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Re:The welfare effects of eviction policies by imtringued on Wednesday November 03, 2021 @06:06AM (#29092722)
If you want to have a fair society just make the holders of capital pay for the privilege of owning it. This is commonly known as a wealth tax but there are two taxes whose introduction leads to no economic dead weight losses.

Taxes on money and land holdings. If you spend your money you do not "win" because you pay transaction taxes (VAT etc) or you increase your exposure to risk in the financial markets. If you don't spend your money you lose because you pay the wealth tax for nothing.

The reason why a land value tax works is that land already exists. It's supply is inelastic. The owner of the land did nothing to create it. So taxing the owner for holding onto land will not discourage him from working (building a house and renting it out). The tax revenue can be used to pay for public infrastructure like transportation then the value of the land goes up which will directly fund the infrastructure. A holding fee on land discourages speculation because the expected value of holding onto land without utilizing it is negative. The reason why land speculation is so profitable is that location is a monopoly. As the community around the land develops the speculator benefits off the work other people while doing no work himself. It's especially bad when income taxes are used to fund infrastructure. As the government does more infrastructure projects and charges higher income taxes your rent will go up as the value of the land goes up.

Just a thought experiment: A single tax implementation of land value taxes implies that you've paid your taxes by paying rent. Rent would still be expensive but products and services would be cheap and your income would be higher.

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