From: ahk@chinet.com
bob wrote:
>On 2015-03-21 20:25:46 +0000, Adam H. Kerman said:
>>bob wrote:
>>>On 2015-03-21 17:23:19 +0000, Adam H. Kerman said:
>>>>bob wrote:
>>>>>On 2015-03-21 13:51:50 +0000, Adam H. Kerman said:
>>>>>>bob wrote:
>>>>>>>Considering that things like compulsory purchase powers over land are a
>>>>>>>form of subsidy (because the buyer of that land is forcing the owner to
>>>>>>>sell it at less than they would otherwise chose to sell it at), I would
>>>>>>>extend that to any transportation infrastructure of any kind.
>>>>>>>Transportation infrastructure is the classic case of the economic
>>>>>>>benefits being almost entirely external to the owner of the
>>>>>>>infrastructure. In cases like this, it is pretty much universally
>>>>>>>recognised that government provision (or interference in the market to
>>>>>>>bring about the required objective) is beneficial to all.
>>>>>>Dude, you have a logic gap there:
>>>>>>You lept from "benefits are external", which is correct, to "beneficial
>>>>>>to all", which is false.
>>>>>In the general case it is false, but in the specific case of
>>>>>transportation infrastructure it is true. There is not a single person
>>>>>alive in the developed world today who does not have a better quality
>>>>>of life than they would if there were no transportation infrastructure.
>>>>>Something as simple as being able to buy a whole week's worth of
>>>>>groceries in one place, for an afordable cost, and bring them home
>>>>>would be impossible without transportation infrastructure.
>>>>There are plenty of people alive who don't benefit from transportation
>>>>infrastructure, say paraplegics traumatically injured in crashes
>>>>in highway traffic, or pedestrians who find life dangerous and
>>>>inconvenient because of highway traffic.
>>>I would think the survivors of major traumatic injury are some of the
>>>people who have gained the most from good transportation
>>>infrastructure. If they did not receive medical attention quickly, and
>>>have access to high quality hospital facilities, it is highly likely
>>>they would have died. Ambulances can't drive quickly on dirt roads.
>>The point would be that they're casualties of transportation to begin with.
>>I noticed that you qualified your original statement to persons who are
>>alive. I mean, if someone was killed in a highway collision, it's not
>>helpful to note that his funeral procession uses roads.
>I didn't qualify it, you did.
That's why it was so easy to refute your statement.
>You invited me to consider the case of the victim of accidents,
No, I used that example to refute your statement.
saying, "say paraplegics traumatically injured
>in crashes in highway traffic," which I have.
>
>>>> Of course benefit from transportation is widespread, but you can't even
hint
>>>> that benefits are equally distributed, because that's wrong.
>>
>>> I don't claim the benefits are equally felt, but they are universally
>>> felt: there is nobody who has not benefited from transportation
>>> infrastructure to some extent.
>> I'm bringing up a critical issue that you didn't address.
>Well I have addressed it, and made it abundantly clear.
>>>>>> What would be universally beneficial to all would be if there was a
>>>>>> strict relationship between costs and benefits, so that those with a
>>>>>> proportionate benefit pay a proportionate share of costs; a bit of
>>>>>> hedging as it's difficult to avoid outside subsidy whenever government
>>>>>> has its hand in anything.
>>
>>>>> It would be lovely if the word were simple enough that every benefit
>>>>> every person gains could be assigned a dollar value, and these could be
>>>>> neatly attributed to specific bits of government spending.
>>
>>>> Yeah, but it's not necessary. Change in land value is so easy to measure,
>>>> so taxing land value is close enough to pay for government, especially
>>>> transportation infrastructure.
>>
>>> Change in land value offers one method of evaluating the benefit, but
>>> it is a fairly blunt instrument. For a start, it is hard to establish
>>> the value of land when it is not sold. If I bought a house 20 years
>>> ago and still lived in it today, with no great desire to move, how do
>>> you actually establish the value of that house?
>>
>> That it's hard to evaluate land is not true at all. Appraisal and
>> assessment estimates fair market value based on recent sales. Obviously
>> there's bad work, but land and building/improvement value are estimated
>> separately. It's more than adequate for fair assessment for tax purposes.
>>
>> The nice thing about property taxes is that it's all out in the open, so
>> if some land owner's land assessment is completely out of whack, the public
>> knows about it and there's a pretty good idea as to who got bribed.
>>
>> btw, land is a lot easier to assess than buildings as you just need to
>> know square footage and buildable characteristics and what surrounding
>> properties are used for. With buildings, you have to keep up with changes
>> in the building's characteristics over time and correctly entering
>> building permits and the like. From a quick drive by, the number of
>> bathrooms in a house isn't possible to estimate.
>The downside of land value tax is that the owner of the land will find
>himself liable for this tax as a result of events entirely outside of
>his own control.
Huh? That's the nature of land value.
>Suppose I buy a house in the "rough" end of town
>because I can't afford a big enough house int the expensive end of
>town. Suppose my part of town then goes up in the world and suddenly
>my home becomes expensive. Is it really reasonable that I should be
>liable for a huge tax demand that, perhaps, I can't afford, because
>some other factors have come to bear on my neighbourhood?
Yes. If you can't afford to live there any more, you'd sell for
a tremendous profit. Poor you.
>Perhaps a
>farmer buys a field in the middle of nowhere, to grow some crops on.
>Then a highway gets built and suddenly his field is in the middle of
>expensive commuter-land. Sure, if the farmer sold his land, he could
>realise a huge profit, but if all the farmland in the area suddenly
>becomes suburbia, he has nowhere to go. That farmer has lost his job
>and his future simply because somebody else has built a highway. Land
>value tax is definitely not without its problems.
He's still made a profit. Poor guy. There's always more farmland to buy.
>>>>> Unfortunately the world doesn't work like that. There are an awful lot
>>>>> of things where I benefit from something existing that I don't use. I
>>>>> benefit from the military existing. I hope the military never has to
>>>>> be used, and in some ways it won't need to be used *because* it exists.
>>>>> How much is that benefit worth? I benefit from the fact that it is
>>>>> economically viable for a car company to make a car that I can afford.
>>>>> I don't own a car right now, but nevertheless I benefit from that. I
>>>>> benefit from the education system. I finished school years ago and
>>>>> have no kids, but I still benefit from the education system because it
>>>>> means the other people I depend on in society are better educated. . . .
>>
>>>> If you own a house, if your local schools are excellent, it means that
>>>> you can sell your house for more money to a family with school-age
>>>> children. That's actually a direct benefit to you, despite not
>>>> being in school or having children attending that school.
>>
>>>> And it's for the reason that you stated, that there's a value to society
>>>> that its citizens are better educated.
>>
>>> And if I don't own a house, or own a house in an area with poor
>>> schools, I still benefit from living in an educated society.
>>
>> Sure; renters benefit.
>>
>>> If you tie taxation to land value, some other guy who owns the expensive
>>> house takes the tax hit, and I get the benefit.
>>
>> Well, the house itself is exempt from a land value tax. Building an
>> oversized home won't increase one's own land value. But if your neighbors
>> start replacing more modest homes with more expensive homes, your land
>> value will increase.
>>
>> Anyway, we're not tying government services to consumption but to benefit.
>> A kid from an upper middle class family consumes two semesters of education
>> per school year, same as the kid from the lower middle class family does.
>> It's free public education. If it were tied to consumption, then it couldn't
>> be free.
>>
>> The benefit to residential land exists whether one sends any children
>> to school. btw, a nearby private school that's really good would also
>> have a positive effect on land value.
>>
>> Land taxes tax value that the land owner hasn't created. The value is
>> created by society in general; part of the value created by society is
>> through government spending.
>
>Sure, land value tax is one way of taxing the benefit an individual
>person gains from wider societal improvements. It is not the only one,
>though, and in certain circumstances may not be the fairest one.
Your examples weren't convincing.
What's the alternative? We tax income, sales, transactions, excise,
myriad other things, none of which bear any direct relationship to
services government has provided.
>>>>> People offer a proposal for what they thing we should do and what it
>>>>> will cost us, and we decide whether to support that proposal or not.
>>
>>>> Well, I'd like to do a lot more referendums for major spending, yes.
>>
>>> Ah well, you see, I happen to live in Switzerland where we have not
>>> only possibly the best railways in the world, but certainly the most
>>> referendum-heavy system going. Interestingly when the present Swiss
>>> constitution was enacted in 1847 it was modelled on the US one.
>>> Somehow things have diverged in the intervening years.
>>
>> The referendums must have been amended in. Our Founding Fathers didn't
>> really consider direct democracy.
>
>The Founding Fathers were a bunch of privileged landowners seated in
>late 18th century economic realities. That they failed to see how the
>world would develop in the following 200+ years is hardly surprising.
That's absurd. The Constitution still works great. Sounds like other countries
agreed that adopted it decades later.
Congress isn't prevented from initiating referendums.
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