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Originally Posted by
Steven Douglas
The "intended system"? Whose intended system, specifically? Whose intentions?
Mine, of course. I'm not trying to defend other people's erroneous ideas. Life's too short.
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And why would that not be open to dispute?
That would be an ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
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Is there something inherently indisputable about an intention?
Yes. If you are not talking about the intended system, you are just trying to change the subject.
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Red herring, as those are examples of lands reserved for actual use.
The folks who typically hoard land completely out of use are land speculators, not governments, and they are waiting for capital gains, not pursuing rent income.
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The United States has a total land area of nearly 2.3 billion acres.
Forest-use land, 651 million acres (28.8 percent)
Grassland pasture and range land, 587 million acres (25.9 percent)
Cropland, 442 million acres (19.5 percent)
Special uses (primarily parks and wildlife areas), 297 million acres (13.1 percent)
Miscellaneous other uses, 228 million acres (10.1 percent)
Urban land, 60 million acres (2.6 percent).
Out of that 2.3 BILLION ACRES, I am not referring to Urban land, Special uses, or other land that is actually put to some use. And the value of those particular lands is irrelevant, as they are not on the market, not available for use. There's over a BILLION acres of land that is not put to any use whatsoever. I would be forcibly excluded from using them.
But of course, your claims are just objectively false. The billion acres you are apparently referring to are being used for forestry, grazing cattle, etc. The land is merely being used for things that you choose to call, "nothing." Furthermore, you would not be excluded from them. There's no reason to exclude you from them.
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Government at all times has built-in incentive to increase revenues. IF the market truly did decide the value of all lands, artificial scarcity (via land reserves, zoning laws, special use restrictions, etc.,) are most certainly a way to increase those revenues.
Nope. The land market is always a monopoly market. That means one rational (i.e., profit-maximizing) landowner will act the same as a million rational landowners. So if the government wants to maximize its revenue, it can only do so by charging what the market will bear on all the land. Any attempt to game the market by holding land out of use will lose more revenue on the idle land than can be gained through the increased price of the rest of the land. The only time this relationship doesn't hold is when the idle land is an actual amenity for users of nearby land, like a park in an urban area. There is a certain level and distribution of parkland that maximizes the total land rent of an urban or suburban area. But that condition obviously doesn't apply to the vast areas of marginal or sub-marginal land you are talking about.
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The reason that incentive is most definitely in place: Not all commerce requires a major metropolitan hive center from which to operate, and WILL move to the cheapest, most economically feasible areas they can find. With LVT in place as a single tax - that means CAPITAL FLIGHT to the least expensive lands.
Nonsense. It just means capital will seek its most appropriate and productive allocation, rather than having to account for the opportunity cost of land appreciation. Your position is simply absurd. The expensive lands are expensive BECAUSE users are willing to pay so much to use them.
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Hershey specifically chose Oakdale, CA, to build a big plant, and received all kinds of tax breaks to do this, on the assumption that it would provide work for those in the community. The problem - the plant was mostly automated, and provided less than 600 jobs. Oakdale and other areas with similar problems finally addressed that problem -- and Hershey ultimately responded by moving its
American and Canadian plants to Mexico.
So? The problem was the local government's attempt to second-guess the market. Hershey just took advantage of a proffered gift of land value. LVT ends all such nonsense.
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Yeah, until someone (read=MANY) say, "You can keep all your wonderful publicly created value. I'll shop elsewhere -- if I am not forcibly excluded from doing so, thanks."
Fine. So what? You don't seem able to comprehend that LAND VALUE AUTOMATICALLY MEASURES AND ACCOUNTS FOR ALL SUCH PREFERENCES.
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IF the market actually determined the land value, and that value was not distorted -- meaning that land was not made artificially scarce. Which the State has the built-in incentive to manipulate.
Refuted above. You just don't understand what fixity of supply implies.
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That's your red herring.
No, it's a reminder to you that you speak for yourself, not others.
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Bully for those "lots of ordinary people" who actually do choose to live on "very small amounts of very valuable land" in a concrete metropolitan hive. That's them, and their choices, and not a model for everyone to follow. There are also "lots of ordinary people" who would not make that choice, and want nothing whatsoever to do with high-rises or anything that resembles a concrete hive. To me it looks like insanity, and a recipe for something "not-so-human". But I've lived in them, and see why it appeals to some. What does that have to do with those who would NOT make that choice, and want to live as far from that as possible?
LVT gives everyone the opportunity to pay for exactly as much government as he wants.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss
I was quoting wiki, which can always be wrong. Instead of merely asserting that I do not know what deadweight loss is, perhaps you could expound, and actually make an argument and explain why my understanding is wrong. Or, better yet, explain what you believe deadweight loss to be, and why my reference (which I did not write) or anything I wrote about it fell short of the mark in your mind.
Deadweight loss is not just some circumstance some individual doesn't like. It's a reduction in the AGGREGATE production of goods and services as a result of the disincentive effect of a tax.
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You can KNOCK THAT CRAP OFF NOW. We have all been warned against making ad hominem attacks. I have stopped making them. Do likewise.
So instead you make outlandish accusations about what a government that used LVT "would" do, like deprive people of access to low-value land for no reason. Cute.
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Wrong. Exactly the opposite, since free market competition is ostensibly the primary value determinant, and therefore revenues.
Nope. You do not understand the implications of land's fixity of supply. The government CANNOT increase total revenue by holding large areas of low-value land out of use, because what it loses on the swings, it cannot make up on the roundabouts. By forcing an inefficient allocation, it could only reduce total available land rent. It can only gain by holding land out of use to the extent that the vacant land functions as an amenity -- like "green space" in urban areas -- for users of nearby land.
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The success of LVT requires active competition for land that would drive up revenues. A finite number of competitors actively pursuing an equally finite quantity of land.
The quantity of land is not only finite (everything is finite -- except the stupidity and dishonesty of apologists for landowner privilege, of course) but FIXED. You basically just haven't accepted the economic implications of fixed supply.
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All your seeming knowledge, and you seem not to comprehend the basic fundamental role that supply scarcity plays in economics, including value, price and revenues.
The supply of land is FIXED. An ordinary monopoly increases its profits by reducing supply below the market clearing price. Land is not like that. Because the supply is fixed, its production cost is zero. That means there is no way to reduce costs by reducing production, and no way to increase aggregate profit by taking any of the supply off the market.
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Land is not the only thing that has a finite quantity. In the moment, so are competitors for all land. If the government opened up all land for use under an LVT regime, more land would mean less people competing for the same land that was otherwise limited in supply. That would place downward pressure on land values in the aggregate.
No. You are getting confused with the economics of a normal monopoly. Land rent is economic advantage as already revealed in the market. By taking some land off the market, you can increase the rent of substitutable parcels; but unless that idle land actually increases the usefulness of nearby land, total rent will decline because some of the resource is being misallocated.
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Hence, less revenue overall, as each competitor for land pays less overall.
Wrong. That's your mistake. Each competitor doesn't pay less, because the competitors who wanted to use the land being held vacant aren't using other land as productively. They can't compete with the more efficient users of the other land, so they end up paying less for land -- so much less that the total rent is less -- and not being as productive.
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Increased productivity from greater use could EVENTUALLY result in increase revenues, but that would be to those communities only, and a long way off - like to the tune of generations.
You'd see increased economic growth almost instantly.