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by epistasis 924 days ago
I think your last sentence there bears out that you have enough bias on the issue that perhaps the real concern is that it allows sky scrapers.

Since dropping the LVT, Vancouver has used restrictive permitting and extreme downzoning to keep homeowners very wealthy, but also keep a far larger number of people from having access to land in Vancouver.

In a normal city, you don't go from sprawl of single family homes to sky shapers, you have gradual addition of duplexes, then triplexes, then a smattering of small apartment buildings, and finally, only then perhaps, taller towers in a very tiny number of locations.

This is the reality of normal development that has not been restricted by zoning. That Vancouver has so restricts housing that a skyscraper is tenable in so many locations next to sprawl homes is an indictment of the lack of so many other options in between.

Certainly not a problem for a land value tax, that's a societal problem is a city ruined by exclusionary planning.

1 comments

I have no problem with skyscraper. I'm for the abolition of taxes, which are in practice a massive transfer of wealth from poorer to richer. LVT is a transfer of tax balance from those unable to improve their land, to the rich who can. LVT accelerates this balance towards the skyscraper landlord-baron.
Those who hate taxes, and have investigated them, universally point to the LVT as the "least bad tax."

Now, I'm not opposed to taxes, but given the choice between taxes that increase prosperity and taxes that decrease prosperity, I'm picking the ones that make us all wealthier and remove rentierism.

If you think that all taxes are "in practice a massive transfer of wealth from poorer to richer" I'm not sure you have a solid understanding of taxation.

If you think that LVT creates "landlord barons" then you really have zero understanding of the LVT. It eliminates the rentierism that creates barons. It takes their land rents and redistributes them to productive uses. That's the entire point.

> Those who hate taxes, and have investigated them, universally point to the LVT as the "least bad tax."

Can you post links to specific analysis work of these people?

> If you think that LVT creates "landlord barons" then you really have zero understanding of the LVT.

That's difficult to believe. The consequence of LVT is to remove regular people from owning homes in order to transfer it to wealthy corporations who can afford major developments.

I continue to be curious how LVT is supposed to be benefitial for regular people but I've yet to see any evidence in that direction.