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Comment by somethoughts | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps my response was a bit long but I did attempt to address it. Perhaps I can elaborate:

The question is to what degree/portion of Georgianism to apply and what to do when the land value component starts going up infinitely that its starts hurting the electorate.

- Do you introduce alternative tax sources (i.e. increase income taxes on billionaires instead as in California)?

- Do you introduce caps on annual land value increases (i.e. Prop 13 as in California) or add a bunch of waivers for specific use cases (i.e. primary homes also know as the homestead exception, day cares as they are starting to do in Texas)?

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Exceptions are a bad idea, and as bad ideas tend to go, popular with voters.

Exempting by use, like primary homes or day cares, now means that the government is in the business of snooping on you to make sure that the primary home you declare is also your actual primary home. You also give well-off people with a bigger primary home (or owning a home at all instead of renting) a big tax break. Welfare for the well-off is not an efficient use of funds.

> - Do you introduce alternative tax sources (i.e. increase income taxes on billionaires instead as in California)?

If you do that, you lower your land value tax take. (Of course, if you already already sabotaged your land value tax base via exemption and limits, as per your second point, then bad decisions beget more bad decisions and special taxes on billionaires seem like a good idea..)

I generally agree with LVT/Georgianism in principal.

However in reality its a difficult ask to have all people purchasing single family homes to be able to build a 40 year financial model/projection of a regions growth prospects when the buy a home.

Or have them move away from their family and friends support network.

I think Georgianism works best:

- when there's expansive flat land and slow growth and no zoning/resource constraints (i.e. Texas pre-2010).

- you build higher density subsidized housing so people can stay in their neighborhood (i.e. Singapore)

LVT would remove the disincentive to develop housing, so cost of living would drop as more is built. Even if a homeowner couldn’t keep up with the land tax, they’d be much more likely to be able to find housing in the same area.

Compare to right now, where every generation can’t afford to live in their own hometown, because there’s only upwards pressure on housing costs, so families and support networks are constantly being torn apart.

Yes - I think pure Georgism works if you don't have zoning restrictions and abundant flat land and slow linear growth.

OR you have proper planning and build it into the city charter. The city needs to have planned for the locations of future additional schools/recreational infrastructure/transporation a priori and have sufficient resources (water, gas, electricity, sewage).

There also need to be proper addendums to any purchase agreements to highlight the potential for severe property tax increases.

Post facto switchovers to or continuation of pure LVT don't seem like they would work realistically.

> However in reality its a difficult ask to have all people purchasing single family homes to be able to build a 40 year financial model/projection of a regions growth prospects when the buy a home.

Georgism doesn't require that any more than the current system. In fact, for people who haven't already bought a home, the cost under a Georgist system are almost exactly the same as before:

The yearly outlay for owning a place is the same, because market forces will adjust land prices to make it so. The sum of cost of capital plus all taxes is roughly only dependent on demand / what recurring benefit you can derive from the land. Under LVT your mortgage will be smaller, but you have more taxes on the land.

Interesting - perhaps I don't understand quite clearly though?

Assume a long time single family home elderly owner on a fixed income (i.e. social security) that had modeled for only linear increases in accessed land value (and associated taxes) but experienced exponential accessed land value appreciation (and tax increases).

Would the proposed solution be for the original long time elderly owner to sell 50% rights to the property in exchange for another future owner to tear down the single home and replace it with a duplex for the original owner and new co-owner to live in together?

Or is the assumption that only well capitalized apartment owners are the only ones who own the land and have the capability to teardown and re-build as more units or renovate and raise rents?

Proper, non prop 13 land value tax limits this infinite value growth.

Agree - I think pure land value/pure Georgism works best when there are no limits on development (zoning/water availability/topography) and there's room for infinite sprawl into adjacent flat land.

As mentioned I think Texas will be interesting to watch as its pretty close pure Georgianism - the state's revenue is mostly/all LVT property taxes - but they are starting to see exponential growth - so it will be interesting to see if they stick to it or resort to California style Prop 13.

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