Tax land, not labour.
Farming would already be discouraged if farmers could build skyscrapers over their fields and collect the rents from those buildings. Since nobody wants to live in a skyscraper in the country, this never happens.
And then if you're really feeling like reform:
Tax assets instead of income for individuals, and tax both for corporations. Only tax income for small businesses.
We should have a flat consumption tax for all. And a single one time child tax. It is in effect a double tax, but still will be lower impact than the cacophony of various taxes we have now...it can be used to fund education. Currently funded by property taxes.
a single flat consumption tax will stabilize economy. I suspect that it would also curtail consumption and carbon foot print. A tiered consumption tax might be punitive but not a terrible idea even though it ought to be a back up or a emergency measure during crisis situations.
Food, shelter, medical and educational expenses should be taxed after a minimal deduction.
Try a lot of thought. Like Henry George. Ricardo. Einstein. Friedman.
And then reconsider.
Esp re what those people have said?
I suppose you have no opinion? I see no point in continuing this exchange. Cheers.
anyway, i suspect your "idea" is bad from the start... you say tax consumption... AND THEN tax the (just?) born... do you even darwin bro?
You are giving the disenfranchised the shaft from the outset.. who do you think would like this? who do you surround yourself with to get to this line of thinking? Rhetorically, I'm done.
Perhaps if I expanded that as ‘pay taxes for the consumption of your own child’? And pay a fee before having kids. This could be in the form of a community trust or an investment fund at county, state or country level.
We pay different kinds of taxes but children are negative taxes. As in, cost of rearing children is mostly subsidized by the govt with taxes.
My suggestion was that every consumption good needs to be taxed. When income, property, inheritance etc are not taxed and only sale of goods is taxed, everyone pays a tax according to their lifestyle.
Example: a sleeping cot is taxed much lower than a yacht or a house. Parents save and pay for their children’s education. The retirees live off retirement plans.
In my last sentence I mention that food, shelter, medical and education are only taxed after minimal deductions. Which means, everyone essentially gets a kind of UBI for essential needs before their consumption in these survival categories is taxed.
Obviously if one is ‘disenfranchised’ there is charity. Currently we consume too much using credit lines and debt. The key is to restrict consumption and eliminate waste/scarcity...have more local governance than regional governance.
That would cause an incentive to consume and a disincentive to save. I don't think that is the direction we want to push our financial system in.
If it is discouraged - with taxation, that land will be yielded to more productive use.
Nobody creates land but somebody gets to "tax" it. Either we can let that revenue stream fill up government coffers or it can go into private pockets. It's our decision.
Well put. If I suggested privatising air and that you needed to pay the owner to breathe it, that would be seen as ridiculous, and rightly so. Meanwhile, land is an equally natural resource and equally essential to human life, but private land is just accepted as "the way it is".
People in fact do pay for 'special' air in the form of air purifiers, air conditioning, heating, etc.
Land is both scarce and unsubstitutable.
IMO land ownership is a big negative externality, as others can't utilise that land and land is a finite resource. As with all negative externalities, they should be taxed heavily.
If you build a 5 storey house on it you pay the same amount as the guy next door who has an asphalt car park.
In my city (and several others) you can overlay a current map of "above/below poverty line" on top of a 1930's map rating neighborhoods by "risk".
Those rated low quality/high risk due to "threat of infiltration of foreign-born, negro, or lower grade population" in the 1930s line right up with the largest swaths of below-poverty-line neighborhoods today.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/04/after-nearly-a-centur...
The housing crisis is relative. It's a crisis when your relative moves in.. All joking aside, _every_ major metro has an affordable housing crisis.
I'm not sure that is true, 50% of the world lives in cities but cities produce 70% of the worlds emissions.
New York City may produce more emissions than Papau New Guinea. But I don't think moving people from Manhattan to Vermont would lower emissions. Just the opposite in fact.
Further, the definition of "city" can include a lot of sprawl in places like Houston, Phoenix, and even Beijing and Tokyo.
Even further, can you cute your source? I'm skeptical of both numbers. And it would be very easy to cherry pick either side of these numbers.
For example, a lot of concrete is pored in cities to build mid/high rises. Concrete produces a fuck-ton of carbon. Is this amortized over the expected lifespan of the building? Where is the carbon cost accounted for? A lot of the carbon is emitted in rural areas. But is it all just lumped into the city because that's where it's used? That seems unfair. A lot of rural wealth comes from natural resource extraction used to build and power cities...
Most power plants and factories are outside of cities. Yes, they mostly power the city and produce goods for the city -- but their providing a lot of income/wealth to rural areas...
50% of population: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization#how-urban-is-the-wor...
70% of emissions: https://www.c40.org/why_cities
This is based on the concept of a "consumption emission", which is an interesting concept. The point being that cities (especially western cities) have seen their emissions drop due to de-industrialization, but consumption has increased (hence your statement about carbon footprints correlating to wealth/income). To say that cities impacts are smaller when they just outsource all of their carbon impact is disingenuous.
GGP suggested that suburban living is greener. How does the 50%/70% support his point if cities include the suburbs?
Is it the case that you get to cherry pick which urban center is a real city based on how green it is?
I wouldn't be surprised if Dallas is "less green" than small towns in Italy, even adjusting for income/wealth. I would be surprised if the same is true when you compare to inner Tokyo (Shibuya).
One thing that would be interesting to know -- high rises can use a ton of energy to heat & cool. And the taller they get, a significant portion of the building is just stairs and elevators. I wouldn't be surprised if density gets "less green" at a certain maximum. Manhattan & Shibuya could very well be past that point.
Sure, but how does that compare to the energy needed for lots of smaller buildings, which can provide the same floor space to the same number of people? I suspect the high rise is more efficient: it has far less surface area on the outside. The more surface area that borders the unheated/uncooled outside, the more energy you need to expend.
>And the taller they get, a significant portion of the building is just stairs and elevators.
Again, how does that compare to smaller buildings? Once you get past 1 floor, you're going to have to use space for stairs and elevators. You can't have a city with 1-floor buildings; the sprawl would be ridiculous.
>Manhattan & Shibuya could very well be past that point.
Have you been to Shibuya? Buildings really aren't that tall in Tokyo, especially in Shibuya. Remember, Tokyo (and pretty much all of Japan) is a highly tectonically active area, with frequent earthquakes. Manhattan has no earthquakes and has a huge layer of bedrock under it; it's basically the most idea place on the planet for building skyscrapers, except for being close to the sea (because of hurricanes, but these are rare because it's pretty far north). There are some reasonably tall buildings in Tokyo, but nothing like the 100-story behemoths in Manhattan.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/04/why-bigger-cities-are-g...
I think in the statistic you cite, 'city' includes both the urban part and the sprawling suburbs. You'd also want to compare apples to apples: someone living a very green life in a "western" city is still likely to live a more carbon-intensive life than someone doing subsistence farming.
This trope of environment === greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is dangerous.
Of course, they do not, but still....
Everything is near and there is public transport.
So how they would use more carbon is very hard to see.
Instead, San Fran is one of the NIMBYest cities on the planet and so all those people are forced to come in from further afield.
I prefer the more European style of 2-8 stories, like here: https://goo.gl/maps/poabxNny8r8Jq46v7
But I think the broader point stands.
4 floors is mildly inconvenient on foot but 8 floors is becoming a real chore for people over 40.
Oh, wait!
Rome is a city with less than 4 million inhabitants, they become almost 6 millions during a normal workday.
There's a lot of information, history and a broad perspective on how things work in various countries.
Housing politics is key to so many things:
* The economy - allowing people to live in productive places is a benefit to them, and all of us, because they put their talents to more productive use. California, where the housing crisis is worst, also has the highest poverty levels of the US when cost of living (which is mostly housing) is factored in.
* The environment - cities are more environmentally friendly than sprawling suburbs.
* Equality and "social justice": the history of how people of color have been frozen out of the housing 'ladder' in the US is not as well known as more blatant and vicious examples of racism, but it is a huge reason why certain disparities have persisted.