Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined? Housing costs

Re:Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?... by conanbatt on Thursday July 27, 2017 @09:18AM (#14864940)

No, but its still is an investment with an expected positive return. Otherwise nobody would have any and would tend to sell it at 0.

Land also has the chicken-egg problem capital doesn't have. The first one that built a house didn't consume his capital, the first one that got the property rights didn't consume capital whatsoever.

I am closer to your position than to the other commenter in this thread, just wanted to distinguish that land can capital do have some differences worth thinking about.

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Re:Why has regional income convergence in the U.S. declined?... by sokoloff on Thursday July 27, 2017 @10:15AM (#14865453)

Most places have real property taxes (and to a lesser extent, adverse possession laws) that act as a beneficial (to society) drag on infinite holding periods of land. That tends to be a tax on the current (improved) value of the land, where others have made an argument that a tax on unimproved value would work differently (in some ways better, in some ways worse).

My apologies on the prior post; I meant to imply that buying unimproved land in the "right" place is a great long-term investment.

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