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Comment by alexb_ | Hacker News Reader

The best way to get people to build more housing? Tax the land that it's built on. Not the building, like we do now. The way our property taxes currently function, any development is disincentivized and increases your tax bill for daring to improve the world around you. If you instead tax the land, people who sit around and do nothing with $1 lots will actually have to do something, or sell it to someone who will.

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The best way to get housing built is to build it. The government could pay for it to get built directly. We have an aversion to that, so there's no political will to do so, but why bullshit around with weird taxes and hope "market forces" result in what we wish for, like a Republican that genuinely believes in trickle down economics?

Just build the damn housing.

This has been tried and has both worked and failed. Failed in some cases where governments built large clusters of apartment towers without much heed to community or spaces for urban renewal and local business. And succeeded when there were more comprehensive plans than "just build housing". See for example many European countries and Singapore.

It needs be an intelligent holistic approach or it can lead to fractured failed communities.

Most people do not want the US government to be their landlord.

If the choice is between sleeping on the sidewalk owned by Uncle Sam or the bed-under-a-roof owned by Uncle Sam, most people will take the latter.

That seems to make sense. Are there any cities or states that have tried that? If not, why not?

Detroit is considering it. Nobody else has tried it, so far as I know.

Why not? Well, it's a... let's call it a "heterodox" economic theory. It's not mainstream.

And, if a state were to do it, it would probably have negative effects on farming. (A city, not so much, unless there was significant farmland within the city limits.) Making most of the farms in your state less economically viable is probably not a formula for winning elections, so a state is probably not going to go for it.

> And, if a state were to do it, it would probably have negative effects on farming.

So create a different tax system for farmland, or exempt them from taxes. It's not like giving farmers subsidies and tax relief is unprecedented.

Sure. It just blows some of the "one simple trick" aura around a land tax. "One simple trick... except we have to exempt farmland from it... and there may be some other fiddles we need to keep it from ruining other groups by unintended consequences... and then everybody and their dog are going to claim that it's unfairly disadvantaging their group...." That's a much messier sell than "just tax land".

Anyone who tries to sell you a simple, cure-all solution is lying. Exemptions, incentives, edge cases, and more all have to be taken into account - ESPECIALLY when you are dealing with something as sensitive as people's money. The tax code is already super complicated as it is for a reason.

Well, to agree with you (am I allowed?) and say a word on your side of the question: A land use tax could have a number of exceptions and complications and still be far simpler than what we have now.

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