[hushpuppy]

> 'economic rents' are not the colloquial 'rent' we pay for housing we don't own. economic rents are UNproductive, meaning simply income produced by ownership itself, rather than in the productive delivery of service (in this case, housing). LVT only seeks to tax away that unproductive part (economic rents). the productive part would include the costs of mortgage(s), insurance, utilities, upkeep, and a small profit (aka risk premium).

Except the LVT premise is bullshit.

Lets say I have a house I rent out for 1800 dollars a month. About 500 dollars of that will go to taxes (income, property, etc).

Out of the rest I take 600 dollars and am in the process of fixing up two more houses that I bought from a tax sale that were made unlivable through crackhead squatters.

So that leaves me about 700 dollars more. Out of that I need to save probably about 300 dollars a month to cover costs associated with owning homes. Such as the need to replace roofs or water heaters or hire arborist to take down dying trees before they destroy my neighbor's property, etc.

Then that leaves me with 400 dollars that I reinvest in other companies. So it goes to doing thing like buying bonds, etc.

The only thing that is "unproductive" here is the money being paid to the federal governemnt to go murder brown people half way around the world.

The entire intellectual basis of this "Georgian" stuff is completely bogus. The theories about monopolies are wrong. The theories about how to solve the tragedy of the commons is wrong as well. The economic efficiency theories are wrong, etc etc etc.

[TimPC]

So you say you have $1000/month out of $1800 that are unrelated to providing rent in the unit being rented and you feel there is no possibility that you're capturing some sort of economic rent when you have more than 50% profit margin on the rent you charge. I think something is bullshit but it's not the economic theory.

[smeeth]

You appear to be arguing that if you spend income in a productive way then the income was productive income.

That's simply incorrect, it's not how economics works. For example, if I stole $2000 from you and used it to fix houses/invest it would not magically become productive income.

The comment above you is pointing out that excess income a landlord makes because people are willing to pay a premium to lease a scarce or rare good they own doesn't contribute to the rest of the economy in the same way selling a hotdog does. Ergo, unproductive income.

[imtringued]

One of the absurd things about our modern economy (it's actually a recurring problem) is that we keep spending more and more on the same on already existing values. People complain about ever increasing debt and borrowing but most of that money isn't even being spent "into" the economy, it's just used to buy land from rich individuals.

The reason why this is not "productive", is pretty straight forward. It's unproductive because nothing is being produced. We are selling what's already there long before humans existed.

[geocon]

Really? Care to tell that to the various Nobel laureate economists who have endorsed land value taxation? Do you really think you understand economics better than Paul Samuelson, Milton Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz, William Vickrey?

[klyrs]

Regardless of my vehement disagreement with GP, you're attempting an [appeal to authority](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority) which is utterly unconvincing.

[User23]

Compounded by the fact that there are no Nobel Laureate economists.

And that those supposed authorities have been teaching absolute nonsense like loanable funds.

If you want to learn about the economy, the only useful option is to look to working market participants. Some rando at the fixed income desk has forgotten more about how the economy works than those pompous frauds.

[imtringued]

Hey, I like loanable funds in a 100% reserve system with demurrage but that is not the world we live in