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Comment by petcat | Hacker News Reader

We just saw mass protests in Spain over an elderly lady that couldn't afford the new rent in her desirable City apartment. What do you think will happen in France when suddenly lots of elderly people can't afford the taxes on the house and property that they've lived in their entire lives?

Any discussion about taxes is a complete non-starter. France needs less taxes, not more. Their entire society and business environment is completely taxed out and they still can't afford their public welfare and benefits. They need to reduce public spending in order to maybe one day, also reduce taxes.

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1) LVT suppresses rent growth

2) LVT can fund reverse mortgages

> Any discussion about taxes is a complete non-starter. France needs less taxes, not more. Their entire society and business environment is completely taxed out and they still can't afford their public welfare and benefits. They need to reduce public spending in order to maybe one day, also reduce taxes.

Yes, most developed countries are overtaxed. They should get rid of nearly all of them and replace them with a high LVT. Near-zero regulatory complexity, paperwork, enforcement burden, or economic distortions.

Is LVT funding UBI or reverse mortgages? Seems like supporters think it can fund anything and everything.

"Near-zero regulatory complexity, paperwork, enforcement burden, or economic distortions."

This isnt true in the least. Land value calculations would be require all sorts of regulations and appeal processes to set true land value and prevent gaming the system. Just want until private equity figures out they can drive up property values in a residential area so they can use the tax on existing properties to force the owners to sell to them.

UBI is a very stupid idea, in large part because it will get funneled into land values.

> Seems like supporters think it can fund anything and everything.

Well yes, money can be used to fund "anything and everything." This is actually a key characteristic of money. If your implicit argument is that LVT can't produce enough money to fund reverse mortgages, you obviously aren't really thinking about the words you're reading. Because using LVT to fund a reverse mortgage with the purpose of paying the LVT doesn't require any money. It's simply exchanging the latent equity in a building for a reduced land value tax bill.

> This isnt true in the least. Land value calculations would be require all sorts of regulations and appeal processes to set true land value and prevent gaming the system

No not really. Land valuation is pretty much automatable now.

> lots of elderly people can't afford the taxes on the house and property that they've lived in their entire lives?

I think exempting your primary residence from LVT (or capping it at the value of UBI, in that proposal) would not defeat the purpose of LVT, and would eliminate such problems.

Nothing. Because LVT is never proposed for non-rent seeking homeowners who live in their own home.

That's only true for this one implementation. But that gets messy when you have home buessiness that may involve some rent-seeking aspect. This is especially true once businesses figure out you can home office people instead of paying the land tax.

If you're rent seeking in your own home you can pay LVT.

Or higher wages.

These protests started because schools are falling in complete disrepair. And you want to reduce their funding further? Maybe students should study outside? Taught by AI, because human teachers are too expensive?

Fuck this death cult that is neoliberalism. We've been doing austerity for decades, and things keep getting worse and worse. How come we're unable to maintain what we had 50 years ago, while work has never been this productive? Tax the rich.

There's no amount of defunding that will satisfy the capital class. They will take everything, unless we stop them from bleeding us dry.

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