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Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by lend000 on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @01:53PM (#37918890)
No, there's a big difference. If someone bought a house and gets priced out of the house due to massive increases in value in the neighborhood and overall market, they reap the rewards of selling the house, because they owned the property. I don't believe tax increases should be slowed like they are in California -- that's a big part of the housing problem IMO.

Whereas in an LVT system, a person just gets priced out as the neighborhood increases in value with nothing to show for it, even if they spent money to build the house itself.

Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by mactrey on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @04:50PM (#37921405)
No, you are wrong. The two cases are analogous. Under a LVT, if their tax goes up, it's because their land became more valuable. So when they sell they get more money. And under a LVT, if they spend money to build or improve a house, then they also get a benefit when they sell for a corresponding higher price. It's just that those improvements would not be reflected in a higher tax bill.
Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by lend000 on Tuesday October 17, 2023 @06:35PM (#37922508)
Sell what to who? Isn't everyone a lessor under Georgism?

I don't see how having regular auctions to determine what the land is actually worth is compatible with true land ownership. You auction the land to determine the tax, someone pays more than the current lessor, then that highest bidder gets to lease the land from the government and kick out the old lessor. Where does ownership of land and ability to sell it and profit from improvements come into play?

Unless you are in the Georgism-lite camp that says no auctions, just let government appraisers put value on the land as they do today and base the property tax on that exclusively instead of the current combined property tax. In this case you still have property ownership/buying/selling, which is far superior. I think the pros could outweigh the cons in limited situations, specifically downtown metro areas. But you have to accept a lot of bad pricing in this scenario, because these are the same assessors who allow all of those single story parking lots to profitably exist in downtown metros throughout the country.

Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by TulliusCicero on Wednesday October 18, 2023 @07:14PM (#37936069)
> I don't see how having regular auctions to determine what the land is actually worth is compatible with true land ownership. You auction the land to determine the tax, someone pays more than the current lessor, then that highest bidder gets to lease the land from the government and kick out the old lessor. Where does ownership of land and ability to sell it and profit from improvements come into play?

Nobody's actually suggesting randomly auctioning off people's land at periodic time intervals.

You're arguing with ghosts.

Re:Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax la... by lend000 on Thursday October 19, 2023 @02:29AM (#37939245)
> Nobody's actually suggesting randomly auctioning off people's land at periodic time intervals

You might be surprised if you visit r/georgism.

But the point is that if you don't do auctions, you don't know how to price the LVT, and you don't actually know if the resulting inefficiencies are more significant than the core problem with taxing productive land use that Georgism tries to address.

> You're arguing with ghosts.

You're selectively arguing with a fraction of a comment.