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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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It was implied, but I later edited my comment, the government should do so. We have a massive housing crisis on our hands and there needs to be a solution. The government is so bloated that there is easily already the money somewhere to divert to something actually worthwhile.
Private developers, individual citizens, the government itself, etc. Anybody and everybody with a willingness to build a house should be able to do so without dealing with the ridiculous zoning laws we have now.
We have market-rate housing and co-ops at such a low rate. We need a massive increase in quantity. The private sector won't do this because there is no profit motive, so it largely has to be the government who is building these. But once their built it shouldn't be the government who owns it, it should be the co-ops, market-rate housing orgs, or literally individual citizens who own the housing,
I don't want property taxes. Those need to be removed along with all other types of taxation. The only valid type of taxation should be land value tax, and a carbon emission tax. A property tax punishes a land owner for developing their land and using it more efficiently. A land value tax on the other hand incentivizes more effective use. It's a massive topic and a massive difference. If you want to learn more I would recommend looking into georgism.
I disagree with your definition.
Ah God, I was wondering (cheering for) when you'd make the turn to "politically only possible with a socialist government" or something along those lines, but now I see you're one of the famed georgists. First I've seen in the wild!
If you have a criticism of georgism I'd love to hear it, because so far I've heard basically none. And I don't think I would go quite so far as to call myself a georgist. It's only something I learned about relatively recently, but the more I learn about it the better it sounds than the current dog shit we are dealing with that we somehow call a tax system. Is georgism perfect? Almost certainly not, but it's a massive step in the right direction.
You are correct in that the solution to the housing crisis is only possible with a socialist government. Socialism and georgism are not mutually exclusive.
Land is in common ownership + tax based on land distribution. What does this do? Georgism is only relevant to capitalism and is only a minor improvement to efficiency and distribution that will also just become calculated into costs within the C of the C+V equation from marx. It would only have a minor impact based on the size of your house+yard, nothing more. It's in no way progressing us towards socialism. It could be useful for a NEP/current China situation of broadly capitalist relations controlled by a socialist state, I guess, and I'm open to that tax dominating, though it doesn't really consider (or tries to theoretically consider but won't ever be able to) imperialism/unequal exchange and extraction in other lands where the raw product is immediately exported to a country that will refine it.
In some versions of socialism, not all. And technically in a georgist system, depending on implementation, all land is considered the governments land, it's owned by the common people. From there individuals pay society for exclusivity to a plot.
I'm not an economist, so my understanding is limited, but my understanding is that a LVT results in the landlords themselves paying the tax instead of tennants. The end result is a giant hit to the wallets of landlords across the country. That's a very good thing, and does indeed get us closer to socialism. Less landlords, less landlord power, the better.
Additionally, even if it only slightly effects land use efficiency (which I disagree that it would be slight) any increase in efficiency will increase the proportion of land that is for sale and therefore reduce prices.
And keep in mind, this is only part of the solution, not the sole solution. Zoning still needs to be fixed and there needs to be massive government investments into co-op housing developments.
Read some theory, it kinda sounds like you're basing this entirely off of YouTube videos you've seen (including your understanding of socialism)
Landlords increase rent to make up for it, what does georgism do? Landlords don't exist as such in socialism, but how they do exist still isn't really impacted by this shift.
Georgism is a misunderstanding of the causes of issues at the "tax affecting productivity" level. That's not the cause of our problems.
The lack of massive investment of housing and zoning are, again, results of a problem not the problem itself. These issues don't exist with good planning, and that's why georgism is just irrelevant except as a bandage for some of the ills of capitalism temporarily
If you want to convince me, mocking me isn't the way to go about it. I'm as much of a leftist/anti-capitalist as it gets in my area, and I almost certainly agree with you on more things than the average american. If you can't even hold a civil conversation with me, how could you ever hope to convince anybody else?
But yes, most of this is based on a rather light understanding as I have already mentioned. I live in the U.S., a capitalist country that very intentionally does not allow workers to have free time. I have a disabled girlfriend that I take care of. The amount of time I have to myself that is truly free time is extremely limited. I'd rather spend that time playing video games and watching youtube than reading economics books. It's shocking, I know. And during the rare times that I am able to find the time/energy to read, I'd rather read science fiction, which rarely if ever goes into economic theory.
Again, they can't exactly just increase rent to pass off the tax.
How is investment in housing and zoning fixes not a form of better planning?
I disagree that it is just a bandage. But even if it was, I'd rather have a bandage than a fucking open wound like we have now.
If the government doesn't collect wealth in the form of a land tax, how do you suggest we do it?
Not to pester too much, but georgism, philosophically, seems entirely based in an attempt to find some liberal justification for a broad solution to many problems. It attempts to find some legal method within the assumptions of the capitalist system (ownership as it exists in capitalism being key) to mitigate the problems that the original assumption creates. Capitalism will just react and reform to its benefit around those new mitigations systems like it always does. But the georgists ideas remain limited to the set of possibilities that capitalists have limited debate to.
If you want to argue that it is a valid use of the state to produce low cost housing then this is an interesting conversation. But much of the rest of your response is nonsense. For instance -
You’re going to fund all the social programs of a modern government via, essentially, no taxes? Come on. If you want the government to provide a robust social safety net, including housing, you’ll be looking at Nordics level taxation.
You can be wrong if you want to be.
No, it would be funded through land value and carbon taxes. Those two tax types should be the only valid form of taxation. We should still have enough tax to pay for it (after we ditch the bloat our government has. Example).
People always complain about such a system but they actually have healthcare, so seems like a moot point to me.
First off, there's no need to be a dick about it. Second, that definition says person, whereas you said entity.
"In either event the entity that owns your house, that isn’t you, is your landlord."
"a person who rents land, a building, or an apartment to a tenant."