But realistically, the primary beneficiaries aren’t retired middle-class homeowners on fixed incomes, but large corporations who own commercial property that now have their property taxes permanently frozen at 1970s levels, costing local governments huge amounts of money and encouraging poor land uses.
Or, at the county level, judges and court officials, district attorneys, public defenders, the county sheriff’s office, county fire department, animal control, emergency rooms, county parks, public health officials, etc.
Strangely enough, bureaucrats just aren't particularly prudent when they are using our money.
That's one, ideological view. Another view is that the so-called free market is very focused on the short term, which isn't conducive to providing public goods [1].
Moreover, the "free" market seldom actually is, because more than a few of the players work at least as hard on amassing market power and excluding competition as they do on competing.
>> bureaucrats just aren't particularly prudent when they are using our money
> Another view is that the so-called free market is very focused on the short term, which isn't conducive to providing public goods
I can't decipher what potential problem you're pointing to. Apparently even "knowledge" is a "public good".
But whatever your complaint there is, it's based on the flawed premise that there is some One True Way <X> should be, and that central planning intervention is necessary to make it so.
That fallacy is called ipse dixit, roughly translated as I say so, therefore it is.
> bureaucrats just aren't particularly prudent when they are using our money
And that's the fallacy of the excluded middle. Just because (some) bureaucrats aren't particularly prudent when using our money, it doesn't follow that (as you alleged before) the free market is always better.
> But whatever your complaint there is, it's based on the flawed premise that there is some One True Way <X> should be, and that central planning intervention is necessary to make it so.
I actually happen to think the opposite of the two assertions that you claim constitute my premise.
That's not what happened though. I pointed out that bureaucrats aren't prudent when spending other people's money, and that's self-evidently true.
For example, you know would not be prudent with other people's money either, or with $1000 you found on the street.
> And that's the fallacy of the excluded middle. Just because (some) bureaucrats aren't particularly prudent when using our money, it doesn't follow that (as you alleged before) the free market is always better.
I was hinting at the fact that since everyone uses someone else's money less prudently than his own, using someone else's money results in 'waste' compared to using one's own, and therefore, all public spending results in 'waste'.
So it's clear that the free market actually is 'always better' in that sense. It's better in all other senses too.
For example, you'd be hard pressed to argue that a state-maintained monopoly or cartel is better for us than no such thing.
> I actually happen to think the opposite of the two assertions that you claim constitute my premise.
Quote the two assertions I claimed constitute your premise.
It's also a sweeping generalization, both:
-- as to what counts as a "bureaucrat" (of whom I know more than a few); and
-- as to what counts as "prudent" --- a public servant must take into account more than your, or my, personal preferences.
> you know would not be prudent with other people's money either, or with $1000 you found on the street.
Evidence, please. (I happen to think I'd be prudent in each case.)
> since everyone uses someone else's money less prudently than his own, using someone else's money results in 'waste' compared to using one's own, and therefore, all public spending results in 'waste'.
Another sweeping generalization. It also depends on your definition of waste. Is it waste for "bureaucrats" to spend money on, say, enforcing traffic laws that prevent you from going as fast as you want through a school zone? (Feel free to pick another example; I really don't like the "but think of the children!" argument, or rather, so-called argument.)
> So it's clear that the free market actually is 'always better' in that sense. It's better in all other senses too.
I used to think that way. I assume you know about "negative externalities" [1]. If you remember the days before the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, then recall what the air and water were like in the U.S. when "the free market" allowed businesses to dump their wastes in the air that the rest of us breathe and the water that the rest of us drink.
Some key limiting factors of "the free market":
1. People tend to have tunnel vision --- they want what they want, and they want it now. (This, I suspect, is a trait developed by natural selection [2].)
2. In a so-called free market, we assume that buyers of goods and services will individually make rational choices that, in the long term, will promote the common good. But that assumes two facts not in evidence:
First, it assumes that people will take the time to investigate the choices available to them. That doesn't always happen. For example, I don't know a lot of people who study the terms of click-wrap agreements and decide whether they want to proceed. Most people simply click on "I agree" and hope that they aren't giving away their first-born; they also unconsciously count on the legal system not to enforce terms that are too onerous.
Second, it assumes that people are rational in their choices. That assumption is increasingly being challenged in behavioral economics [3].
> Quote the two assertions I claimed constitute your premise.
Okay --- what you said was this: "But whatever your complaint there is, it's based on the flawed premise [A] that there is some One True Way <X> should be, and [B] that central planning intervention is necessary to make it so." I don't believe either of these things a priori, but neither do I rule out the possibility that in a particular case one or both of them might be true.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
[2] http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/03/good_news_bad_n.... (a self-cite)
FTFY.
You clearly aren’t interested in a respectful or intellectually honest discussion. Why are you here?
As it relates to your earlier comment "This scenario of yours is used to justify policies such as California’s Prop 13," you should consider that Prop 13, which amended the California constitution, was adopted overwhelmingly by voters in California in 1978. If Californians don't like it today, they can repeal or change it. That's how our system works.
Why haven't Californians done away with or amended Prop 13? Polls consistently show that the majority of Californians continue to support Prop 13's limits and interestingly, even proposals that would eliminate Prop 13's tax treatment for non-residential properties are losing steam[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Bell_scandal
[1] http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ln-support-prop...
It’s a big mess: because they can’t reliably raise money through property taxes, local governments have turned instead to sales tax, fees for various public services, long-term debt, sale of public assets, money handed out by the state government, and various budget shenanigans. School bonds in particular require only a 55% majority to pass, and then can be paid back via property taxes, so those have been popular in most CA cities, even when they probably aren’t the most sustainable way to raise money to fund school facilities.
The politics are complex, because Prop 13 bundles together several loosely related provisions. “Low taxes” and especially “make sure the legislature can’t raise taxes whenever they want” is a generally popular message, but there are demographic/political reasons that it has stronger support than just that. For instance:
(1) Freezing tax rates at purchase time is a net transfer away from renters, new people moving to the state, young people, new home buyers, etc. and to older, richer homeowners (as well as corporations and very large land owners). For obvious reasons, the latter more often have the right to vote, more often vote in practice in elections at all levels, have more money to spend on lobbying and campaigning, etc.
(2) The current demographics of statewide popular elections are different than the demographics of the whole population of citizens or residents, as represented by the state legislature. Seats in the legislature are apportioned by population, which means that urban areas which make up most of the population of the state and tend to vote for Democrats are favored. By contrast, conservative voters tend to vote more often in statewide elections. By forcing supermajority legislative support for tax increases, Prop 13 gives folks in the conservative minority a sort of veto power, which they are loath to give up.
This "corporations" thing that you have come up with is a completed red herring. A government exists to serve its people, not some abstract notion of "productivity". If it's your home and your property, why should you be forced to give it up so that someone else - be they a property developer, or a local government - can profit? Every transaction requires a seller as well as a buyer and if the seller doesn't want to sell for any reason then the deal is off.
But your position is that people can be compelled to sell for what reason exactly?
Now you’re putting words in my mouth. I never advanced this position.
This is the only way to ensure your goals or objectives are realized; constant vigilance.
"You see, the government owns your car too, because you're driving on roads built by the government"
"Oh but you see, clearly, based on the government deciding under what conditions you're allowed to leave the country, the government owns your body too, and is therefore within its rights to torture and kill you on a whim."
Do you really see no problem at all with the idea that governments own everything and are just graciously "renting" things to us?
Do you sincerely see nothing as your own legitimate property? When you buy a new phone, is that actually the government's property instead of yours?
However, the same is generally true for land value taxes. The people who stand to lose most from land value taxes are large land owners who for whatever reason are sitting on unimproved or under-improved property.
Often, property just sits because the owner expects the value to continue rising, and wants to make sure to flip the property for as high a price as possible. There’s no pressure to immediately do anything useful with the property, so in extreme cases you end up with 50% parking lots. This image of Denver in the 70s would never occur with a proper land value tax: http://1p40p3gwj70rhpc423s8rzjaz.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-... A hard core libertarian might argue that all those property owners should have the right to build parking lots if they want to, and it’s nobody else’s business. In my opinion though, a city where blanketing downtown in parking lots is the rational behavior has a pathologically broken city planning / tax system.
Yeah, it’s too bad that under a land value tax some individual homeowners who really like the tiny house they bought 40 years ago for $50,000 now need to sell it for $1,000,000 because they can’t afford the tax anymore. But these folks are actually pretty rare, and they just received a giant cash windfall, so they probably won’t get too much sympathy. If they really want to stay, they can surely take out a loan against the property, as evgen suggested.
There are plenty of other folks in our society who get screwed much worse, and are more worthy of public attention and concern.
> A hard core libertarian might argue that all those property owners should have the right to build parking lots if they want to, and it’s nobody else’s business.
.. And this:
> In my opinion though, a city where blanketing downtown in parking lots is the rational behavior has a pathologically broken city planning / tax system.
You might also want to consider whether a property owner would "blanket downtown in parking lots", if there were no reason to believe that would be a good investment.
If someone makes a bad investment, that's his problem.
If there are way too many parking spots operated by a private enterprise, some of them will be removed to make way for more productive uses of the land.
If mass deforestation was so bad, no one would do it! /s Or production/mining with extreme environmental havoc
Or hundreds of other examples where there are METASTABLE, yet SUBOPTIMAL uses or resources.
I find it terrifying that intelligent people assume that there is only one "godly" state, with no metastable traps, where it will always converge.
Try setting up a simpleton PID feedback loop - neither overdoing or underdoing values will give you a desirable outcome
How is that analogous to what I said?
What is that "METASTABLE" nonsense? :P
If you'd stuff european cities with low density parking lots it would make car owners life not FUCKING SUCK At the cost of ruining the "ecosystem" - everything is spaced out by parking lots, so more and more people are using cars in turn needing more parking lots, hardly desirable outcome for a city, which would be better served by good public transport, which would be made less desirable if everything was distanced by parking lots
A simple metastable suboptimal state example is extreme income inequality - it took years to get out of another metastable state - more sensible income distribution. Now, it would take a lot of effort/change/work/whatever to switch the states.
I specifically talked about an oversized parking lot getting reduced due to it not being a good investment, so no, not exactly analogous.
The point is that the allocation of anything that's privately owned and used in/for some sort of production will get adjusted as necessary, purely out of its owner's self-interest.
But for starters, burning down a forest would not be a productive endeavour, and as such, not in its owner's interest. Already we can see you're not quite clear on what the problem is.
On the other hand, cutting down a forest to make room for a farm might well be a good idea, but probably not for only "a few years worth of farming".
Why would someone operate a farm for only a few years when it could produce him wealth indefinitely? Again, it's not clear what problem you're seeing here.
> everything is spaced out by parking lots, so more and more people are using cars in turn needing more parking lots
Here you're assuming that people will buy more cars if there's more parking space. I can't see how that would be the case.
If people notice that there are more bicycle parking spaces, will they buy more bicycles? If someone brings you an extra coat hanger, will that make you buy a new coat?
I don't see the connection. Can you point out a real problem related to any of this?
> hardly desirable outcome for a city, which would be better served by good public transport
Now you're talking about something that's not determined by market forces, but by government. Public transport is irrelevant to the earlier discussion. If bad decisions are made in that sphere, blame it on the government.
> A simple metastable suboptimal state example is extreme income inequality - it took years to get out of another metastable state - more sensible income distribution
"Metastable" sounds like a term some academic self-proclaimed philosopher might use. That means it's probably nonsense (or pointless).
> Now, it would take a lot of effort/change/work/whatever to switch the states.
I'm not sure what sort of effort you're imagining, but all it would take is for governments to not dictate what currency we're allowed to use.
tl;dr is "boo hoo, cry me a river"
You might have a point if you consider a home something that is entirely fungible - but for a lot of people it is not.
Admittedly, rich people could buy fancier goods which could be taxed more, but would that make up the difference?
For example, point 2 at http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/10/10-tax-tips-stock-options-p...
There should be limits on these things to prevent the type of situations we see in SFO, Boston, etc.
Consider a world with no landlords. You live with your parents until you can afford to buy, or you wait in line for social housing, which won't magically appear from nowhere...
So let's say you buy a house, not because you are a speculator, but because you want a home. You live there for 50 years, raise your family there, and are enjoying your retirement. Someone over that time period, your property happens to become more valuable, as say a city expands.
Then along come some carpetbagger in a shiny suit and says, your home is not a "productive" use of this land, and he's going to tax you more than your pension is worth if you want to stay there, you should make room for his new development of "executive apartments" or whatever. No normal person would think that is just or right.