That's not how normal people value those things.
Logically, this doesn't even work. Lets say everyone in LA wants to live there with their children and their children's children and so on forever. Extrapolate this a few generations and eventually you will have a solid mass of humans 1000 ft tall. (This is a hyperbolic joke, you get the point)
The only way it doesn’t work is if the community makes it impossible for more new people to get in, or if there isn’t enough economic opportunity to support all the people living there. But people don’t generally want to move into communities where they can’t find work, and I see no good reason we should enforce minimum lot and zoning laws to prevent people from moving to where opportunity lives.
Ahhhh, brutalism . . . “The Soviets decided to pass: the plan was too extreme and destructive of existing institutions even for Stalin. Undeterred, Le Corbusier changed the word “Moscow” on the diagram to “Paris”, then presented it to the French government (who also passed). Some aspects of his design eventually ended up as Chandigarh, India.”
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik...
In either case, the land-usage intensity rises by multiple factors.
The option is not between 1-story quarter-acre development and a forest of Burj Khalifas. There is in fact considerable intermediate ground.
In developed countries, high density housing will either make the city unbearably expensive(NYC) or bring down quality of life.(SF)
High density is a sign that resources are scarce but demand for them has increased. The sign of a well functioning and professional state is one that has a healthy middle class and enjoys low density sustainable standard of life.
Often the case for high density housing is married to sustainability goals. But sustainability goals exist in the first place because resources are scarce and it is becoming difficult to live in a sustainable manner.
The rational solution is to place a moratorium upon expansion of the city and the population. Only in Bizarro World would the logic of cramming more people even more densely in the name of sustainable design would make sense.
The true scarcity mentality is with governing bodies and elected officials who do not have the vision, integrity or collective access to more than one brain cell. They fail to create networked sustainable communities and manipulate their vote banks.
One might choose to be fair and honest to admit that calls for high density housing is often where successful immigrants congregate due to their employment. Often said immigrants are on work visas and often are not eligible to vote in local/national elections.
Is it a coincidence that elected officials impose high taxes only in certain cities/counties and extract every dollar they can squeeze from a work force who are cuffed to their visa sponsored high paying jobs? The golden goose is slaughtered and well done. Stick a fork in it and let the taxes drip.
There are no high density initiatives in Visalia, CA. Only in Bay Area. Because why build infrastructure and public transport when you can keep taxing those who can’t even vote in the first place. At least in CA, it’s win-win over and over.
Every city that has a highly paid immigrant work force is on the chopping block and will start passing high density housing initiatives. Success must be penalized..it seems. Affordable housing is subsidized housing. And who subsidizes it? The developers will tack that cost to the market value homes. Which would..surprise!..create more unaffordable cities. It’s a vicious cycle that should obvious to most who pay mortgages for all of their working lives.
We don’t need high density. It’s funny. Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai, London maybe..but we have literally brainwashed ourselves into thinking we need to be high density and by creating unnecessary economic activity/jobs/dense zones, we have created an unsustainable situation.
Case in point: Growing 1/4 of America’s food and 80% of almonds in a desert during a drought and in a state with the highest cost of living? Daft! And for what? A fraction of our GDP. While investment in education and tech and automation would create prosperity all over the world and we could export what we do best. Tech.
Are almonds a basic human right? I don’t think so. Water is…and Californians have to sacrifice water during a drought so the world can have its almonds and alfafa for their non native dairy cows. So we will soon be 10 billion. And we came from 3.5 million in 1975. When will this euphoria over expansion and ‘growth’ stop? It’s a fool’s dream and a dangerous one.
The Dutch solved this. They are a tiny country growing a lot of hydroponic food for Europe. Now they mostly sell tech and know how to grow hydroponic tomatoes. They don’t actually grow hydroponic tomatoes for the whole of the word. Optimization of resources and proper asset management. The asset here isn’t the water and wind and hydroponic tomatoes in Netherlands. It’s their tech and know how.
America doesn’t operate with an understanding of scale, economies of scale and diminishing returns. We could be better and shine better. But the elephant thinks it’s a pussy cat and ends up trampling everyone around it during playtime. A tragedy all around.
I think you're reversing cause and effect.
Or give me an example of an affordable city that is also high density in America. I haven’t seen it.
What I'm saying is that they aren't expensive because of the density. They are dense, because they are expensive, because they are very desirable places to live. You wouldn't densify an area where no one wants to live...
High density is imposed upon medium density middle class zipcodes because it is the middle class that is working class.
There are more jobs in this zipcode because the govt has chosen to create infrastructure(often supported by the employers like FAANGs or HP at a time etc in the Bay Area for example). It was meant to benefit the workers.
But as these cities prospered, it became crowded. Instead of creating new cities with good infrastructure to replicate the success of tier 1 cities, corporations and governments are trying to stuff more sardines in a small metal can.
The FAANGs are basically run by the employees who are woke adult children who have never had any real life experience or have travelled beyond the confines of their fantasy world. The Govt is run by the equivalent of a pirate with a wooden peg leg and a green plastic parrot on its shoulder plundering the working middle class for extractive taxes with no returns and punishing the productive.
The ‘desirability’ is the availability of jobs. Corporate America and Big Govt are hand in glove as they keep scratching each other’s back. The immigrant tech work force often has no voice as most of them are denied green cards due to what is racism. An Indian or Chinese passport sends you to way back to the end of the immigration line. There is no DACA for the children of tech workers, mind you.
They are treated like cattle and then squeezed to death by taxes. The visa is the chain that binds them because they don’t even have the mobility to move to another job or city that is more affordable. If this isn’t thuggery and theft by Big Gov+Corporate America, I don’t know what is..
I have looked at the minutes of many city council meetings in the Bay Area. Every high density initiative is always wherever there is a substantial tech immigrant population..often Indian/Asian. And the high density is often affordable housing quotas to bring people from other Bay Area cities which is a redistribution program. In one Bay Area city, high density housing is mandated by Sacramento to bring in the homeless and create affordable housing from other cities in the county. But no new schools or roads. No community spaces and existing green and open spaces are being built. There is BART which is basically transport for people who come to the city to steal Amazon packages and catalytic converters. There is an increase in social spending for the new entrants but no increase in law enforcement even though crime has soared, no new fire stations and retail/shopping options have shrunk. Water, electricity and every utility bill has gone up by 25%. Property taxes increase every year and so does cost of living.
What Corporate America and Big Gov needs to do is create more fantastic cities that are desirable. As an Example: Why this scarcity mentality that there will be only one Bay Area? Bay Area is a modern day labour camp. It’s expensive and crowded not because it is desirable but because people are trapped. Trapped by their jobs and by taxes.
The single story suburbia looks claustraphobic - instead you have soace for parks, public squares, and services and facilities. There can be large distances between apartment blocks, and can be very green
America is a nation of immigrants. They didn’t leave their home countries and sacrifice so much for a better future to go back into high density apartments and sprint to the park for fresh air.
I know elderly Asian neighbors who hyperventilate at city hall meetings when they hear their adopted country going the way of the homes they fled. And my heart goes out to them. My friends who came here from communist regimes prefer to live in middle America that used to be immune to the coastal political restlessness.
The way a govt can control a citizen’s life is through housing, taxes and trade it for quality of life. It’s borderline blackmail. Current trends and progressive/liberal/greenwashing fads invalidates entire lives and makes a mockery of immigrants’ journeys made towards a prosperous abundant life that is free from govt constraints.
People hate to hear this but noone has a right to live somewhere indefinitely
I ask you this, why do the people living in LA have more of a right to be there than the native Indians that were there 500 years ago?
The problems you mention stem from various "kick out" policies that are essentially forced assets transfer and artificial scarcity policies to inflate prices (difficulty for new housing, one family houses, height of buildings, devaluation of residential areas by bad policing etc)
Housing prices are results of specific policies, and people's ownership rights are protected in western societies.
Same would not hold for commercial or nonresidential property ownership. Presumably not by trust (e.g., shielded / non-person) ownership.
You. Don't. Lose. By. Winning. $1M.
You get options.
Lets say you live long enough for the cycle to repeat multiple times. I assume proponents would say, "well, hooray, everyone but you is way better off, I guess it sucks that you weren't better at managing money", when all anyone ever wanted to do was live together and be left alone.
It's a great ideal, but the problem is that land is a finite resource, so eventually you'll run out of space that is necessary for the next group of people who want to live together and be left alone to actually do so. At which point, you either have a stark divide between those who got in their claim and those who don't, or you come up with some redistributive system that gives newcomers a chance.
The only people who can be “driven out” are the renters, but if you let owners subdivide and build more, even they should be able to stay in the neighborhood indefinitely. It’s only once you break the chain by not building new homes that the existing community is forced to move. The original neighbors may become a minority compared to the newcomers, but the alternatives to building enough housing for everyone who wants to live in a neighborhood appears to me to be:
- make your neighborhood undesirable for even you to live in.
- make it impossible for new people to buy their way into the community.
- accept that non-owners and not-rich-enough owners will be priced out and forced to move from their homes.
It might be easier to fix zoning first?
(Property that's zoned to allow more development is more valuable, but property owners are often against lifting zoning restrictions anyway.)
Owners don't lose from property shooting through the roof under current taxation schemes but under a 100% LVT they lose their community and gain next to nothing financially because land value is entirely captured.
But as tax money is raised, the local government has a choice
1. They can use the tax money to fund services.
2. They can return the tax money collected as a Citizen's Dividend.
If they don't have any need for any more services, everyone would still be able to live there. Your concern that people will lose their community are unfounded. They might decide, as the tax goes up, that they don't need a 1 mile by 1 mile plot of land, in which case they can sub-divide it and live in the area they care about. Anyone who uses less than the average amount of land ends up net positive through this process. Since land ownership tends to be skewed by wealthy land-owners, this means the majority of people receive net proceeds.
But maybe the city does want to spend these new funds on roads and infrastructure for the new people. They have correctly identified that land values will raise by more than they spend, so it is in the interests of the community for them to build. Since these services are profitable to the community, the collected dividends will now be even higher. This represents even more gains for our original garden tenders, but everyone who joined after the initial process shares in these gains.
Now that they have built more awesome stuff, the original citizens are now much better off. This city is now filled with companies moving in, providing jobs for the citizens, it's a magical process. Land values are all much higher. This means that the tax is higher, but it means that the dividend is higher. They can now either go for #1 or #2 again...
In a non-LVT world, it wouldn't make sense for the infrastructure to be built for the sole profit of the original land owners, so it wouldn't be built. Everyone is better off with the land value tax.
You are responsible for the improvements on your land, and you pay for the unimproved value of that land that comes from all higher levels. The local government on the other hand is responsible for local infrastructure, and pay for the city+ based unimproved value.
A landlocked country would pay less tax, a city at the mouth of a river pays higher tax, a locality with a beach pays higher tax, etc... this ensures that each level has some accountability and is incentivized to improve.
At each level is money left over after paying the tax(I hope!), and can either be invested or can be returned as a dividend.
One of the main unresolved issues with Georgism is the Disney World problem, and I believe that if you structure the tax in this way that problem goes away. Disney would simply be labeled not as a household actor, but as a city level actor.
In New Zealand, property taxes are relative: the tax you pay depends on how much your property price rises relative to everybody else’s property prices. The local government has a fixed budget, which is apportioned between all the properties proportional to property values.
Example: a city has a budget of $1000. The city has two houses, one worth $100k and another worth $900k. The property taxes are $100 and $900 (ignoring fixed charges). If the houses double in value to $200k and $1800k, the property taxes are still $100 and $900.
It is important to keep this in mind when arguing about property price increases, because price increases don’t always matter.
taxes = mill-rate * property-value
If you're paying more in taxes it's either because the taxing authority decided to raise more money or your property has increased relative to your neighbours.
It all comes down to the mill rate.
If your whole neighborhood's valuations go up you all get taxed more.
In practice - aren't tax rates changed based on politics?
That is, are most rates not “mill rates” (where relative house values matter, not absolute values).
This is the first I've heard of a city adjusting taxes down.
Yeah but instead it’s people who cannot buy land who rent their homes who make their community better only to be priced out.
> No owners “lose”
Right and for all the people who aren’t wealthy enough to own land who get priced out of their neighborhoods and have to move? Often further from places of employment?
The comment you replied to said “let's say there's a neighborhood of people who are quite poor but charitable toward one another”. Poor people buying 100 acres of land for $1 is not a “neighborhood of people”.
Your scenario is buying cheap land in hopes one day it’s expensive — basically a long shot lottery ticket.
Or literally all of Los Angeles 30+ years ago. Or basically everywhere desirable today 30+ years ago.
> Now they're millionaires.
The difficulty with this reasoning is that it assumes that homes (and the land they sit on) have only economic value and nothing else matters.
> No owners "lose" from property values shooting through the roof.
In the story you just described they lost their homes they had built up and loved.
For many people, a bunch of cash doesn't replace that.
They lost their homes which is not just a house. There's a much more emotional aspect to a home that can't be expressed in merely dollars.
They were also forced to sell in the story, it wasn't a choice.
You want me to feel sorry for someone who gets a Million dollar windfall when:
1) they got a million dollar windfall
2) they now have a ridiculous amount of options (because money = options)
3) if they're really determined to stay in their house, they can cash-out refinance continuously and use some of the unrealized gains to pay property taxes (and past cash-outs)
4) they could also build an ADU on their property and rent out the ADU to cover property tax + have extra money
5) If they actually do move and leave, it's because they preferred $1M do the other options
No, sorry.
This is like feeling sorry for people who win the lottery because they have to pay taxes and then everyone calls them for a favor.
Most things in life aren't ALL good.
You're looking at it stricly as if housing was a investment to be cashed out, as opposed to a place to settle down and live life.
There is no windfall. They got kicked out of their home by being forced to sell it.
Is the $1M a lot? Well, they are now homeless. If the property values rose so much that they got the million, all other properties rose as well and being now homeless they still need to buy a new home. It'll have to be much smaller or maybe there's nothing affordable available anymore so they have to uproot life (jobs, schools, friends, family, doctors) and move to a much cheaper city.
Very cruel, and all because some richer people want to move in and take over? That's the kind of abuse that leads to things like Prop13.
> #3 cash-out refinance continuously
This is completely unrealistic. You can't pay a recurring cost by going farther into debt every year if you can never pay it back.
You can be poor, even with a million in such a market, and all that happens if you move somewhere cheaper to start again, is you perpetuate the cycle.
The question is whether the Georgist solution is more equitable than what we have today. But no system can magically solve the problem of supply and demand.
A bunch of poor people buy some cheap land with very low taxes because its a run down scruffy mess with no facilities.
The land stays a run down scruffy mess with no facilities because the local property owners have strong financial incentives to keep it that way
Incremental increases in the land value tax would make low income landowners hungry long before the land rose in value enough to make anyone millionaires, and land isn't exactly easy to sell quickly, especially not if it's marginally-less-shitty-than-before land with an uncertain future.
How massive depends on how long they stay into the boom.
Again, no one ever loses (financially) from prices going up.
All you get are options (financially).
If your home is direly important to you, and being close to family is important, too - you still have options.
1) Sell and move in with family and use your gains to help offset their property tax
2) build an ADU in your backyard / convert your garage to an apartment - and use the rental income to pay your fair share of property tax - plus have the majority left over for spending
3) continuously cash-out refinance to pay your property tax + your previous cash-out
No owner loses (financially) from property prices exploding.
And in the case of the Georgist system being discussed, a typical poor person who is living on a typically tight budget and typically doesn't own very much of their home equity has very strong financial incentives to avoid unaffordable tax rises. Sure, they still have "options" to pay that bill, just like unemployed people also have "options" to sell and move in with family, take on lodgers or refinance, but if the consequence of house price rises from are that you have to choose between sharing, moving or paying refinancing costs on your house it's definitely not a windfall. And they're not finally priced out of an area when it's a million pound plot attractive to developers who want to build condos, they're priced out of their still-very-undesirable area as soon as the LVT bumps up 20%, perhaps because some well meaning citizen planted flowers instead of syringes in the local park.
The other option, of course, is to try to keep your house in line with your cost of living by attempting to thwart all attempts to generally improve the area. I think it's pretty obvious a lot of people will choose that...
Play your scenario out.
A bunch of poor people buy 100 acres of land for $1, and they turn it into a paradise.
It becomes cool, so rich hipsters wanna buy up chunks to Instagram it.
The first person sells a patch of land he bought for $0.01 for $1M. Suddenly, property tax on everyone's $0.01 parcels shoots up from $0 to $12,000 per year.
These people have no jobs, so they can't afford $12,000 in taxes per year, so they're all forced to sell their properties to other hipsters on Instagram for $1M, too.
Well guess what?
Now they're millionaires.
I mean, technically, not. They've got some taxes to pay. But you get the idea.
No owners "lose" from property values shooting through the roof. ESPECIALLY not leveraged owners (mortgage holders).