Hacker News Reader

Comment by msla | Hacker News Reader

So people will be paying a higher tax than they ought to be if they aren't trend-chasing the economy to always be engaging in that "best use" from year to year?

That sounds perverse in itself, especially since an economy needs diversity to function, and if everyone is incentivized to chase a single thing per region you end up with overproduction of that and underproduction of everything else.

View on HN

Land that’s already been improved would pay less in taxes. Empty lots, parking lots, and other unimproved land would pay more tax. Calling an economic incentive to do something with your empty lot in an urban area “perverse” seems.. extreme.

But the post I responded to implied that if you weren't in the most-profitable economic sector, you'd be taxed as if you were, causing excessive loss, leading to people switching businesses to be in that one Golden Sector regardless of what the economy needs and can support.

Besides:

> Empty lots, parking lots, and other unimproved land would pay more tax.

Believe it or not, we need ranches and farms. Taxing them out of existence would be bad.

Is a city full of pet stores valuable?

I don't see why this would encourage economic homogenization.

Go look at the most valuable real-estate in the USA that is still commercial, it's almost always banks and Starbucks.

It would because anyone who isn't in the best-paying part of the economy would be taxed higher than their actual income could support, leading them to either switch businesses or go broke.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com