> fixed income at the end of your life in no position really to deal with inflation.

This might be true if you have everything in cash in a safe at your house and plan on taking out fixed amounts for the rest of your life, I guess, but who are those people?

Most people are on social security, which is inflation adjusted.

Others with more wealth have retirement savings, which are likely mostly in bonds and stocks, which weather inflation not too shabbily. Interest rates go up, and banks start actually yielding interest!

Prop 13 passed mostly as a populist revolt against taxes, but in reality it does a lot more for people in their prime of earning and a toooon more for commercial property tax cuts than it does for retirees.

Every other state has better tax deferral mechanisms, and given the tiny fraction of Prop 14 effect that goes to retirees, I don't really buy this back formation of what was going on. If people really voted for such a lie, it wouldn't be the first time with propositions but from the media I've seen from the time I really don't think people were that duped and probably knew the broad effects of Prop 13.

> 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.

Retirees are not on fixed income and haven't been for decades. Social Security gets adjusted for inflation. 401ks grow. https://www.slowboring.com/p/seniors-arent-living-on-fixed-i...

This is a solved problem in other jurisdictions. Effectively you can just allow seniors to defer their property taxes at low interest rates and it becomes a liability on the house when it is transferred on death.

The key bit is that California is relatively unique here. There are a few other states that have Prop-13-like laws, but California's is the most restrictive and incumbent-homeowner-friendly. All those other states (and the ones with nothing similar) seem to get along just fine.

Of course, the solution to increased demand (driving increases in property market value) is to build more housing. Without Prop 13, a big chunk of the NIMBYs who are currently against more housing would likely change their tune if they had to choose between no new housing or much higher property taxes.

I think it would be reasonable and productive to phase out Prop 13 over time, rather than immediately getting rid of it. We could structure it so a property doesn't lose Prop 13 protection until the next time it's sold (and then it never has that protection again). We could completely remove the inheritance loophole (which was tightened up in 2020 but still exists). We could even set a date, say, 10 or 15 years in the future, when re-assessments at market value will start for everyone, regardless of whether or not they've sold. We could also phase in higher allowed assessment percentage increases over time (right now it's capped at 2% per year, but we could, say, add 0.5% to that figure every year for some number of years).

Hell, we could even leave Prop 13 in place as it is today, and just bump up the assessment increase cap to 5% or 10% or something like that. (Texas, for reference, has their own 10% yearly cap on assessment increases.)

There are so many ways to solve this, but all of them are politically unpopular. (Hell, we couldn't even reform Prop 13 as it applies to commercial properties.) As a homeowner in California, I get it, but I still support Prop 13 reform and eventual Prop 13 abolishment.

I think the marketing of prop 13 was old people getting kicked out of their houses.

But I think the majority of the tax avoidance goes to not-old-people, like immortal corporations that can own the land forever.

EDIT: random link - it seems like residential owners don't benefit anywhere NEAR as much as commercial, rental and industrial entitites.

https://youngamericans.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/...

A land tax means that you don't own property but rent it.

This is bringing us back to the dark ages in terms of land rights.

Empirically, according to Doucet, a land value tax would only raise average tax rates if you're living on a parking lot, or vacant lot. Aging homeowners would mostly see a slight decline in their property taxes ( California excluded ).

Washington has a much lower property tax rate for a primary residence owned by a person over 65 years old.

  > A forest is much less efficient than a mall and yet, the forest might still be more important.

In a weird twist of irony our efforts to be lazy end up costing us a lot of work. But that's also because there's two types of lazy: short term and overall work. We used to say we want to hire programmers that are lazy because they'll find the most efficient way to do something. But now we don't revere that kind of lazy, we like the kind of lazy that procrastinates. Do the quick cheap thing now, telling ourselves that we'll make it better in the future, knowing that's a lie. That pattern isn't unique to programming, it's just marshmallows.

In WA state (maybe others too?), the county assess my land value and the building value separately on my property taxes.

Point being: the government has been assessing land value for a long long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax_in_the_United_S...

Yeah, because the value of your land just went up and you didn't do anything to make that happen. Only right that excess value goes back to society and reduces the tax burden of the working class.

Makes sense to me.

If you don't want to pay the taxes, thanks to Disneyland you can now sell your land for a nice fat gain, buy cheaper land elsewhere, and pocket the difference. And whoever bought your land will likely use it for the social good (maybe build a hotel or something).

I'm curious as to how you think we should divide up who gets what plots, can you explain how that works?

> A simpler overall approach (I've left out the nuances) would be to have an equal amount of land per person completely tax free

I like the thought, but the challenge in most places is that the poor are already paying massive "negative tax" in the form of various social subsidies.

So if you add tax exemptions on top of it, it becomes increasingly impractical to raise enough taxes.

And no, it can't be done simply by taxing the rich more. That should be done too, in my view! But the math is simply such that we need a pretty broad tax base to support our spending.

Raise X in land tax and then you spend it evenly amongst the population. Anyone using less than their fair share gets a bonus, anyone uses more has to pay.

If you just allow using X value, but tax free, then those who use less don’t get rewarded.

Effectively one non transferable share, one per citizen, with proceeds as a dividend.

> p.s - a govt will never agree to such an arrangement because it will not favor them.

IDK, governments tend to align with what results in the most economic activity being created / moved into their country ("growth"). If you were able to convince that overall economic growth would be multiple times higher over a few decades with the system, it might just become appealing.

A problem I see with implementation in the US, though, is that local municipalities are who tax land and property value, so entire rural counties and cities would have their funding stunted. And asking the government to buy into that while subsidizing low-growth areas for a long time (decades / forever, if a rural area never develops) is a really hard sell.

> This will have some of the unfortunate effect of collectivism. We don't want the govt to tax you into poverty.

Weird framing. In any case, this would lead to less taxes for most folks, at least compared to property taxes.

I wouldn't say it's coordinated. This is an old article, published in June. A lot of people came to the land economics blog from the ACX article that ran today, someone likely saw this one and then posted it to HN.

ACX has been on the Georgist tip for awhile.

I don't understand your use of externality here. How is it imposing costs on others?

Landlord costs affect supply in the long term, so you will see changes, just not necessarily immediately over a one year period, but definitely over a 5-10 year period.

> We also don't see landlords who own their properties outright (and thus don't have mortgage interest costs) charging lower rents than landlords in the neighborhood with identical properties who have mortgages. When landlords' costs drop, do they drop the rent in response?

If costs are uniform for each landlord (they have to pay for), it limits the amount of money they can invest in new capacity, and you will see the effects over a decade. If one landlord has cost advantage over another, then they will of course probably just take the extra money as extra profit.

> Taxes on land do not affect the supply of the land, this implies they are not passed on and the research literature largely agrees with this.

They provide friction with what can be done with the land, because the cost of owning the land has to be paid. If it is just a land tax, however, you can game it by building as much as possible on it so the landowners who can't build as much as you can subsidize your usage (long term, you either have to build as much as you can on your land, or sell the land to someone who can).

> Taxes on land do not affect the supply of the land, this implies they are not passed on and the research literature largely agrees with this.

Taxes may not affect the amount of land that physically exists, but they absolutely can and do affect the amount of land available for rent as opposed to other income-generating use cases.

On top of that, a tax that applies equivalently to all of the land available to the rental market in a given area will simply push prices upwards across the board, which is likely to just be absorbed by renters given the usually low price elasticity of demand for housing.

A transaction can occur if the price is >= the seller's cost, and <= the value to the buyer. If it's at the minimum, the seller must pass on the tax or not trade, at the maximum (down to the max minus the tax) , the seller can't pass on (all of) the tax and still trade. We observe that landlords make profit, so we are not at the minimum. Are we at the maximum?

I think there are cases where we are in between for significant periods of time. Consider a positive shock to wages. Can landlords put up prices overnight? I don't think so, unless the landlords all co-ordinate to do so, prices will be sticky as there are always some properties in the market, so it's difficult to be the first to increase rent. Unlike a purchase, a landlord who waits for a buyer at the right price is forgoing income during the void. So the market price can be a Schelling Point.

A tax increase, however, happens at the same time to all landlords. All of them would prefer to pass it on, and they know that so they can assume all other landlords will try to pass it on. If the rent is currently below the maximum possible, they will succeed.

How long it takes prices to adjust I don't know. It is an empirical question, but I don't know what data would answer it. But it seems like it took decades for landlords to capture the two-income surplus after it became common for women to have a career.

> We also don't see landlords who own their properties outright (and thus don't have mortgage interest costs) charging lower rents than landlords in the neighborhood with identical properties who have mortgages.

Why would they as long as they find a renter? The market always charges the marginal cost.

> Rent is a function of supply and demand, not a landlord's costs

Of course it does. The landlord's costs factor into the supply made available by landlords.

> When landlords' costs drop, do they drop the rent in response?

Competition says they do.

> Rent is a function of supply and demand, not a landlord's costs,

Do you really believe that landlords will subsidize tenants for a long time?

More to the point, if landlords are losing money, why would anyone build rental housing? Instead, why wouldn't they take housing off the market?

I do acknowledge that rent is a function of supply and demand in the big picture, at least. I don't think the whole foundation of economics is wrong.

Demand for apartments will be constant. Supply of apartments will be constant.

But I think what's going on here is that we are way off the equilibrium point. The supply of good places to rent is far outpaced by demand for them, at most price points, and especially so where all the value is (on the coast). So, this means if you're a landlord and you know you'll owe another $1200 tax to Sacramento this year, you should be very confident that if you raise rent by $100 a month, even if an individual tenant would rather move than pay it, someone who can afford $100 more exists and will almost certainly fill that vacancy promptly. It may represent a slight step down in what their buying power would buy. Like, they may have rented a $3000 apartment before, and they'll now rent what used to be a $2900 apartment from you for $3000.

> otherwise we would expect changes in e.g. mortgage interest costs to be passed on

These aren't a universal cost. When rates change, some landlords' costs go up. But some don't. That lets the latter set the marginal price.

If everyone's costs go up the same amount, it's collusion without communication. In an inelastic market like San Francisco's, you'd expect prices to rise.

If I own £100K worth of land, and the government announces a 1% annual land tax, it's likely the value of my land will fall by about ~25-33% overnight.

If you think that's morally unobjectionable, fine, but I'd love to know what happens when all the landowners who own rural land that doesn't have a profitable development path attached to it can't pay their tax bills. Have the state seize it all?

Or do they just claim it's of negligible value and avoid the tax?

Most mortgages are fixed interest. So it makes since that today's rate change doesn't impact a renter cost in the near future. Probably not until the next time the property is sold.

> Rent is a function of supply and demand

Is there really a market dynamic in rent pricing anymore? I thought that algorithmic collusion had eliminated the need for landlords to compete on price.

Landlord costs drives supply at a given price point so your initial premise is flawed.

This is a prime example of short term thinking, often espoused by politicians.

Landlord costs impact supply.

Profitability of renting effects supply. Reducing the profitability of renting reduces supply which, as you noted, increases price.

> we would expect changes in e.g. mortgage interest costs to be passed on to

This absolutely happens in the UK where variable interest rates affect more people.

> When landlords' costs drop, do they drop the rent in response?

The price of everything is pretty much a ratchet. They never go down again absent some kind of competitive pressure.

That’s one of the ideas of LVT actually: building apartments in land doesn’t increase tax burden, burning the apartments doesn’t lower it

Feel free to quote in the article what supports your summary given the article doesn't actually talk about that

In fact it mentions insurance fraud as the cause...

Additionally it certainly wasn't increasing cost but reduced income which is a very different issue

If landlords can already raise the price of rent, why haven’t they?

> they will find other solutions like mass arson.

Or the more likely option is they will no longer do investment properties as the return it too low vs the risk.

Arson would be irrelevant for land taxes.

It is quite disingenuous to attribute the South Bronx fires as a result of landlords unable to raise rental prices. I mean that is technically true, but your comment makes it sound like it was a result of a particular legal proposal. It was not. It was a period of urban decay in NYC and many cities in the United States. It was the continuation of white flight into suburbs that started in earlier decades. It was a large demographic change with complex causes.

>If they can't be raised, and the costs end up being ruinous to the landlords, they will find other solutions like mass arson

Landlords who have their entitlements to land rents or other natural resource rents they've captured ripped away from them would almost assuredly endorse the use of violence.

Land redistribution (of which this is a form) from the landed rentiers to the landless has historically resulted in brutal violence in order to protect their privileged claim on non-human created wealth.

And if margins are decreased, then... (what happens to new supply?)

I don't think this is why it won't get passed on. In theory the lowest income could leave the state and higher income renters would come in.

But in reality a land value tax incentivizes higher density housing. A single house and an apartment complex pay the exact same amount of tax, while the apartment building can split it up over many occupants. Land value taxes are a very natural hands off way of encouraging the right use of land, empty lots and car parks become unaffordable in highly desirable areas while apartments become relatively very cheap.

In theory the land value tax could be set so the overall taxation is the same as before, but but the distribution is such that the people with massive blocks of land in highly desirable areas foot most of the bill. This would over time make housing cheaper over time as more housing is built to reduce the tax burden.

youd think that, but you can fit another 10 people into that studio apartment

The author makes the comment about the land value tax not being able to be passed on to renters in the context of comparing it to a property tax.

If I’m understanding the argument you’re making here correctly, wouldn’t what you’re saying be equally true for a property tax?

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t think the author would agree with your point since I don’t see how your argument could be true for a land tax, but not for a property tax.

Landlords are competing with each other, and renters can take their next best alternative. If everything gets strictly more expensive, the next best alternative is not necessarily any cheaper...

>In the instance of perfect elasticity of the demand or perfect inelasticity of the supply, the price will remain the same and the entire tax burden is on producers. An example of perfect inelastic supply curve is unimproved land (the supply of improved land is elastic because more or less could be created by investment in improvements) or crude oil. Thus, the whole tax burden is on landowners and owners of the oil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

It's literally econ 101 that says landowners will bear the burden of a land value tax.

Supply of land is perfectly inelastic and land value tax is not a marginal cost of production so does not change MR=MC.

It completely solves the problem. I recommend you read “progress and poverty” to get a better understanding of it.

You don’t seem to understand how it works or what it does.

The idea is that valuable land will be utilized better.

It's strange that people always make this argument for wealth taxes, but you rarely hear it about property taxes. If "net worth is not real" neither is equity in real estate.

The actual mistake is pretending like they can't leverage those shares to access fiat, for example securities-backed loans. The proceeds aren't taxable income, the bank gets its interest, and the latter is typically substantially cheaper than realizing the shares and paying capital gains tax. Meanwhile, they keep the assets, which on average continue appreciating.

That’s just a decision we made about what is taxable.

Purely an accounting artifact. We can pass a wealth tax tomorrow and it’ll suddenly be taxable.

Net worth is real money, and is usually a very accurate measure of what people can realize. There are a few outliers who own so much that they’d move the market if they sold it all. Selling 2% to cover taxes? Not going to move the market very much.

They play a clever little game where they borrow against those shares to live on. Since there’s no realized gain, there’s no income (and the interest is deductible against any incidental gains that might happen along the line). Then when they die, the sale of shares to pay off the loan is a non-taxable event and the estate value is reduced so the heirs won’t pay as much (or any) estate tax.

Try this - go to a bank and say “I’d like to borrow money using my 401k/Roth IRA as collateral. If I fall behind in payments you can liquidate the entire thing, including penalties, and make yourself whole.”

You’d think they’d jump over each other to lend money against such a stable, secure asset right?

Except they’ll say “sorry, this isn’t allowed. IRS treats borrowing against an untaxed retirement account as an early withdrawal, even if the asset itself stays untouched.”

Turns out the government fully understands the concepts of stocks, gains, unrealized net worth and more, and has laws on the books to make sure you are being taxed appropriately for them.

Meanwhile billionaires have convinced you – through their machinery of media, influencers, politicians and more – that this exact same reasoning absolutely cannot be applied to their own wealth. Because it’s “paper money”. It doesn’t exist. There’s nothing to tax. Just cannot be done, or it’ll bend the laws of spacetime.

You are ignoring the most common approach, borrow against the asset. In that case the sufficient assets turn into essentially unlimited untaxed cashflow. Especially with how the market has been lately, the gains erase any burden of the loan. Sounds like a broken tax system to me.

Yeah, it's all illiquid illusory non-wealth when they have to pay taxes, but when they want to buy a newspaper or social network they suddenly have 40 billion in hand.

Forced liquidation hurts more than the sticker price, but with billionaire taxes, that's a feature, not a bug. They make the most sense as a check on concentrated power rather than a revenue driver.

> Net worth is not real.

Well then why are people able to borrow against it and then also deduct taxes on the interest on that borrowed amount?

Also I pay property taxes. Somehow the worth of the property goes up every year and gets gets taxed accordingly. Then why can’t wealth get the same treatment?

I dont know why it's so complicated to just say "Money is Money when it's Liquid, tax it then". Any loans on wealth should be taxed..nationwide.

But even in California's case this doesn't feel like anything anybody would object to. Given how much California Billionaires liquidate using loans on their wealth, I bet, they could do a middle class tax cut too to offset it a little bit too.

I am little baffled as to why the politicos haven't latched on to this whole-heartedly. You can still proudly say you're taxing Billionaire wealth. Because you are! Just more sensibly.

that net worth is still power, which is even more valuable than money.

if you are claiming the high net worth, almost certainly you have raised significant actual money on things you own. a wealth tax means that if you dont actually think your business is worth a billion, you cant raise money as if it was.

thays a net good thing.

if peter theil is lying about being rich and he only has a couple hundred thousand bucks to his name, the publiv overall deserves to know, and it should cost him quite a lot to raise or borrow money.

these people are commiting fraud and should be forced into texas prisons without AC because theyre lying to banks about the value of their assets, and the bankers too beed to go to those same prisons because theyre defrauding their depositors.

this is only a good thing for routing how whos lying about their worth

I’d be willing to take some of the “not real” money.

> There is nothing to tax until they sell some shares.

This is a very strange claim when we have property taxes. Shares are property so they can be taxed just like houses and land.

> There is nothing to tax until they sell some shares.

That's tautological. I mean, it's true under current federal tax law. It's obviously not true under new California law, which is what the article is about.

Clearly the government can tax non-cash assets, and they do all the time. People act like "wealth taxes" are some moral horror or logical impossibility, while tossing their mortgage statement into a big file and pretending to ignore the property tax line on the escrow account.

Are there practical problems like "wealth has feet"? Sure. Taxation is hard and all systems can be gamed. But let's not pretend that there's a greater principle at work here.

Absolutely ridiculous statement, it's not an accurate measure but it's definitely a good measure of money.

If you have 100B to your name even if it's post IPO stock in a possibly ponzi company that's your current wealth and you can easily convert a staggering portion of it into material realized wealth depending on several factors.

If I use cash to buy 1B dollars in Microsoft shares today, am I not worth a Billion dollars...?

The value may not be exactly convertible agreed so let's just force everyone to book all gains every year, and force sell a net percent of your share.

Not 100B$ of share, but 2% of 100 Million units of stock that you own. Why does this not work?

If I take 2% of your shares why can't it work the same way? I can then pick and sell it over the next year or two however I see fit, in case of govt they can slowly sell back this share to not affect the prices too much.

I am baffled by the fact that we have a tractible quantity and people call it hard to use to measure money.

Paintings, Jewels, etc. are what's truly the hard part of the wealth equation not the stocks, which is over 99% of what a wealthy billionaire owns.

I am not even considering pro or against taxes on billions people make but it's ridiculous to say stocks aren't money? Then what is money really... Currency is also traded, it's value can also go up or down....

Another thing with taxing unrealized gains is that no one in the government is willing to return any money if the unrealized losses happened. Somehow it's all hunky-dory when someone loses 1M in stock value, but as soon as someone's stock went up 1M they all want to tax it right away.

> Net worth is not real.

Good way to find out it this is the case: take it away. Not real, right? Why would they mind?

Simply let them pay the tax with shares. Problem solved!

I hate this argument.

Would you rather have 1M dollars in cash or 10B in stock that you can't sell?

Nah, just make them pay taxes when it's valued as collateral and it's over a certain amount. Anyone saying you can't do that is lying to you.

>Net worth is not real.

You wont mind if we tax it then will you?

You do, of course.

p.s. liquidity != wealth. try not to confuse them.

The broken part is that there is third world-level poverty on the streets outside Google’s offices, working class people cannot afford to live in the Bay Area, and a fifth of California lives in poverty.

Yes. No one person should have assets worth as much as the GDP of Qatar.

If you taxed him half of that wealth he'd still have single digit percentage of the company.

The broken tax system is that I get taxed about 50% on my marginal income dollar --- the system doesn't wait for me to spend it first --- but when his stock portfolio appreciates by a dollar, he's not taxed! Not until he sells in order to spend. Why are we taxing labor so much more than capital?

And no, I don't think that inventing pagerank really entitles two people to $200B. Although in their case I don't think they've done as much harm with it as some other billionaires.

The part where he has access to essentially unlimited untaxed cashflow by borrowing against that asset. Especially with how the market has been lately, the gains erase any burden of the loan. Something has be done about this, at least. Otherwise broken sounds about right.

whats its mean to be kneecapped?

like, if a company's market cap gets too big, the law should stop applying to them? they should be allowed to start their own militaries and enforce martial law a la east india company?

how does a founder keep a single digit of their company after theyve been dead for a thousand years?

These arent nearly as absolute as you are making them to be.

a founder can keep their percent by paying their taxes with other money they have, or by decreasing the worth of their company. theyre a founder, they have control. Maybe founders wont be so keen to enshittify their products if theres a downside to continued growth forever. considering google dropped "dont be evil" in exchange for making larry page's 1% grow for the sake of growing, how's society at large benefiting from continuing to subsidize it?

> Companies should get kneecapped if their market cap gets too high?

Yes. They should be broken up because competition is good for consumers and society. If we had functional anti-trust enforcement Google would not have a near-monopoly on search ads where they own both the ad inventory and the marketplace where you have to buy those placements.

Yes perhaps there should be wealth caps. Did Larry Page really do 5% of all that labor that made google as big as it is? And should a single company get so big and have so much power? Yes, I get that they took risks and invested early, and we shouldn't take away that type of incentive, but perhaps it should have caps, or an S curve tax schedule.

>Stop the fraud and the corruption and the incompetence and then let's talk about increasing taxes.

Zero taxes is the only right answer. Any talk of taxation means that you have already given in to being exploited, because it's a slippery slope. Let's be realistic - corruption will never end. The only way to reduce it is to starve the beast.

> One should first ask permission, and, if we are in a good mood, we might "let them" pursue their happiness.

yes... this is called the law...

Lots of peoples "pursuit of happiness" is hindered by the law because we've deemed it not good for society.

And care about the rule of law. You cannot pass retroactive laws, you cannot pass laws that target individual people. If you pass a general law (which could very well have reasonable objections), people have to have a chance to leave.

"I'm passing this law that is effective the exact millisecond I sign it, tough shit if you don't like it" is tyranny and despotism. But based on your comment I think you know that.

Or if people can easily move. Or if you want the next generation of startups to operate in your state.

the FTB is anything but timid and wimpy

if the voters and legislature have the “bravery” to pass the wealth tax law, it will be aggressively enforced by the FTB

the second-order effects, whatever they may be, would be clearly visible within a couple years.

> In its ideal form, this tax would capture and redistribute the annual rental value of land; that is, the recurring value of the land excluding the value of any buildings or other improvements on top of it.

> but you see the same basic patterns everywhere. Land in the city center is worth much, much more than outlying areas.

The calculation of the "unimproved value" always perplexed me.. it seems like you're not taxed for the things you build on your land, but instead for the things other people built around your land. After all, why would property in a city be valuable if not for all the high rises, subways, and office buildings?

Is it not that the gains are unrealized? If they sold the house they would pay capital gains tax?

I think not wanting to pay some yearly tax on that $1.4 million because the government pretends that the same as having $1.4M cash in the bank, or making $1.4M in a year, is fine.

Not wanting to pay the property taxes associated with a $1.5M home is the problem.

what reasonable persons wants to pay taxes? Just because you like to pay extra doesn't me we should.

I mean, I do too. Mine just happens to have been bought before the last inflationary cycle.

Not even the poor. Really everyone working. I would much rather sleep all day and live off of a pile of money than to show up somewhere and do something for money. That's the tax -- 35% of your waking hours are now at the service of someone else. And yet, they charge income tax on that. Stay home and live off a stash of money in your mattress, 0% tax, 0 obligations. Wake up and commute to work, 35% of your week gone, 35% of your "income" gone.

I am not even that mad that I personally have to pay taxes. I enjoy funding government programs! I think I owe society something! But it sure doesn't make sense that already being rich makes you immune to giving back to the society that made you that way.

The numbers on wealth distribution are shocking, to say the least. I think wealth taxes without loopholes are a really good idea in the current circumstances, infact I believe it may not go far enough. And I think there has to be a global concerted effort to tax wealth.

The working class are starting to choke and drown in financial stress, and this will only get worse. Capital naturally accretes and we've never had this level of capital concentration in human history.

Sales tax and the gasoline tax are use taxes. They are about as fair (democratic) as you’re gonna get because it’s based upon use most the other taxes whether they’re high or low, you can’t escape from particularly if you are the average person in the middle, and once again, if you benefit from capital gains, that is a huge life-changing benefit, which most working people don’t have. Vote yes. on proposition 40 if you are in California the less than .001 and even the 1% will easily survive.

Property is literally a wealth tax on an asset that can’t move away

why is it a burden when they are already collecting sales tax? They just change one number but nothing else changes.

As someone who lives in California. Goodbye please move to one of those red states. Florida? This percenter will stay in California, and if I had to, the only other two places I would go would be Washington or Oregon, and if the United States was still on good terms with Canada, British Columbia which doesn’t look too bad, but I’m staying on the west coast of North America.

214 out of 40 million people, there is no need to carry water or suck up to them.

The Noe valley bathroom was enough of an anomaly that it made the news. Do you have actual evidence that California taxes are not well spent?

If you are a billionaire or 100 millionaire, you probably got rich in California, Washington, or Oregon, or probably in the northeast of America in the last 50-60 years, if prop 40 passes, it will have the same effect as prop 13, a positive effect long-term that is, if you manage your finances, most of the states in the Union you are out of luck. why is that?

California spends an insane amount on combating homelessness with nothing to show for it. This is a difficult problem to solve for sure; I'm not an expert in this field and would be speaking out of turn were I to suggest preferable alternatives. Suffice it to say that billions of dollars are being flushed down the toilet doing whatever is being done right now.

High speed rail.

From what I can tell the residency change for a billionaire is about how often you fly to your various homes. Zuckerberg I think hasn't gotten rid of his Palo Alto or Lake Tahoe property, he just added a FL house and will have a cap on how many days per year he's in CA right? This isn't like a normal person with 1 house relocating.

> Do you really think driving people with money out of your state will actually be good for you and the state?

If your state is selling 500sqft condos for $3,000 a month, then yes, it probably would increase the average quality-of-life for that state's residents.

If you are retired and did manage to buy a house and are not rich, proposition 13 is the only thing keeping you in your house.

The tax system in Texas is a better system. Sure, Texas has lots of problems. That doesn't mean there is nothing to learn from Texas.

I live in Texas. I don't like the restrictive laws. Texas could learn a lot for California, just not in the areas of taxation

> Shari-yall

Made me laugh while drinking; messy, but worth it for the smiles I'll have every time I remember it! Outstanding job, internet stranger.

It’s pretty easy not to murder babies.

Starting a business self-selects for people that desire money (over other benefits).

The purpose of a business is money (otherwise you start a hobby or charity or something non-businessey).

Being very successful at business is a selection bias for people that are highly competitive at chasing money.

There's a bunch of traits in very wealthy self-made people due to the filter they have run through.

Tax too much, and we kill the golden geese of the economy. Examples abound around the world of crappy economies that can't afford good socialist stuff because they've demotivated the rain makers.

capitalism itself is covetousness and greed.

not good believer in christ would ever participate, when jesus made it clear you are supposed to freely give away everything you own to the poorest among us

Don't argue something the GP didn't say.

There are plenty of other taxation schemes that are progressive and more durable and effective than a wealth tax.

The main reason we're here is because talking about reforming Prop 13 is political suicide, even if that's the best way to fix CA's budget.

Truckin straight to the trash heap where you can sort recycled cans by hand for a living. What an abysmal vision.

You know the extraction is more like 10000-to-1 than 1-to-1.

But in essence I do believe that I (and thousands of others) could have had at least $100k more net worth if they hadn't monopolized all user-acquisition channels and if they hadn't helped bring about the many laws and regulations which made this possible.

I have no ill feelings towards them but I just don't want them in my state competing against me for limited resources using money which they acquired through an unjust scheme which I was coercively made a part of but which I never agreed to and have been protesting for almost a decade (on deaf ears).

It's not personal or even saying anything negative about their character or abilities. From my perspective it's just pure self-preservation. They either need to contribute more tax to make up for the injustice or they leave.

When they sell their assets, it makes those assets more affordable for the rest of us. So any forced sale is good for society. I don't see any issues with it. We were/are forced to prop up their stocks through government contracts, grants and regulatory monopolies... So they should contribute something on their end too.

And I don't care about the "jobs they create" - They created jobs for my competitors to get easy money in cushy jobs. I want those jobs gone too! I don't want FAANG employees bidding up house prices in my area.

I only want to compete against people who are playing by the same rules as me! I don't want to compete against people who can rewrite the rulebook as we go, to suit them.

Many, many years ago multiple generations would live in one home that may have even been built by a generation that is long dead.

What are the proposals for accomplishing this?

Did tariffs raise prices? Or did prices stay the same because "if the market demand is such that it allows them to raise [prices], they'd already have done it"?

If they can't raise rents to cover expenses plus "enough profit to make this PITA worth it" then things (slowly over time) grind to a halt.

In Massachusetts it’s legal to pass on real property tax increases during the term of a residential lease, provided the lease contains specific clauses. (Most leases do, as a result.) And most commercial leases are triple-net, meaning the tenant is also on the hook for increases.

I would be surprised if most land consumption taxes (whether structured as property or land) would not get directly passed through to the beneficial consumers of that land quite quickly, or for their privilege to consume that land to be terminated/non-renewed at the expiration.

The article is. It's an argument for the main tax being on real property.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_tax

Because TFA ignored the problem.

I’ve long thought if you doubled tax revenue or halved it the public services rendered would be the same. Tax revenue is not the problem.

How much of California's budget is "giving the money to NGOs"?

Congragulations you have just rediscovered conservatism.

Spending problem? What spending problem?

https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/california-high-speed-r...

Well, the general economic consensus is that for income taxes, the revenue-maximizing peak of the Laffer curve is around 65-70% [1]. Revenue maximization isn't necessarily the right primary goal, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve#Income_tax_rate_a...

Same back at you. Clearly you think they’re too high. So what is the correct ratio?

The straightforward answer is there is no correct ratio. The best tax regime is the one that allows for sufficient funding of necessary and desired services and long-term economic investment while also balancing wealth creation with wealth inequality. That number isn’t fixed and it’s clear that it shouldn’t be evenly borne by the population as a whole.

How else are we going to support public infrastructure and society?

The famine is unrelated to the land distribution but also the farm land distribution didn't last. They changed course and put the land into collectives and it is still in collectives today so the famine cannot be blamed on collectives.

My understanding is the famine was essentially the middle managers of these collectives over stating yields and being too afraid to admit their lies. To maintain the lie, they shipped off food while the farmers starved.

Famine along the yellow river and yangtze river has been happening for thousands of years across all dynasties, its specifically what land distribution was meant to fix, and since 1960s there hasn't been a famine since. My parents and grandparents lived through it and left cities to work in countryside fields during the cultural revolution. You tell me how the famine fits in and I'll let you know if you're accurate or not.

My point is that a single land value tax would have the same effect as piecemeal improvements to current tax portfolio - none of it would fix the inertia already priced and baked into the system.

Taiwan did not have anywhere near the land distribution occur under CKS/CCK, nor the same veracity of landlord clique ownership. And, you're further wrong in that a big part of white terror was specifically due to 外省人 owners of factories and farms, from land stolen from the aborigines. The white terror wasn't by any means less violent and senseless than cultural revolution.