[shimman]

The government already has and does do exactly this. Is this suppose to be a gotcha? If you have very valuable property, you should pay taxes on it. Claiming that you have ownership over land on this planet is odd, you didn't create the land and governments change overtime.

[GS523523]

Property taxes are the most evil of taxes because they force you out onto the street if you're unable to pay them. Qualifying it with the words "very valuable" to solve the problem creates an arbitrary two-tier system that is inherently unfair.

>Claiming that you have ownership over land on this planet is odd, you didn't create the land and governments change overtime.

The government didn't create the land either.

[lotsofpulp]

Property taxes are the most just of all taxes because they are the most correlated with your consumption. Speficially, the land value tax portion of property tax (ideally, that is the whole component).

>The government didn't create the land either.

The government did create the peace and order that allows you to sleep at night on your land without having to worry about another tribe taking your land from you. Without an ability to defend it, "your" land is a tenuous label.

The government, and the rest of society, also pays a hefty price routing utilities, police, ambulances, and people around your property's borders. The more property you have, the more it costs the rest of society, not just in money, but in time.

Earned income taxes are the most evil of all taxes. Why would you have to pay for the act of providing value to society?

[kiba]

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Because it is politicaly unpalatable to tax landowners, we tax economic activity instead.

The result is that return on effort are reduced. That mean labor, entrepreneurs, and capital bear the burden of supporting government budgets as opposed to landowners who benefit from the economic activity making their land valuable.

Taxes as a rule discourages whatever get taxed. The exception to this is land, because land isn't created. It already exists in nature.

Don't tax what people make, tax what people took.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Historically speaking, I am not sure if humans argued that they have created the land and therefore they should be allowed to use it. Ownership of the land and its use is, rather, simply tied to one's ability to retain it ( possession being 9/10ths of the law and all that ).

[estearum]

Yes, you are correctly identifying that all land rights stem from one's ability to claim nature's productive power as his own and monopolize all output from it.

This was self-evident in the feudal era, when landlords (Lords) had to at least raise their own militaries to assert this monopoly right. But the modern State and the landlords reached a compromise: the State will provide security to protect the lords' monopoly on nature so long as the landlords don't raise armed forces.

Totally absurd arrangement.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

It may be absurd, but do you have a workable framework that can replace it? If not, it makes zero to no difference whether it is absurd or not. It works for the society in place.

[estearum]

Yes. A high land value tax prevents the capture of unearned wealth by owners of land without introducing market inefficiencies or price distortions.

The current arrangement demonstrably does not work for society in place, and as AI (whether in this wave of innovation or the next) increases productivity further, it will work less and less by virtue of further increasing land rents, thereby pricing out larger and larger swaths of society from a place to live, work, or otherwise exist.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

Huh? Last time I checked, municipalities big and small fight for every bit of investments they can get and they typically get it by offering a swath of incentives at the cost of the actual taxpayer. That high value land ends up being tax free for the actually wealthy while a schmuck like me get his bill increased and argues with otherwise well-meaning people that akshually high taxes are good for me.

[estearum]

What are you arguing here?

It seems like you're arguing that the people who own high value land should pay higher taxes than those who don't.

I agree!