benjiwengy

Consumption and automation are beneficial activities. Not smart to tax them.

Excluding others from a valuable natural resource is deeply immoral unless compensation to those excluded is paid.

The difficulty(or not) of measuring the "true value" of that compensation isn't a justifiable reason that we should as close to it as is reasonably possible.

The value of land is the opportunity cost of not putting it to its best use withing existing planning regulations/zoning.

Its is also the loss of opportunity suffered by those excluded with left uncompensated leads to a net transfer of incomes, capitalised into rental incomes and selling prices, and a misallocation of resources. Housing issues are purely a symptom of this economic injustice.

A Land Value Tax ends that net transfer, which is why the selling price of land falls to zero.

We have to have the cash when we pay selling prices, mortgage interest and rents. The LVT and these are economically one and the same thing, thus merely a substitution.

Not for existing homeowners admittedly, but certainly for those in the future.

Humans bring slaves and stolen goods to the market. Neither of which were supplied by slavers or thieves.

Same thing as natural resources. You are conflating two separate things.

What gives Land its economic value and meaning is its relative difference in productivity ie marginal vs inframarginal Land.

The Saudis are rich because their oil reserves are cheap to exploit relative to those found at the margin of production, like Canadian Tar Sands.

That difference isn't due to the efforts of the Saudis supplying it. It is purely natural advantage ie Land.

What is true of oil is true of all natural resources, but particularly 3D space ie Location.

Hope this helps.

Land is defined as everything not supplied by human effort. It is thus perfectly inelastic in supply.

Bringing land into use is a service ie Labor.

Hope this helps.

I don't think humans adding value with their time, and selling it on the market will ever stop. This has been a misplaced fear for thousands of years, yet we work just as hard as ever. Technology just makes us more productive. So will robots.

The argument for the LVT/BI is that it is not a benefit or a welfare payment, but should be view as a basic human property right. Without which, we are not free.

The LVT really only means we would all be equal share landlords of the value derived from scarce resources supplied for free by nature/god. Basic Income/Public spending is that equal share.

Without that, humans cannot share this Earth as equals, thus will not have taken the final step from being savages to truly civilized beings.

Yes, it really is that big a deal;)

No, a tax on the rental value of land would move the demand curve over to the left. This would reduce both rental incomes and selling prices. ie a reduction in demand. So the rise in rents would be cancelled out by the fall in selling prices. ie No inflation.

Landlords do not currently claim most of peoples disposable incomes. That ratio hasn't, nor would it change because renters get more income via the BI.

Landlords would in fact be keeping a lot less of peoples income once equilibrium has been reached.

There are no difficulties in separating the value of location from that of the buildings. Easy to do. Besides as far as LVT is concerned, its the structure rather than value taxed that is important. But I'd need to write more than I've got time for here to explain why that is.

The reason why a Basic Income paid out from a LVT is a good idea, is because it reduces costs by leveling the field for all participants in the immovable property market. So that market can then allocate resources at optimal efficiency.

A UBI paid out of taxes on produced factors (income,capital) distorts resource allocation, so we all end up poorer.

Rents would go up, but then so would the LVT and then the UBI until an equilibrium point is reached.

In the US, without any other changes to your tax/welfare system the LVT/UBI would result in every man,woman and child getting around $4000 each. That would rise as rents went up.

That would go up even further if other taxes and benefits were reduced.

No. Landlords will not just raise their rents. They are already charging the maximum the market will bear. However the result of LVT would increase the disposable incomes of those that rent, from which they will apportion some of on purchasing more/better location, the rest of more goods and services.

Rents will rise for this reason, and so will the amount an LVT can collect. But this isn't an infinite spiral. There will reach an equilibrium, as there is now, where renters apportion are certain % of their income on valuable locations. Which is collected by the landlord and taxed away by the LVT.

The LVT would not make landlords build denser housing, they have exactly the same incentive anyway. It would how ever reduced vacancy and under occupation among owner occupiers, and would increase the average size of dwellings, even if that meant they were more densely clustered by building upwards.