| > tech investor and app innovator who believes that if used right, technology can bring an end to income inequality and a hosts of other social and economic problems. If this implies using technology to deliver greater public services more efficiently, it is unlikely to solve structural inequality. If you deliver public services more effectively and make California a more attractive place to live, then land values will rise, and landowners and mortgage investors can charge even higher rent. The primary driver of inequality is housing costs and the only combination which would allow for high public spending on services and low rent paid to landholders and banks is switching state revenue from income, sales, and personal property taxes to a land value tax. You can incentivize an incremental switch to land value taxation by sponsoring legislation which would allow residents to obtain an exemption from all state taxes if they lived in a county which made quarterly payments to the state on their behalf. If a county can figure out how to get around Proposition 13 and raise local revenues from quarterly assessed unimproved land values sufficient to pay for both local and state services, it should be allowed to forward a portion of the money to the state in exchange for exemptions from state taxes for residents. From a technical standpoint, it would be great if there was a public map of a single land value tax rate for every parcel of land in the state. However private developers could build this using data published by the county governments. |