I’ve since learned that overly online keyboard warriors are the least important people to convince. The most important people are on your local city council or state legislature. Furthermore, instead of wasting time with hard cases or elected officials who are dead-set against your ideas, you’re much better off finding and working with people who are already interested in your principles. This often means giving up on your own city or state, at least for the time being, and pursuing a “succeed anywhere” strategy instead.
We're about to have a board vote eliminating single-family zoning (I expect us to win) and this rings extremely true about local politics. If you count "votes" in Facebook comments --- Facebook is where all our local politics happen --- you'd think this is the most contentious issue in the world. But in our last mayoral election, you'd draw the same conclusion about the race being tight, and in fact the progressive rinsed the moderate by a huge margin.
The same thing is very true of public meetings; the turnout for comment at those things is almost never representative of the area's median sentiment. "No" turns out for everything; "yes" rarely does.
I spend a lot of time in online arguments with opponents, on the theory that I'm not really writing to the person I'm arguing with but rather to everyone quietly reading comments. But it's almost certainly the case that the only conversations that have really mattered have been with electeds themselves.
> you’re much better off finding and working with people who are already interested in your principles
after five years in the trenches of local housing/urban policy in my city, this is my biggest takeaway. i don’t think i’ve ever even once changed someone’s mind who was a staunch NIMBY, even with a reputation as one of the most accessible and persuasive local policy advocates/writers. but I have been able to build coalitions of hundreds of people by finding people who were already mostly with me, and just shifting them from inactive->active.
there’s also a lot of power in the energy of building for the future. when we passed our big SFH elimination ordinance two years ago, we had a packed city council meeting that, numerically, had 50/50 of residents speaking for/against. but for the city council, watching a parade of retirees 65+ come up and say the same thing over and over again (“i’m not sure this is right for our city”) vs an equal sized but diverse group of people of all ages and life stages speak about all of their different housing needs and dreams for the future, the weight in the room was overwhelmingly in favor; the new zoning passed unanimously.
> watching a parade of retirees 65+ come up and say the same thing over and over again (“i’m not sure this is right for our city”) vs an equal sized but diverse group of people of all ages and life stages speak about all of their different housing needs and dreams for the future, the weight in the room was overwhelmingly in favor; the new zoning passed unanimously
"Yes you worked your whole life for that house that you carefully chose and maintained, but we want to send its value through the floor because we're more powerful".
They're responding to attempted guilting. "Retirees will lose all their value they worked their whole life for" is the guilting, "actually they didn't earn shit by buying land and sitting on it" is the "not giving a damn". Your reply is literally the exact inverse of reading comprehension.
Housing should not be an investment. You should maybe be able to expect to get what you put in back out of it if you decide to sell. But you should not expect to profit 2, 3, 500% by waiting 20 or 30 years. Speaking from my personal experience, housing in Japan is extremely affordable and Japan is much, much better off for it compared to the hellscape that is US housing prices. And for what purpose? To reward people for already having wealth by passively giving them more of it?
Not from what I’ve seen. This seems like fantasy cope.
They’re responding to markets locking up. And changes in actual laws, being forced through by shifting demographics allowing actual shifts in voting power - and hence changes in actual laws.
> Housing should not be an investment. You should maybe be able to expect to get what you put in back out of it if you decide to sell.
You do not get to decide this. And the people involved all had to pay money, so presumably it was someone's investment. If people pay more for a house with a nice view, they have every right to protest if someone comes along wanting to change that. It not only reduces the value of the property monetarily, it reduces the value to them that they took out a mortgage on and worked for decades to pay off.
>the people involved all had to pay money, so presumably it was someone's investment
People pay money for all kinds of things that aren't investments. Ever eat at a restaurant? Ever buy a car?
I agree with parent: houses should be more like cars and less like stocks. Prices should be lower, there should be less debt-financing, and we should end the expectation that home prices will go up endlessly forever.
And in some places they are. Japan works that way - houses generally lose value over time and there is even a cultural stigma against living in a "used house" - if you can afford it the convention is to buy a house and knock it down and start fresh.
I mean the fancy thing about living in a liberal democracy is that they do get to decide this in a limited sense. They get to have an opinion, advocate for it, and if they can convince people through the political process they do get to determine the outcome!
To actually advocate for their position: the US housing market isn't the consequence of natural market forces; it is the consequence of government intervention in the market to force a specific outcome. Housing prices have been rising as a percentage of average income for a long time. That cannot continue forever, so it won't, there will be a breaking point eventually (arguably we're just about at that point which is why it's become a political hot topic). We can choose policies to gracefully reduce prices over time or we can just let prices climb and the housing situation become ever more acute as it becomes increasingly difficult to people to own homes.
Housing prices going down will undoubtedly disadvantage people who made homes their primary investment vehicle. Though those people also just an investment path was dependent on the government creating artificial scarcity combined with interference in the loan market to keep the ship afloat. It will undoubtedly hurt. But it also hurts right now for individuals who did not choose the current set of regulations and suffer under the fruit such regulations have born (sky high prices, a lack of starter homes, etc.) The current housing situation is one without easy answers. It is a crises of our own making, but now that we're in it we will have to rip off the band-aid or just let the wound fester till it's something even worse.
You don't get to decide it either. It's decided via politics. But you started the thread by being annoyed with people doing politics. You need to pick a lane.
In my experience, people call it ‘politics’ when it isn’t working for them or is frustrating, ‘the rules’ otherwise. Depending on the day, they might randomly be flipping back and forth.
"I am advocating for Thing and that's Good and Not Politics, but you are advocating for Other-Thing and that's Bad because it is Politics."
When you buy a property you buy a property, not a view. Check the deed for the property you bought; the view won’t be listed on the legal docs. The view is an externality. If you are lucky enough to have a view across someone else’s property, lucky you. Having had a free benefit does not mean that other people’s right to their own property should be restricted to
maintain access to a positive externality for you. In other words, if someone else can build something that blocks your view, it wasn’t your view, you were just lucky enough to be able to have access to someone else’s view for a while.
If you want to maintain the view, you should pay the cost of that, whether that is buying the property that the view crosses, or compensating that other property owner for the loss of use of their property.
Using regulatory means to shortcut other peoples property rights is - in my opinion - horseshit. It also sets a dangerous precedent to regulate out the ability to change. It’s all fun and games until someone out maneuvers you at a city council meeting and now you can’t build a carport without hiring a lawyer and 6 months of hearings (real story, had to do this because our house was old enough to be considered historic. For context the carport was being put in an alley next to a dumpster and a cinder block apartment building. No historic element was involved)
> What do you care about the value of the house you're living in?
When you are eventually too old to live there, sell it and move into an assisted housing facility, the money you get for that house very much matters for how you will live the remaining years of your life.
> What did you do to deserve the massive raise in value of land since you bought that house besides buying early?
What did the sw eng do to deserve the 500k a year comp while the lady cleaning the toilets in the same building hardly makes 10% of that? Market? You don't say...
It wasn't a jackpot. Many, many people have houses. Trying to make people who did that into a group you're allowed to dismiss is evil. Just as it is with basically any group.
If you bought a house for 50 grand in 1984 and now it's worth $3 million because you got lucky and happened to buy in the right spot, that's a jackpot in my book. You didn't do anything to create the value of that land: that's what Georgism recognizes.
If you bought it in California, say, in 1984 it was more like $100k, and would now be worth more like $900k[0]. Your outlier valuation is a terrible basis upon which to institute yet another tax.
The outlier valuation is exactly the point! That's why it's a lottery ticket. Some people get $900k, others get $3m, not because of anything they did, not because of improvements made to the property, but just because they picked the lucky patch of dirt.
As discussed in the article, LVT can be implemented in a revenue-neutral way where most homeowners would pay lower property taxes so your handwringing about "yet another tax" is unconvincing.
"I'm a highly paid sw eng in the bay area and want to buy a house, but it's very pricy. Let me present a scapegoat so we can all agree to force them to sell below market value. But don't touch my total comp because that's totally the market value of what I contribute to society!"
A consistent view please. Either society decides through laws who gets to have how much, or not, but stop selectively applying that to things you want versus things you already have. Such brain acrobatics is just dishonest.
Sorry, what is your actual objection here? I'm not saying anyone should be forced to sell below market price - I'm saying the market price is inflated by the the cost of land: Land that no one created, land that is not a product of any human market.
The point of a Georgist land-value tax is to separate the value of the land from the value of buildings on the land. Land itself is a public good and should be taxed as such.
I don't disagree thatthe market price is inflated. Lots of market prices are inflated. Many people here are paid in or own (or both) stocks of tech firms whose value is inflated by at least as much or higher. Have not heard anybody claim that they are earning too much money. Easy to punch others though.
I can't begin to understand what the quoted section you start your comment with has to do with the comment of mine that you replied to. I didn't say anything about any of that stuff...
You don't have to move to such a place, but there are a lot of real estate that's not very hot, on account of not being near anything economically relevant, but are still pretty nice places.
If you don't have to work a day for the rest of your life, why should you care if a famous tech company has its offices 15 minutes away?
If the house is paid off, you have that equity. Maybe it's $500k instead of $1million, whatever, it's still worth money.
To your second question... the difference is a wage is based on adding economic activity while the land value increase is almost exclusively rent-seeking. Apples and orangutans.
> If the house is paid off, you have that equity. Maybe it's $500k instead of $1million, whatever, it's still worth money.
"Whatever"? With 20 years left to live, $500k difference is huge. Try to get informed about prices for such places. And how come you are the one to decide whether they are worth it or deserve it? This is a ridiculous discussion.
> To your second question... the difference is a wage is based on adding economic activity while the land value increase is almost exclusively rent-seeking.
The economic value of their lot obviously increased manyfold since they purchased it. Anybody could have bought it. If society (through laws) should have a say in the price of selling a plot of land then I'd like to see your reaction to society having a say about sw eng compensation. Oh right that's totally different! Because one of them impacts you directly while the other one doesn't and is easy to armchair philosophize about.
I believe that most people see the state of housing as a problem, home owner or not.
Still no reason to deny folks whose property value skyrocketed those funds when they sell. Unless you also want to deny Nvidia or Tesla stock owners their money when they sell.
Your investment in maintenance and improvement of the structure is, in any in-demand area, a tiny contribution to the appreciation of the value of the property.
By "protect it against drastic change", I'm assuming you're talking about political action. That part of your contribution to the value is literal rent seeking.
When I was fresh out of college, I got the advice to invest a part of my salary in bonds and stocks.
I luckily stumbled upon a good pick and basically a month's salary showed up on my account overnight. It's been a puzzling occurence morally speaking, that I gained so much money by essentially doing nothing.
While I certainly didn't mind the money and still don't I'm puzzled by the 'rich people' who inevitably show up in every discussion claiming 'dammit I worked for what I have with sweat and blood, while freeloaders and parasites loafed about! I deserve every penny I have'.
No you didn't (I didn't either), please shut up. I worked hard for a lot of stuff I cherish that made me very little money, and the place I own went up a lot in value, to which I had zero contribution.
Land is a little different from shares because you can meaningful affect the value of your land by spending your life improving your community if everyone else does too. You can be a good neighbour much more easily than a good shareholder.
I picked up some rubbish from the street on my way home yesterday. That act probably raised all our property values by some microscopic fraction of a cent. Then global macroeconomic conditions affected the property value by a huge amount more. It would be incorrect to attribute any gains to picking up rubbish, but it would be a very understandable human mistake, I think.
Not everyone has the follow-through to maintain a property over the years. Some owners allow a structure or surrounding grounds to degrade. There is something to be said for the homeowners that keep a house, property, and neighborhood well maintained and attractive to live in over the years.
This is true for pretty much any asset though. If I put effort into maintaining my car (which I use), the expectation is that it will last longer, provide me the benefit of using a well-maintained vehicle, and maybe sell for some portion of its original value when I eventually swap it out. I certainly don't expect my Toyota to appreciate in value by 1000% just because I didn't let it rust out.
This 'Georgian' tax scheme looks good in many ways. More below, but first, your question:
I don't know about other zones, but I live in a town that highly values open space and natural environment. This is a town ~35 miles away from a major city (top 10/20 in US), with no rail or mass transportation, or substantial business.
This is not the same as residential towns/zones more adjacent to the city, and I'm not making any arguments about those.
But for this town, and several near it the residents do a LOT to deserve the increase in land value. 1) Everyone in the town pays, and has paid for decades, substantially higher taxes to maintain the open rural character of the town, which includes the town buying parcels of town to keep open. 2) Everyone in the town foregoes substantial development opportunities available for subdividing land. 3) Everyone in the town pays higher taxes for high-density developments that do not happen to preserve wetland, environment, or usable open space. 4) Everyone in the town pays extra costs maintaining habitat rather than clear-cutting. 5) Because of the lack of development, the values have gone up LESS than other such towns in the region.
Yet everyone yells that this sort of town should be subject to the exact same massive high-density developments of other towns, utterly destroying the environment and town character, and yet providing nothing of value. A new lower-income-accessible house in such towns provides ZERO advantage to a supposed resident, who would now become absolutely dependent on a car and all the required expenses, being located a multi-hour commute from jobs in the city and no public transportation. Meanwhile, entire habitats of endangered species would be destroyed along with the character of the town.
It should be a different call on locales closer to the city (although I cannot speak for them). Particularly in zones near public transport such as rail lines, where people can get to/from work without the expense of an automobile, higher density should be encouraged, so their income can go towards building wealth in a property.
The Georgian idea looks quite good to me, as long as it respects the value of land conserved for natural habitat and open space. Such land should be completel different from a vacant lot with a torn-down building or parking lot — the "rentable" value of habitat or open land should be zero, since it cannot be built upon.
That said, it also looks like this 'Georgian' tax scheme would likely eliminate all parking near the city center very rapidly, or make it very expensive. This change should not be left to unintended consequences. Either provisions for parking should be made (force tall high-quantity parking garages?) or better yet, provisions for reducing/eliminating cars in the city with extensive public transport, low-/no-tax for bicycle parking? Probably different for each locale, but it needs to be planned for.
> Yet everyone yells that this sort of town should be subject to the exact same massive high-density developments of other towns, utterly destroying the environment and town character, and yet providing nothing of value.
Nothing of value to existing inhabitants perhaps, but massive value for those that don't have housing yet.
There are already inexpensive houses available at similar distances from the big city that would provide the same value to someone who doesn't yet have housing. Same commute distances, would require an automobile (and associated expenses), and the rest.
They stay inexpensive — because the people who lack housing do not want to buy them. Why? Because they are in the towns who do NOT spend all those costs and taxes to maintain a town with character, open lands, and protected natural environments.
No, you will not, without a fight, get to just destroy and take by fiat what others have spent decades and fortunes building.
The result will be just more of what is available in adjacent towns who did not spend to create a better environment, while destroying what value there is.
And then of course, if we do have people move into the less-well=-maintained areas, and try to improve them to produce more and better housing, the same "pro-housing" people complain of "gentrification".
It's not a glib response. People like you have made their "Garden cities" into a fortress, from where you drink champagne (or your favorite equivalent), while watching the plebs fight to the death outside, because they don't have a place to live. Maybe one day you'll realize you're one of the baddies and shed a tear.
I'm not talking about a garden city or walled fortress of any kind, and I said so above. I'm talking about a semi-rural town where people have valued nature and open space.
And no, destroying that to supposedly make housing for low-income people who are "fighting to the death for a place to live" will help zero of them. Because even if you gave the housing for near free, there are zero local jobs and zero local public transportation options to jobs, or even to groceries (nearest is 15min+ drive away). So, they'd need to jump up to meet the expenses of a two-car household, with car payments, insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc.. Plus spend hours commuting to work. Plus daycare, not cheap in the area. If you are that low-wage and have to support the automobiles and commuting, it literally costs more to get to work than you earn. You will have destroyed something of great value created over decades at vast personal expense, and helped no one.
The point is to put the housing where it makes sense. E.g., near jobs and public transport, and where it doesn't destroy open lands or literally endangered species habitat.
New York city could put plenty more housing right in Manhattan, but you don't see even the most radical pro-housing types suggesting they build over Central Park to do it.
> New York city could put plenty more housing right in Manhattan, but you don't see even the most radical pro-housing types suggesting they build over Central Park to do it.
Central Park acts as counterweight to the very dense urban area of Manhattan, which doesn't have that much place for building new. Your merry walled garden doesn't have that excuse.
In fact it does have exactly the same reason for being. Stop arguing non-facts, and microscopic context. There is no walled garden, or gated community of come imagined tycoons here (I'm sure there are elsewhere, but not where I'm talking about).
The town I'm talking about is well outside the city, but also one of the closer ones that actually has habitat, and in particular habitat for endangered species. It is EXACTLY this kind of preservation (and in fact, much larger zoning) that is needed to serve as a counterweight for high-density development.
I'm all for wherever it is already dense enough to basically exclude natural habitats, increase the density. But wherever it is sparse enough to have maintained natural habitat, decrease the density, not increase it.
You evidently have not noticed we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event, the previous one being the Cretaceous (~65 million years ago) asteroid impact catastrophe, and this one being entirely human-caused.
Simply encouraging blanket urban/suburban sprawl will only exacerbate that catastrophe. Which would be particularly tragic, since the need is entirely temporary, as birthrates are declining and the problem will be the opposite in a few decades as population declines (and already is in many countries), but the endangered species will already have been killed off never to return.
Personally, I paid substantially higher cost, of hard-earned money, and continue to pay taxes on a lot where 75% of it is absolutely unbuildable - I can't even cut a tree in that zone without permission. If I were greedy, the best move would be to advocate for ending zoning and environmental regs, and let me fill in the wetlands and build multiple units and subdivide. Doing that would easily yield enough money to retire wealthy in less than two years. But fortunately, there is a town where most people value the environment. It was actually hard to find, since there are many, actually MOST towns around prioritized development, because, money.
So, yes, just like Central Park, on a larger scale, this is one of the counterweights, and we pay more and incur large opportunity costs to maintain that counterweight.
Got it. You post simplistic opinions based on overdramatized notions of things that exist only in fiction, and consistently ignore facts and never actually engage with a real situation or reasoning that might change your opinion. Plus a quick check of your other comments shows similar uninformed yet strong opinions, failure to provide substantive answers to questions, and even admonishing others to "grow up". Wow.
Sorry, my mistake to reply above. Have the life you deserve, but here is not the place for it.
Show me someplace a change in zoning from R1 to Rx sent values through the floor.
Around here (Metro DC), that simply hasn't happened. There's so much pent up demand for housing that at worst, the appreciation has slowed, but I'm not even convinced that's happened, as the infill/redeveloped land is actually being used and generating economic activity (vs parking lots or old flats and offices nobody wanted).
Also, you didn't reply to what I wrote, which is that it's funny that you were trying to convince us that land value appreciation is a return to labor. I'm guessing you ditched that because it's obvious how silly it is.
Upzoning a neighborhood typically increases the value of the land, so that straw -man owner would benefit from it when/if they decide to sell their place.
I don't know how you can say it's a straw-man argument when you qualify the the statement as "typically" increases the value of the land... that indicates you KNOW at least occasionally it doesn't increase and instead decreases, and if it's a real possibility (even if the % is low - 10-15%) then it's not a straw-man argument to be concerned about it, it becomes something that should be risk weighted and explained to mitigate the concern.
Why should someone who is almost dead care about the current and future value of their house? Why should someone who is almost dead care about what their neighborhood looks like after they're gone? There some sort of mental illness where these people think they're going to live forever.
> Why should someone who is almost dead care about what their neighborhood looks like after they're gone?
It might be unfamiliar, but people care about their neighbours and family, and passing on a good place to others to raise their families there in future.
The problem with having everyone rely on gains from home appreciation is that it doesn’t continue to work over time.
Yesterday’s home appreciation is today’s price increase for new home buyers. In most places in the US, home prices have far outpaced inflation for several decades now.
It seems silly to even be arguing about whether or not it’s deserved when we already know that it’s not remotely sustainable.
Yeah I think one of the vestiges of the "liberal consensus" era of politics (pre 2016) was that "persuasion" was seen as the only valid way to advance your advocacy. But the shattering of that consensus has allowed the left of center to realize that, in fact, winning is what matters. Your biggest ideological opponents by definition cannot be persuaded- politics is now a tightly coupled to the ego and therefore someone attempting to change your beliefs is deeply threatening.
The right learned this a long time ago. Persuasion does not matter. Our system is winner take all. Winning is all that matters. Online debate is a waste of time. Find your base and activate them instead.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
We're about to have a board vote eliminating single-family zoning (I expect us to win) and this rings extremely true about local politics. If you count "votes" in Facebook comments --- Facebook is where all our local politics happen --- you'd think this is the most contentious issue in the world. But in our last mayoral election, you'd draw the same conclusion about the race being tight, and in fact the progressive rinsed the moderate by a huge margin.
The same thing is very true of public meetings; the turnout for comment at those things is almost never representative of the area's median sentiment. "No" turns out for everything; "yes" rarely does.
I spend a lot of time in online arguments with opponents, on the theory that I'm not really writing to the person I'm arguing with but rather to everyone quietly reading comments. But it's almost certainly the case that the only conversations that have really mattered have been with electeds themselves.
jakintosh · · focus · HN ↗
after five years in the trenches of local housing/urban policy in my city, this is my biggest takeaway. i don’t think i’ve ever even once changed someone’s mind who was a staunch NIMBY, even with a reputation as one of the most accessible and persuasive local policy advocates/writers. but I have been able to build coalitions of hundreds of people by finding people who were already mostly with me, and just shifting them from inactive->active.
there’s also a lot of power in the energy of building for the future. when we passed our big SFH elimination ordinance two years ago, we had a packed city council meeting that, numerically, had 50/50 of residents speaking for/against. but for the city council, watching a parade of retirees 65+ come up and say the same thing over and over again (“i’m not sure this is right for our city”) vs an equal sized but diverse group of people of all ages and life stages speak about all of their different housing needs and dreams for the future, the weight in the room was overwhelmingly in favor; the new zoning passed unanimously.
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
"Yes you worked your whole life for that house that you carefully chose and maintained, but we want to send its value through the floor because we're more powerful".
ahtihn · · focus · HN ↗
What did you do to deserve the massive raise in value of land since you bought that house besides buying early?
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
applfanboysbgon · · focus · HN ↗
Housing should not be an investment. You should maybe be able to expect to get what you put in back out of it if you decide to sell. But you should not expect to profit 2, 3, 500% by waiting 20 or 30 years. Speaking from my personal experience, housing in Japan is extremely affordable and Japan is much, much better off for it compared to the hellscape that is US housing prices. And for what purpose? To reward people for already having wealth by passively giving them more of it?
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
They’re responding to markets locking up. And changes in actual laws, being forced through by shifting demographics allowing actual shifts in voting power - and hence changes in actual laws.
Not guilting.
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
You do not get to decide this. And the people involved all had to pay money, so presumably it was someone's investment. If people pay more for a house with a nice view, they have every right to protest if someone comes along wanting to change that. It not only reduces the value of the property monetarily, it reduces the value to them that they took out a mortgage on and worked for decades to pay off.
ForHackernews · · focus · HN ↗
People pay money for all kinds of things that aren't investments. Ever eat at a restaurant? Ever buy a car?
I agree with parent: houses should be more like cars and less like stocks. Prices should be lower, there should be less debt-financing, and we should end the expectation that home prices will go up endlessly forever.
jhbadger · · focus · HN ↗
svpk · · focus · HN ↗
To actually advocate for their position: the US housing market isn't the consequence of natural market forces; it is the consequence of government intervention in the market to force a specific outcome. Housing prices have been rising as a percentage of average income for a long time. That cannot continue forever, so it won't, there will be a breaking point eventually (arguably we're just about at that point which is why it's become a political hot topic). We can choose policies to gracefully reduce prices over time or we can just let prices climb and the housing situation become ever more acute as it becomes increasingly difficult to people to own homes.
Housing prices going down will undoubtedly disadvantage people who made homes their primary investment vehicle. Though those people also just an investment path was dependent on the government creating artificial scarcity combined with interference in the loan market to keep the ship afloat. It will undoubtedly hurt. But it also hurts right now for individuals who did not choose the current set of regulations and suffer under the fruit such regulations have born (sky high prices, a lack of starter homes, etc.) The current housing situation is one without easy answers. It is a crises of our own making, but now that we're in it we will have to rip off the band-aid or just let the wound fester till it's something even worse.
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
Everything up to and including murder is likely on the table, hah.
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
lazide · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
If you want to maintain the view, you should pay the cost of that, whether that is buying the property that the view crosses, or compensating that other property owner for the loss of use of their property.
Using regulatory means to shortcut other peoples property rights is - in my opinion - horseshit. It also sets a dangerous precedent to regulate out the ability to change. It’s all fun and games until someone out maneuvers you at a city council meeting and now you can’t build a carport without hiring a lawyer and 6 months of hearings (real story, had to do this because our house was old enough to be considered historic. For context the carport was being put in an alley next to a dumpster and a cinder block apartment building. No historic element was involved)
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
When you are eventually too old to live there, sell it and move into an assisted housing facility, the money you get for that house very much matters for how you will live the remaining years of your life.
> What did you do to deserve the massive raise in value of land since you bought that house besides buying early?
What did the sw eng do to deserve the 500k a year comp while the lady cleaning the toilets in the same building hardly makes 10% of that? Market? You don't say...
ForHackernews · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
ForHackernews · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/california-housing-market-graph-50-years" rel="nofollow">https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/california-housing-mar...
ForHackernews · · focus · HN ↗
As discussed in the article, LVT can be implemented in a revenue-neutral way where most homeowners would pay lower property taxes so your handwringing about "yet another tax" is unconvincing.
derac · · focus · HN ↗
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
derac · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
A consistent view please. Either society decides through laws who gets to have how much, or not, but stop selectively applying that to things you want versus things you already have. Such brain acrobatics is just dishonest.
ForHackernews · · focus · HN ↗
The point of a Georgist land-value tax is to separate the value of the land from the value of buildings on the land. Land itself is a public good and should be taxed as such.
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
I'm very confused what private property you think my comment suggests I do not respect.
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
satvikpendem · · focus · HN ↗
torginus · · focus · HN ↗
If you don't have to work a day for the rest of your life, why should you care if a famous tech company has its offices 15 minutes away?
alistairSH · · focus · HN ↗
To your second question... the difference is a wage is based on adding economic activity while the land value increase is almost exclusively rent-seeking. Apples and orangutans.
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
"Whatever"? With 20 years left to live, $500k difference is huge. Try to get informed about prices for such places. And how come you are the one to decide whether they are worth it or deserve it? This is a ridiculous discussion.
> To your second question... the difference is a wage is based on adding economic activity while the land value increase is almost exclusively rent-seeking.
The economic value of their lot obviously increased manyfold since they purchased it. Anybody could have bought it. If society (through laws) should have a say in the price of selling a plot of land then I'd like to see your reaction to society having a say about sw eng compensation. Oh right that's totally different! Because one of them impacts you directly while the other one doesn't and is easy to armchair philosophize about.
johnpaulkiser · · focus · HN ↗
People that were not alive could not have bought it.
alistairSH · · focus · HN ↗
teiferer · · focus · HN ↗
Still no reason to deny folks whose property value skyrocketed those funds when they sell. Unless you also want to deny Nvidia or Tesla stock owners their money when they sell.
llbeansandrice · · focus · HN ↗
For some reason going down isn’t allowed in housing.
If Nvidia or Tesla tanked tomorrow to $10/share are those who own shares being “denied” money when they sell? Obviously not.
alistairSH · · focus · HN ↗
And as mentioned in the sibling, few people think of stock gains as an inherent right. Stocks go up and down and we all accept that.
theptip · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
Protect it against drastic change and maintain it over decades, investing money in upgrading it where possible.
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
By "protect it against drastic change", I'm assuming you're talking about political action. That part of your contribution to the value is literal rent seeking.
torginus · · focus · HN ↗
I luckily stumbled upon a good pick and basically a month's salary showed up on my account overnight. It's been a puzzling occurence morally speaking, that I gained so much money by essentially doing nothing.
While I certainly didn't mind the money and still don't I'm puzzled by the 'rich people' who inevitably show up in every discussion claiming 'dammit I worked for what I have with sweat and blood, while freeloaders and parasites loafed about! I deserve every penny I have'.
No you didn't (I didn't either), please shut up. I worked hard for a lot of stuff I cherish that made me very little money, and the place I own went up a lot in value, to which I had zero contribution.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
strken · · focus · HN ↗
I picked up some rubbish from the street on my way home yesterday. That act probably raised all our property values by some microscopic fraction of a cent. Then global macroeconomic conditions affected the property value by a huge amount more. It would be incorrect to attribute any gains to picking up rubbish, but it would be a very understandable human mistake, I think.
misterprime · · focus · HN ↗
estaroc · · focus · HN ↗
toss1 · · focus · HN ↗
I don't know about other zones, but I live in a town that highly values open space and natural environment. This is a town ~35 miles away from a major city (top 10/20 in US), with no rail or mass transportation, or substantial business.
This is not the same as residential towns/zones more adjacent to the city, and I'm not making any arguments about those.
But for this town, and several near it the residents do a LOT to deserve the increase in land value. 1) Everyone in the town pays, and has paid for decades, substantially higher taxes to maintain the open rural character of the town, which includes the town buying parcels of town to keep open. 2) Everyone in the town foregoes substantial development opportunities available for subdividing land. 3) Everyone in the town pays higher taxes for high-density developments that do not happen to preserve wetland, environment, or usable open space. 4) Everyone in the town pays extra costs maintaining habitat rather than clear-cutting. 5) Because of the lack of development, the values have gone up LESS than other such towns in the region.
Yet everyone yells that this sort of town should be subject to the exact same massive high-density developments of other towns, utterly destroying the environment and town character, and yet providing nothing of value. A new lower-income-accessible house in such towns provides ZERO advantage to a supposed resident, who would now become absolutely dependent on a car and all the required expenses, being located a multi-hour commute from jobs in the city and no public transportation. Meanwhile, entire habitats of endangered species would be destroyed along with the character of the town.
It should be a different call on locales closer to the city (although I cannot speak for them). Particularly in zones near public transport such as rail lines, where people can get to/from work without the expense of an automobile, higher density should be encouraged, so their income can go towards building wealth in a property.
The Georgian idea looks quite good to me, as long as it respects the value of land conserved for natural habitat and open space. Such land should be completel different from a vacant lot with a torn-down building or parking lot — the "rentable" value of habitat or open land should be zero, since it cannot be built upon.
That said, it also looks like this 'Georgian' tax scheme would likely eliminate all parking near the city center very rapidly, or make it very expensive. This change should not be left to unintended consequences. Either provisions for parking should be made (force tall high-quantity parking garages?) or better yet, provisions for reducing/eliminating cars in the city with extensive public transport, low-/no-tax for bicycle parking? Probably different for each locale, but it needs to be planned for.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
Nothing of value to existing inhabitants perhaps, but massive value for those that don't have housing yet.
toss1 · · focus · HN ↗
And no, it provides no new value.
There are already inexpensive houses available at similar distances from the big city that would provide the same value to someone who doesn't yet have housing. Same commute distances, would require an automobile (and associated expenses), and the rest.
They stay inexpensive — because the people who lack housing do not want to buy them. Why? Because they are in the towns who do NOT spend all those costs and taxes to maintain a town with character, open lands, and protected natural environments.
No, you will not, without a fight, get to just destroy and take by fiat what others have spent decades and fortunes building.
The result will be just more of what is available in adjacent towns who did not spend to create a better environment, while destroying what value there is.
And then of course, if we do have people move into the less-well=-maintained areas, and try to improve them to produce more and better housing, the same "pro-housing" people complain of "gentrification".
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
toss1 · · focus · HN ↗
I'm not talking about a garden city or walled fortress of any kind, and I said so above. I'm talking about a semi-rural town where people have valued nature and open space.
And no, destroying that to supposedly make housing for low-income people who are "fighting to the death for a place to live" will help zero of them. Because even if you gave the housing for near free, there are zero local jobs and zero local public transportation options to jobs, or even to groceries (nearest is 15min+ drive away). So, they'd need to jump up to meet the expenses of a two-car household, with car payments, insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc.. Plus spend hours commuting to work. Plus daycare, not cheap in the area. If you are that low-wage and have to support the automobiles and commuting, it literally costs more to get to work than you earn. You will have destroyed something of great value created over decades at vast personal expense, and helped no one.
The point is to put the housing where it makes sense. E.g., near jobs and public transport, and where it doesn't destroy open lands or literally endangered species habitat.
New York city could put plenty more housing right in Manhattan, but you don't see even the most radical pro-housing types suggesting they build over Central Park to do it.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
Central Park acts as counterweight to the very dense urban area of Manhattan, which doesn't have that much place for building new. Your merry walled garden doesn't have that excuse.
toss1 · · focus · HN ↗
The town I'm talking about is well outside the city, but also one of the closer ones that actually has habitat, and in particular habitat for endangered species. It is EXACTLY this kind of preservation (and in fact, much larger zoning) that is needed to serve as a counterweight for high-density development.
I'm all for wherever it is already dense enough to basically exclude natural habitats, increase the density. But wherever it is sparse enough to have maintained natural habitat, decrease the density, not increase it.
You evidently have not noticed we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event, the previous one being the Cretaceous (~65 million years ago) asteroid impact catastrophe, and this one being entirely human-caused.
Simply encouraging blanket urban/suburban sprawl will only exacerbate that catastrophe. Which would be particularly tragic, since the need is entirely temporary, as birthrates are declining and the problem will be the opposite in a few decades as population declines (and already is in many countries), but the endangered species will already have been killed off never to return.
Personally, I paid substantially higher cost, of hard-earned money, and continue to pay taxes on a lot where 75% of it is absolutely unbuildable - I can't even cut a tree in that zone without permission. If I were greedy, the best move would be to advocate for ending zoning and environmental regs, and let me fill in the wetlands and build multiple units and subdivide. Doing that would easily yield enough money to retire wealthy in less than two years. But fortunately, there is a town where most people value the environment. It was actually hard to find, since there are many, actually MOST towns around prioritized development, because, money.
So, yes, just like Central Park, on a larger scale, this is one of the counterweights, and we pay more and incur large opportunity costs to maintain that counterweight.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
toss1 · · focus · HN ↗
Sorry, my mistake to reply above. Have the life you deserve, but here is not the place for it.
ragall · · focus · HN ↗
alistairSH · · focus · HN ↗
Around here (Metro DC), that simply hasn't happened. There's so much pent up demand for housing that at worst, the appreciation has slowed, but I'm not even convinced that's happened, as the infill/redeveloped land is actually being used and generating economic activity (vs parking lots or old flats and offices nobody wanted).
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
falsemyrmidon · · focus · HN ↗
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
Why would you tax people for those things? They didn't do them.
sanderjd · · focus · HN ↗
Also, you didn't reply to what I wrote, which is that it's funny that you were trying to convince us that land value appreciation is a return to labor. I'm guessing you ditched that because it's obvious how silly it is.
ihaveajob · · focus · HN ↗
monkeywork · · focus · HN ↗
vinyl7 · · focus · HN ↗
philipallstar · · focus · HN ↗
It might be unfamiliar, but people care about their neighbours and family, and passing on a good place to others to raise their families there in future.
jobs_throwaway · · focus · HN ↗
usefulcat · · focus · HN ↗
Yesterday’s home appreciation is today’s price increase for new home buyers. In most places in the US, home prices have far outpaced inflation for several decades now.
It seems silly to even be arguing about whether or not it’s deserved when we already know that it’s not remotely sustainable.
tonic_note · · focus · HN ↗
The right learned this a long time ago. Persuasion does not matter. Our system is winner take all. Winning is all that matters. Online debate is a waste of time. Find your base and activate them instead.