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The whole economy. If your cost of living is higher (due to LVT), the minimum wage you will work for is higher. The amount of discretionary spending (someone e

The whole economy. If your cost of living is higher (due to LVT), the minimum wage you will work for is higher. The amount of discretionary spending (someone else's income) or investment you can make is lower. Obviously these effects on an individual level are small, but when aggregated across the entire economy are very large. In a world of LVT, everyone pays LVT because everyone lives somewhere. You either pay it as an owner or its passed through to you in rent prices. It will be passed onto you in the food you eat (which was grown on land), in the products you use (which were manufactured in a physical place), in the internet services you use (which are run on data centers on physical land), and so on. In this way, it is much like all other taxes. What is special about LVT, and not other taxes, is that LVT create a disincentive against land speculation (using land as an investment rather than for living or productive use).

sethammons 16d ago
What prevents this system from resource exploitation for more taxable profits? I want to have systems in place that encourage nature and long term sustainability.
- jaredklewis 14d ago
  Does LVT create a moral hazard? I don't think so. Have we seen municipal governments with liquor taxes rush to run pro-alcohol ad campaigns and relax night life restrictions in order to maximize tax revenues? No. Have carbon taxes motivated governments to promote carbon use? Again, we have no evidence of that. Indeed, for pretty much ever tax ever studied, we find the relationship you would imagine: increasing taxes on X, reduces X. So in that way, since LVT just adds to the cost to exploit any resource, it will reduce exploitation of nature. But more importantly, LVT is in no way incompatible with other regulations or restrictions on land use. i.e. you can have LVT and a law against strip mining.

sethammons 16d ago

What prevents this system from resource exploitation for more taxable profits? I want to have systems in place that encourage nature and long term sustainability.

jaredklewis 14d ago
Does LVT create a moral hazard? I don't think so. Have we seen municipal governments with liquor taxes rush to run pro-alcohol ad campaigns and relax night life restrictions in order to maximize tax revenues? No. Have carbon taxes motivated governments to promote carbon use? Again, we have no evidence of that. Indeed, for pretty much ever tax ever studied, we find the relationship you would imagine: increasing taxes on X, reduces X. So in that way, since LVT just adds to the cost to exploit any resource, it will reduce exploitation of nature. But more importantly, LVT is in no way incompatible with other regulations or restrictions on land use. i.e. you can have LVT and a law against strip mining.