Exactly. And that's why taxing the land itself—and therefore access to all those improvements and amenities—is a good way to allocate it.
If somebody is sitting on a prime seat in the hot tub, and they don't really care very much about it, and there's a line of 20 people waiting to get in, we have a wasted resource. Revealing true preferences by having people put some skin in the game means that more people are happy, more people are productive, and society works better.
That is a great argument for never building a hot tub, or participating in a project to build one.
Why bother making a tub, a neighborhood, or a community if it can simply be taken from you.
Id rather burn mine to the ground than have it taken away just because someone else wants it more. They might not even want it more, but they just have more money.
I don't think you understand, it can't be taken from you, at least no more than now. Nearly every single person will pay less tax on their home under LVT than a property tax, too.
>Nearly every single person will pay less tax on their home under LVT than a property tax, too.
How could that possibly be true. The lvt would have to be high enough to replace revenue from all current income taxes, sales taxes, corporate taxes, and current property taxes.
It would also be based on land used, so Warren be buffet and someone working at Walmart would have the same tax bill if they both own houses in the same neighborhood.
It is incredibly regressive.
Elon Musk can live out of his small undesirable home in boca chia, so his total taxes would be close to zero
> It would also be based on land used, so Warren be buffet and someone working at Walmart would have the same tax bill if they both own houses in the same neighborhood.
If they both live in the same size house in the same neighbourhood, sure. If a billionaire really wants to live in a closet to spite the taxman, that's fine, although I don't know why they'd bother having the billion. They aren't imposing on the community, they apparently made their billion without using any space (because it's not just homes, the whole point is that it applies to every kind of land use, good for them.
> It is incredibly regressive.
It's the opposite. Land ownership is the biggest thing separating the upper and lower classes.
> Elon Musk can live out of his small undesirable home in boca chia, so his total taxes would be close to zero
He'd still have to pay LVT on his giant factory and fashionable city-centre showrooms, so skimping on his home is not going to make a lot of difference.
The point is that money can buy you a lot more than land. A Picasso takes no land. Elons giga factory would pay no land tax because the land vale is zero. It is in the middle of the desert surrounded by employ land that nobody wants.
Buying stuff that people make enriches those people and spreads the wealth around. It's good to encourage doing that rather than hoarding land. (While you can hoard individual old paintings, if you drive up the price of paintings then new and innovative painters - like Picasso - emerge, and produce new paintings to meet that demand).
> Elons giga factory would pay no land tax because the land vale is zero. It is in the middle of the desert surrounded by employ land that nobody wants.
Which is exactly where we want giant factories being built.
Lvt is of course a good way for making sure land gets used for its most financially lucrative purpose. I never denied that.
My point is that it's a terrible way to fund a government. The vast majority of economic value created does not require land and would go un taxed. The vast majority of value comes not from land or the raw materials derived from land, but from Human labor used to convert the raw material into Goods, or pure services.
It's also much more regressive than the current system. People like Elon Musk make a million times more than your average person, but they don't use a million times more land or eat a million times more hamburgers. Most of what the rich purchase is labor and human compute.
> The vast majority of economic value created does not require land and would go un taxed. The vast majority of value comes not from land or the raw materials derived from land, but from Human labor used to convert the raw material into Goods, or pure services.
The value gets created by human labour but it ends up captured by landowners. I believe there's an economic theorem to that effect, but it's also pretty clear in Silicon Valley: some new innovation increases productivity, workers and investors get paid more, rents go up and all the gains end up in the pockets of San Francisco landlords.
> It's also much more regressive than the current system. People like Elon Musk make a million times more than your average person, but they don't use a million times more land or eat a million times more hamburgers. Most of what the rich purchase is labor and human compute.
In theory I take the point. Do those people actually pay a million times more tax under the current system though?
All value stems from improvements made by people, either on the land, or nearby.