Why is it assumed true that individuals do not contribute to the increasing appeal of their neighborhood?
What if I voted for pro-theme park politicians? Or what if I volunteered my time to clean up the community parks and shared space? What if I helped improve the reputation of my child’s school by volunteering and donating to the music department?
My taxes fund the maintenance of public infrastructure and services, and my actions support the civic good. If I vote to be cheap or generous with taxes, or choose to be lazy or ambitious in community support, that all contributes to the desirability of the land around me.
> Why is it assumed true that individuals do not contribute to the increasing appeal of their neighborhood?
Two things are true:
1. I should have been more precise in my language. "You didn't do anything to make that happen" is a useful generality and not a prescription of every single individual in the community. In this case, we're talking about fairness - which I don't actually care much about myself, but is a point that people most often can emotionally identify with. But, to continue, if you're carrying all that water on behalf of your land value, then good for you! You likely have an existing stake in the community, other than the land that you own (maybe the businesses or houses or other property built on that land or you own a local services business). That is great! The fairness comes from owning the finite resource of land, and not something others can provide (housing, businesses, etc.). I hope you do continue to contribute to your local community and increase its appeal!
2. Your fixation on this point reveals a very fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of an LVT (surely partially my fault). It has to do with efficient taxation. Dollar equal, it's better that your taxes come from the value of the fixed resources of your community rather than things that can be increased. Because then you don't have a depressing effect on productivity and the things, other than land, that make your community nice. It's better that you keep more money from the things you _do_ for your community instead of the monopolies you hold in your community.
I disagree with the fundamental premise on both parts.
> "You didn't do anything to make that happen" is a useful generality and not a prescription of every single individual in the community.
In fact, everyone does contribute, positively or negatively, to their community. Either through involvement or absenteeism, or somewhere in between.
> Your fixation on this point reveals a very fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of an LVT
The goal is obvious and not a misunderstanding. The goal is a bad goal, precisely because it punishes positive involvement in the community. To improve the community means to increase your own cost of staying.
Imagine someone wants to avoid displacement due to their taxes increasing beyond their ability to pay. I don’t know why they would want to stay in their economically “inefficient” house, but perhaps it’s because home is where the heart is and they have sentimental attachment to their home.
If they want to keep your housing costs down, the best thing to do is poison the ground (metaphorically or literally) because it decreases the “productivity” of the land. Box stores in America famously pay low property taxes because building a box store actually decreases property values - they’re expensive to demolish and limited in utility, while being an eye sore that makes the neighborhood higher traffic and less undesirable. Mississippi as a state is cheap because the voters used the government to destroy public services - it’s in someone’s best interest to do this in a Georgism world if they don’t want to be regularly displaced.
Quite the contrary, it rewards positive involvement in the community and it punishes anti social involvement in the community (leaving your lot empty, letting your neighbors create a vibrant community you do not contribute to, and then selling at a large profit anyway). The reward is the taxes you're not paying on the positive productivity you're bringing to your community (which is how we're currently punishing those who make their communities nicer).
> If they want to keep your housing costs down, the best thing to do is poison the ground (metaphorically or literally) because it decreases the “productivity” of the land
Yes, if you collapse multi-dimensional problems into a single dimension you can find many logical oddities. If I wanted an easier time finding a doctors appointment, I should murder every non healthcare professional in my local area until all of their calendars are totally clear. Wanting cheaper healthcare is evil! You're really saying things for the sake of saying them and I'm not going to engage further or explain to you when you're saying irrelevant things.
> it’s in someone’s best interest to do this in a Georgism world if they don’t want to be regularly displaced.
Under the majority of proposed LVT policies (and the ones I support) the vast majority of American housing would see a decrease in net property taxes paid since the majority of American's Building / Land value ratio is orders of magnitude higher than the average parking lot, land speculator, etc.
> I should murder every non healthcare professional
Crazy comparison to Walmarts lowering their own property tax because building a Walmart makes future land use less attractive.
(Same thing applies to gas stations which do literally poison their own land)
> I'm not going to engage further or explain to you when you're saying irrelevant things.
Don’t engage that’s fine, but I gave a specific example of a common way to use land (box stores), which explicitly breaks the LVT model. People today use land for many economic activities that are expensive to repurpose, or impose negative externalities.
> the idea of being displaced at the end of your life out of the home
I would argue that this is unpopular not only amongst retirees but everyone. And it would have tons of negative side effects.
Why would I fix up my house to look nice, if I’ll be displaced? Why would I invest in my child’s local school system, if we could be displaced? Why would I do any community outreach or support, or get involved in local politics? How can banks underwrite loans if the affordability can fluctuate wildly? Look at the life of people who live in mobile homes and trailer parks - they essentially rent the land, and it’s oppressive because they can’t afford to move (actually moving or repurposing land is hard) but their cost to stay is unpredictable.
The only people this is appealing for are people who fancy themselves analytically minded economists with no interest in the practical humanity of the people living there and renters hoping to finally do the displacing for their own affordability.
> The only people this is appealing for are people who fancy themselves analytically minded economists with no interest in the practical humanity
Most states in the US do not have Prop-13-like laws and get by just fine. For the few states that do, they are less restrictive taxation-wise than California's.
Prop 13 has completely distorted the housing market; it is, perhaps unintuitively, a co-cause of CA's housing unaffordability issues. (Prop 13 discourages new development, and is an enabler of housing NIMBYism.)
We of course shouldn't just abolish Prop 13 overnight, or lots of people will get displaced, also overnight. But we should absolutely reform it and phase it out over time, while building more housing, as fast as we can (something that will be a little bit easier to do as all the NIMBYs realize that if they keep shooting down housing projects, their property taxes are gonna go up a ton).
> Prop 13 has completely distorted the housing market; it is, perhaps unintuitively, a co-cause of CA's housing unaffordability issues. (Prop 13 discourages new development, and is an enabler of housing NIMBYism.)
I have heard this assertion with no proof or backing data a lot. There is an assumption but no explanation how kicking long time residents out of their homes due to tax pressure is a benefit to the community, or real estate market prices. Real estate agents and other service companies might benefit from more transactions.
There is also usually no mention that the main problem of Prop 13 is that it applies to commercial and industrial properties, not just individual primary residences. Individuals have a limited impact scoped to their life, but tax implications applied to long term corporations is what has an outsized effect.
Prop 13 isn't for seniors, though, it's for all ages. And the heirs inherit the tax base. A senior-only prop 13 would reset at death, so at least it's limited in duration.
Most states also rely on sales taxes and various fees, and assign limited property taxes. A Georgist land value tax would have much greater effects than the current tax regimes.
Prop 13 is a bit of a nothingburger anyhow when you consider median homeownership period in CA is only like 2 years longer than national average, rather than the myth that seems to be perpetuated of every home being a 40+ year hold paying a couple dollars in property taxes. And when that home is sold the tax assessment of course goes right back to market rate, and boy that is substantial when you have what would be a 450k home outside of Boston go for 2.1m with a 1% tax. 21 thousand a year off a single 50ft wide lot is no slouch in terms of tax revenue.
> And when that home is sold the tax assessment of course goes right back to market rate, and boy that is substantial when you have what would be a 450k home outside of Boston go for 2.1m with a 1% tax. 21 thousand a year off a single 50ft wide lot is no slouch in terms of tax revenue.
The problem is all the tax revenue being lost at the municipality level for decades. National tenure average is ~12 years. Los Angeles is 20 years, SF is 16.5 and SJC is in between. It clearly has a meaningful effect, it's just harder to buy into the market and keep the home over a long period of time.
San Francisco receives over $3,000 per capita in property tax revenue alone. Dallas receives about $1,200 per capita. NYC is less than $1,000, though I gather NYC has their own property tax issues.
And California has an income tax, whereas Texas doesn't.
Prop 13 has it's problems, but I don't think they're as significant as the rhetoric claims. It makes for a great excuse, though. Politicians can blame Prop 13 for why they can't spend as much on services as people demand, and now it's become the common wisdom--but for Prop 13 California could afford to spend much more than it does, and the housing affordability crisis would end, too. It's just wishful thinking.
I remember when Prop 13 was on the ballot. The newspaper reported that if it passed, it would eviscerate the police and fire budgets. It passed, and nothing happened to the budgets.
I don’t think the housing affordability crisis ends and I don’t think that’s the right way to model it. SF has one of, if not the highest, $/sq ft in the US. And prop 13 is suppressing it - estimates indicate that property taxes revenues would double meaning that 2.5k/person would become 5k.
And remember that that 2.5k/person is only for residential properties. commercial properties still fall under prop 13 and that’s about 50-60 of the other tax. So a full repeal would make it closer to 10k/person instead of the current 5k.
I agree the story on rents and home prices would be unclear because ultimately the people might move and just rent out their homes with property taxes baling into the new rental price.
Also seems unlikely. It might depress housing prices and act as a natural counterbalance (but then rents and Col drops too). I think it’s really hard to model.
I don't think housing costs would drop that much, if at all. What matters is the monthly mortgage payment. Property prices drop when property taxes go up, but mortgage payments tends to stay similar.
In one sense that sounds like free money for the state. However, home equity constitutes the largest share of savings for people, and that's more true the lower down the income ladder you go. So you're taking money out of the working- and middle-class. In some circles home equity is considered a poor savings vehicle, but they don't seem to consider that it's the only secured loan most people can access for leveraged investment. It's the only investment available to most people that let's them leverage capital markets the way the very wealthy can.
And FWIW, residential rents also track monthly mortgage payments, so renters aren't likely to see any difference, either. On average renters pay roughly the same amount per month they'd pay as owners, just without building any equity. I suppose they might be slightly better off after accounting for transfer payments (i.e. public services, entitlements, etc), but they'd be even better off if they could become owners rather than renters.
"I don't think housing costs would drop that much, if at all."
That all depends on if people still want to live there, or can afford it. People tend to be sensitive to taxes, especially if they don't see it improving their lives. Businesses can be sensitive to this sort of thing too. And if they leave, people may leave too. California is already at a net negative when looking at joiners vs leavers. It's mostly been lower wage workers, but in recent years middle and high earners have also been leaving. The population is the same as it was 5 years ago.
"Property prices drop when property taxes go up, but mortgage payments tends to stay similar."
That might be roughly true for a person who just purchased and the federal property tax deduction is uncapped. A retiree who is getting a break on taxes is likely to see a big increase. Not to mention if the house is paid off, then there is no mortgage that could offset it.
It's not reset of you inherit, or a bunch of other bullshit exemptions.
We live in a gerontacracy. Every advantage and tax break and handout is given to the elderly and the ladder has fully been pulled up for the new generations.
> I would argue that this is unpopular not only amongst retirees but everyone. And it would have tons of negative side effects.
Every tax is unpopular and undesireable.
Why would I work if government is taxing my income? Why would I invest? Why would I drive the car, blah blah.
Land tax is easy to collect, fast to pay, hard to avoid or game, and encourages productivity and efficiency.
And this cuddling of boomers who've benefited by piling up gigantic government debts and expect to be paid back (typically holding gov bond) is literally going to destroy the financial system. Part of the benefit of this tax is that if you can't pay for fair value of the land you're preventing others from using, you have to sell and get out, so e.g. a productive family can pay your for it, and use it instead of your now unproductive self. If you don't want that, you have to pay the same tax they would pay. Just because you're retired doesn't mean "your done with your duties to the rest of society and you can just expect free shit and do nothing" _especially_ that your "wealth" is just rent seeking on younger generations.
If boomers keep preventing younger generations from being productive and having opportunities, the economy will dwindle, the pile of of debt and other financial assets will collapse, hyperinfation is going to destroy their paper wealth and they will be starving or worse. Just watch, because I doubt at this point is avoidable anyway.
HOA are forclosing more than banks in some regions, it's not just trailer parks these days getting hard lessons in being the "fake owner" of your property
You shouldn't strawman the other side. Us "people who fancy" actually understand that there are real negative side effects. But the money has to come from somewhere.
If not from land taxes, where? Would you like to double sales tax? Or increase income taxes? Every solution costs something, what does yours cost?
> actually understand that there are real negative side effects.
Everything has real negative consequences. One side does not hold the monopoly on negative side effects.
Land is not cheap to repurpose. The Georgism dream that land can be optimally used is a farce. There is significant costs to repurposing land - to make those costs worth it because of the taxes would heavily distort current society, and I think the assumption that this would be desirable compared to the status quo is unproven.
> double sales tax? Or increase income taxes?
Why not the taxes we have? Where is the presumption that taxes need to be changed at all, never mind doubled?
Even if we decide we want to raise taxes, choosing where to do so is delicate. Again, the optimal answer from an economist is not necessarily desirable from an emotional perspective of the people being governed.
Stating truisms ahead of straw manning me avoids the actual discussion. "Everything has real negative consequences." "Land is not cheap to repurpose." I never said otherwise.
You're right about my estimate being off though and it was a disservice to the discussion. An equivalent revenue from sales tax would require ~2.1%. In SF, that would move the total sales tax from 8.6% to 10.7%; in Oakland, 13.8%. A large increase would likely bend some consumer behavior (chasing sales that have feet, aka move to the informal/grey market).
> Again, the optimal answer from an economist is not necessarily desirable from an emotional perspective of the people being governed.
This is the real difference between us imo. I believe the optimal answer is based on realistic projections on revenue collected and what prevents bankruptcy. The compromise answer is what passes a vote and in fact, the bankrupt answer.
I would prefer we didn't raise taxes and instead reduce spending. But given the complexity of reducing spending and the scale of our deficit, we will have to do both. On the side of raising revenue, a land tax offers a way of taxing a wealth that cannot flee.
The negative side effects of taxes on labor are enormous, and have distorted humanity probably more than any other factor.
Any consideration of the consequences of taxes also has to consider the consequences of the current taxation.
But taxes have and will always be a transfer of wealth from the working poor to the rich and powerful. People talking about tax reform or more effective and just systems tend to forget this. It's like the lamb having an opinion on how the wolves should share it.
1. There are many states such as New Jersey or Texas that do not have Prop 13 style laws and their seniors are not suffering excessively. However housing is much more affordable for younger people in those states.
2. States that freeze property taxes have more volatility and boom/bust cycles. You are trading being shielded from tax volatility for increasing economy-wide volatilty and asset price volatility, so the gains are not as high as you think, and seniors are exposed to this volatility indirectly.
3. There are more targeted relief mechanisms available, such as deferring the tax liability until the owner dies for senior owners.
As someone from NJ...you think seniors and young people don't have affordability problems, especially wrt housing here, in the 5th most expensive state to buy a house? (California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Washington, New Jersey, in that order, according to redfin, if you're going by house cost to income ratio, NJ is 6th)
> you think seniors and young people don't have affordability problems?
Of course I don't think that, which is why I didn't say it. That would be a silly thing to write. What is the advantage for you in mischaracterizing what someone wrote and then expending effort to "correct the record" for a statement no one made?
You created a strawman and then knocked it down.
What I actually said: "New Jersey or Texas that do not have Prop 13 style laws and their seniors are not suffering excessively. However housing is much more affordable for younger people in those states."
Both of these statements are demonstrably true. Let's look at the data.
* NJ price to income ratio for housing: 5.5
* mortgage cost burden: 31% of mortgage owners spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
* renter cost burden: 52% of renters spend more than 30% on rent
* CA price to income ratio for housing: 8.0
* mortgage cost burden: 38% of mortgage owners spend more than 30% on housing
* renter cost burden: 58% of renters spend more than 30% on rent
So housing in NJ is more affordable than in CA.
Now, let's look specifically at seniors.
In California:
* 68% of senior renters are cost burdened
* 35% of senior homeowners are cost burdened
In New Jersey:
* 59% of senior renters are cost burdened
* 35% of senior homeowners are cost burdened
So we see that across the board, seniors in NJ are not cost burdened more than in California, and that in fact they are cost burdened a bit less.
Therefore if your solution is to look to Prop 13 style fixes to address cost burdens for either seniors or the general population, then you are not making a data based argument, and in fact the data goes against you, because there is no excess cost burden in states without these property tax freezes.
Your exact words were "housing is much more affordable for younger people in those states", which, even by the numbers you have cited, is not correct. More affordable? Sure, we are number 5 or 6, not number 1. Much more affordable? Come on now.
And no, I don't think prop 13 style laws would be helpful, it would just create more problems, as it has in California.
Kicking in at retirement age plus limiting it to a single owner occupied property is the key, IMO.
In California, it applies to multiple properties, you can pass it down to your children and it applies to property owned by businesses both commercial and industrial, which is absolutely crazy.
California has basically created a class of landed gentry.
From what I’ve heard, the issue is more that it’s harder to efficiently share the hardware across diffusion requests, so it’s more expensive to serve.
It sounds like there might be opportunities for local models (not open weight, but actually locally run) to use diffusion for faster responses on weaker hardware that doesn’t need to be shared.
But yea, it’s still a red-ish flag that big labs haven’t invested much in it. I could see Google/Apple getting value of this sort of local model, but maybe there’s enough research behind traditional models that it’s not worth the distraction at this point in time.
As someone who isn't in California, it's understandable that you might think this. It is, fortunately, wrong.
The biggest driver of costs of electricity in CA are (1) paying for damages caused by grid-initiated wildfires, and (2) paying to upgrade the grid to prevent future cases of (1).
This information comes directly from the government who approves rate increases for regulated utilities, and who has to publish their spending. PG&E, the primary power company, is also a public company and their financials are therefore public.
Rooftop solar specifically (and not general grid-scale renewables) do shift the cost balance of fixed-cost infra and consumption based usage, but the wildfire issues dwarf this.
> If I were a gambling man I would suggest to you that tickets for those events are likely to start at more than the couple of hundred dollars you are suggesting people spend without thinking. The cheapest standing tickets for the next Oasis tour (at very large music stadiums) are more than $225.
So I live in California where everything is famously expensive (but I hear the same of London). $225 for a concert with a famous artist on a big tour is pretty standard. Oh, and since you clearly don't go to concerts, it's pretty standard for standing tickets to be more than seated, because they're usually closer to the stage and people want to stand around and dance.
> Oh, and since you clearly don't go to concerts, it's pretty standard for standing tickets to be more than seated, because they're usually closer to the stage and people want to stand around and dance.
Oh dear me, this is funny. But not in a way you will understand.
I find it useful, so here are some concrete examples from last few days.
As a baseline which many skeptics will have a hard time accepting for their own usage - I think there is a correlation between utility and trust (even which is not truly earned). If you don't let it capture memories and learn about you, and you don't connect it to external tools like email, it's less useful. But I think of it usually like a ChatGPT w/ extra tools and knowledge.
I just moved, and last night I asked my agent how to test how safe the soil in my (urban) garden was, and it found some warnings from my city government, and suggested a particular test service that is available in my area. Since it knows exactly where I live, it was able to find recent warnings of contamination in my neighborhood, and suggest specific chemicals to test for.
Additionally, I give it (read only) access to my email, and it'll ~2x a day notify me of some important email. I'm working with a contractor, and getting emails from them bumped, or getting emails about AWS usage alerts pulled out of inbox and notify me directly is super helpful for filtering the noise of my crazy email volume of 99% spam.
Also, as others have said, it's easy to take a picture of a flier, and say "add to my calendar".
What do you mean? There’s very few images of a car driving, but the roads seem to be correct. Some of the images are definitely generic marketing copy and not Singapore specific, but it seems fairly obvious which ones.
Unless you mean the steering wheel is on the wrong side, but that seems like it wouldn’t matter for an autonomous vehicle.
RHD vs LHD is the issue. Waymo has "300+ million kilometres of experience" that will all be on the wrong side of the road.
I would not be confident of human driving with a lifetime of experience with one not screwing up the other; more confident of one with regularly maintained experience of both (IOW, aware of switching back and forth).
> My other question that I've never found a good answer to, is with mechanization, how is it that "cheap" modern buildings are so expensive. Or were old, traditional buildings super expensive?
Old buildings were often expensive to their inhabitants because people were very poor. The cheap ones were largely torn down, because they fell apart because... they were cheap. Also, people largely lived in comparative squalor to today. Only about 50% of homes in America had an indoor flush toilet in 1926, and most of those were the urban north east. In 1926, the average home was <1k sqft (avg >2k in 2026). The modern idea of insulating a home wasn't around 100 years ago - houses were small, and cold, and you had to shit in a hut in the yard or in a bucket you threw out the window after.
Like cars, we've upgraded our standards of comfort and safety a lot. HVAC, electricity + internet networking, running water and bathrooms and water heaters, insulation, double paned windows, more and bigger appliances, safer standards for things like like staircase dimensions, increased fire/earthquake/hurricane/etc resistance, etc - there are a lot of things that just didn't get included in old homes.
Old houses were literally boxes made of wood, and now they're complex and mechanically rich in many subtle dimensions. Houses also have gotten bigger, so even as the price-per-sqft grows, so does the total size of the home.
What if I voted for pro-theme park politicians? Or what if I volunteered my time to clean up the community parks and shared space? What if I helped improve the reputation of my child’s school by volunteering and donating to the music department?
My taxes fund the maintenance of public infrastructure and services, and my actions support the civic good. If I vote to be cheap or generous with taxes, or choose to be lazy or ambitious in community support, that all contributes to the desirability of the land around me.
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