8 ms·

My high-school economics teacher taught us Georgism is the optimal form of taxation. He gave us a bunch of dense math to back up that claim, but I can remember

• s1artibartfast 9d ago
  There is no optimal form of taxation, only trade-offs. There is shifting burdens from good to good or person to person. I find it no surprise that so many of the loudest proponents for georgism are highly compensated tech workers with low physical consumption - exactly the demographic that would be favored most under that system.
  • wat10000 9d ago
    We tend to own property in places where land is expensive, we'd be paying hefty taxes in a Georgist system.
    • reverius42 9d ago
      It would also help incentivize real improved use of expensive property, and less speculative investment without improvement, perhaps leading to lower prices (thus lower land value, and lower taxes), perhaps reaching some kind of equilibrium with better improved land use in expensive areas, less speculation resulting in the expensive areas being less expensive, and more equitable taxation than our current system.
      • estearum 9d ago
        Yes basically you should expect to see significant densification with significant competition in how appealing to the market you can make that level of density (since you as the developer keep all the upside).
        • s1artibartfast 8d ago
          I would actually expect to see a reduction in densification if a LVT is more expensive than current property taxes. While it obviously encourages putting high value land to greater use, it also encourages avoiding high value land itself. If the tax burden of your San Francisco house or office doubles, you may look into relocating to where land is cheaper. It obviously depends on the rates.
    • s1artibartfast 9d ago
      I would expect that land usage favors the very rich, but not nearly as much as income. Georgism does a excellent job of incentivising better land use, but is trivial to shelter income from. A teacher renting a run down aprtment might have a similar land tax footprint to a tech ceo in a taller building, or maybe the ceo just teleworks from home in Wyoming. xAI or whomever puts their next Mega server farm on undesirable land, and then operates basically tax-free. The end of day problem with the Georgist theory is that we now live in a knowledge and information economy, not an industrial one governed by material inputs. Changing a 1 to a 0 on a string of bits might yeild a billion dollar profit, but requires no material overhead.
      • estearum 9d ago
        You seem to think the point of a taxation scheme is to tax everything. It's not. It's to 1) fund services while 2) minimizing distortions. If someone can consume land of no value and produce huge amounts of value from it, that's a good thing. They should be entitled to as much upside as they can produce.
        • s1artibartfast 9d ago
          Im more a small goverment type. That said, the point of a taxation scheme is not to "minimize distortions". If you think that is important, thats fine, but it isn't a commonly held position. Funnily, It is mostly Georgists that think it is a very important property of a tax.
          • wat10000 9d ago
            I'm curious as to how a small government type would be so derisive toward the idea of a goal of minimizing distortions in taxation. "Minimize distortions" is another way of saying that the tax minimizes government interference in the economy. Seems like exactly the sort of thing a small government type would want.
            • s1artibartfast 8d ago
  • imtringued 9d ago
    Georgism makes it possible for the government to profit off the infrastructure it builds, which makes it possible to fund public transportation projects without the tax payer having to pay income tax. Instead the people who benefit from the infrastructure have the bill for the public transportation system rolled into their land value tax. Right now in the current system you pay both income taxes and then you pay the landlord again because to him as the monopoly owner of land, the public infrastructure is pure producer surplus. The demographic that would be favoured under that system is people who work for a living and the people being disadvantaged are the ones sitting on land or extracting the producer surplus.
• slopinthebag 9d ago
  The optimal form of taxation is none
  • antisthenes 9d ago
    Coincidentally, that's also the optimal number of libertarians.
    • slopinthebag 9d ago
      Coincidentally, that’s how much you contribute to the discussion
    • s1artibartfast 9d ago
      Most libertarians think government institutions and their services are essential for society to function. They aren't anarchists after all.
      • antisthenes 9d ago
        They should really hold a group discussion then and talk about how they present themselves to the outgroup. Because in my experience talking with them, most don't, and the vast majority are anti-federal organizations of any kind. And these have been multiple discussions over the course of 20+ years.
        • slopinthebag 9d ago
          That’s because unlike other political factions that treat politics as a team sport and prioritize group identity, libertarians tend to be free thinkers and have their own opinions and views.
          • estearum 9d ago
            I can predict virtually every single opinion a self-labeled "libertarian" has about the world. Now granted, among the people who are actually free-thinkers and have their own opinions, you will find many libertarian-adjacent views, but I've found that those people do not refer to themselves as libertarians.