Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by sorcerer-mar 342 days ago
Hot take: that’s actually desirable.

Sell and let someone who can make better use of it (i.e. more readily stomach the property tax) take possession.

Calcified landed gentry just sitting on dirt that appreciates due to the efforts and investments of everyone around them is Bad, Actually.

1 comments

Not for those of us who like our home and have made a life here.

What you're advocating for is treating potential club members better than current club members. It doesn't make that much sense.

If you really were advocating for sensible policies, you would be advocating for many many more multifamily dwellings and/or taxes being directly proportional to the cost of the infrastructure needed to support it--generally by linear feet of roadway taken instead of property square feet.

No I'm advocating for the prevention of feudalism where a permanent landed gentry can extract wealth in perpetuity through no contribution whatsoever than having a deed.

I agree that property square feet is a bad metric. The right way to do this is actually to tax based on the unimproved value of the land, which would in fact create many many more multifamily dwellings by virtue of increasing the carrying cost of land as the market demand for density increases.

In my opinion, a person should not be forced to move just because of economic circumstances outside their control. Unless you're a spry 20-something with no real connections, moving will be incredibly disruptive and potentially traumatic.

One person's "landed gentry" is another's "housing stability."

In my opinion, options should be balanced against each other and then we should pick the least-bad or most-good ones.

The "allow zero carrying costs indefinitely on any land" option entails runaway wealth inequality, skyrocketing housing costs, major impediments to family and household formation, and destruction of the payoff period for any capital expenditures made in a geography as younger generations have to create new cities from scratch over and over again, creating enormous financially unsustainable infrastructure sprawl (see: Houston) as redevelopment is too difficult against the vested interests of the landed gentry (see: NYC and SF). This of course causes decay, bankrupts cities and states, and ends up reducing the quality of life for everyone, including the landed gentry.

The "incur carrying costs" option entails old people reverse mortgaging their property until they die, or selling and moving into something more suitable for their needs.