unions that would straight up murder scabs. Your thing, neoliberalism, works in the opposite direction. The results speak for themselves.
Then seize the land. If that’s your end goal then do it.
Do you think you can trick the landlords into watching you do it slowly enough they don’t notice? You think you can trick capitalists into getting real jobs? Preposterous. You have no sense of class antagonism.
Except I’m not a neoliberal. Total strawman.
Rather I’m a Georgist:
For reference, several historians credit Henry George’s publication of Progress and Poverty as defining the start of the Progressive Era:
I’m sorry, you’re a libertarian. I’m even less impressed.