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by ThrustVectoring 3290 days ago
>What, exactly, do landlords contribute to society?

Efficient allocation of resources to property development. Although that's just a technical distinction, you can get rid of it by separating out the improved vs unimproved value of land (the former is much less problematic than the latter).

>All money means is that you convinced someone else to give you money at some point in life.

Presumably, the convincing is because giving you money is better than the alternatives.
2 comments
maxerickson 3290 days ago
The efficiency there is their contribution to the economy. I think often it is not much of a contribution to society.

(compare a pleasant and profitable development to a development designed to exploit government incentives...the latter may well be more "efficient" in terms of economy)

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dgfgfdagasdfgfa 3290 days ago
So—this means the value of a landlord is directly proportional to the minimization of their profits.

Unfortunately, that's also more than you can expect from humans who know they can charge more and find tenants.

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ThrustVectoring 3290 days ago
Yeah, that's how capital markets work in general. If you can charge more and still find a tenant, you're replacing low-value land use with higher-value land use. This is particularly true in commercial real estate. Though that's kind of a side issue to my original point: the excess profits attracts and incentivizes similar investment, which increases the cost of investment, which lowers profit down to the general waterline of the economy.
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dgfgfdagasdfgfa 3289 days ago
If anything, this has convinced me that public transit and other public services should be funded entirely with property tax.
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ThrustVectoring 3289 days ago
Georgism brings up some really fantastic points along this line.

If you want to be technically pedantic, exclude the value of improvements on the property. You don't really want to tax the act of replacing an empty lot with a $10MM factory. You do want to tax the right to use land within the catchment of the various services the state provides. Land isn't produced, so you can't disincentivize producing it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

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