France needs to read my paper

rjbwork

A land value tax seems like such an obvious solution to so much that ails our societies. Allowing legacy land owners to accrue vast sums of untaxed value due to the economic activity of everyone else in the vicinity of their land creates such perverse incentives. A great example near me is in midtown Atlanta. For decades there have been empty lots that just sat empty and empty and empty until enough economic growth happened around them that their owners finally sold it for development. Even today, there are empty lots and vacant decrepit buildings in some of the most valuable locations for hundreds of miles because we are not taxing the value of the land these people are accruing.

yuppiepuppie

Is this just theory? Are there thriving societies that do this? Curious, as I dont want my cynicism to creep in...

Lucasoato

> France needs to read my paper We Italians should be taking some notes as well... :)

Dunewalnut22

Denmark has a land tax (grundskyld) and Estonia taxes land only, not buildings. Both real, both modest rates though, nowhere near the full rent capture Georgists want. Pennsylvania towns did split-rate too with mixed results.

gpvos

Yes, land value tax has been advocated by many, but has any country implemented this and made it their main (or at least a major) source of tax income? Why not?

A_D_E_P_T

People don't like land value taxes for the same reason the anti-property-tax movement is in the news these days: It reverses 100 years of pro-homeownership messaging, and it turns landowners into renters from the government. Wouldn't a better solution be to more heavily tax voluntary vices? Gambling, drugs, prediction markets, cash-sink "luxury" products, parasitic mobile games, etc.? I think it's fine by just about everybody if those particular industries -- the real "bad capitalism" -- become almost unprofitable by default. The secondary layer of "bad capitalism" is in finance, speculation, and even legal services. There's no reason that those, also, cannot be much more heavily taxed. At the same time, do the extremely smart thing that Asian economies -- China and Korea foremost among them -- have been practicing: Subsidize technical and industrial innovation, strategic industries, etc. Just cut the red tape and fund it.

28304283409234

It should be prohibited to create youtube voice-over videos with annoying and distracting background music.

rattynm

I'm pretty sure the issue isn't economic know-how, it's all politics. We're simply stuck with a hung parliament, and while each party keeps playing in their political interests, nothing will happen. It will take a while until we get a functional political system (i.e. parliament needs to realize coalitions are absolutely necessary to do anything), so let's just hope the french economy doesn't collapse in the mean time and its debt doesn't blow up.

jtbayly

It is not at all clear to me that taxing land equals taxing the rent seeking portion of the economy.

beans6543

Funny timing. The NZ Election is coming up on the 7th of November, and there is a party campaigning on a Land Value Tax and UBI [0]. Despite never being in parliament before, they're polling at 5% [1], just above the threshold to make it in (but would have quite a lot of leverage over the next government.) It will be very interesting to watch and see if this does get implemented. [0]: https://www.opportunity.org.nz/tax-reset [1]: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/politics_election-2026/2035492/ne...

bvcp

lvt is too ham fisted, what your really want to tax isinefficient land usage, eg your land is zoned for higher density or industrial etc and you fail to deploy it as such then you should pay a tax for that. this encourages investment and discourages land banking. moving that land into those who will deploy it and lower the overall cost of doing things overall

giantg2

Even though this paper has scarcity in the title, it doesn't seem to investigate how UBI affects scarcity of resources that are not labor. Natural resources and production volume are essentially finite when looking at a current timeframe. A UBI will increase prices as demand for finite resources stays the same or increases and the money supply to consumers increases. Wasn't there another post a week ago talking about how UBI won't save us from automation? I was much more inclined to believe that one.

petcat

We just saw mass protests in Spain over an elderly lady that couldn't afford the new rent in her desirable City apartment. What do you think will happen in France when suddenly lots of elderly people can't afford the taxes on the house and property that they've lived in their entire lives? Any discussion about taxes is a complete non-starter. France needs less taxes, not more. Their entire society and business environment is completely taxed out and they still can't afford their public welfare and benefits. They need to reduce public spending in order to maybe one day, also reduce taxes.

roenxi

Since we're stating the obvious today... Good economic policy is largely context independent. It is almost always a good time to tax economic rents and deregulate starting/running a business. The basic formula for success has been well established for several centuries and even the Communists managed to figure it out a big chunk of that. It is not surprising that the established government figures seem confused. If they've let the situation devolve to the point where there is a visible problem it is strong evidence that they just don't care about good economic policy. Not in the top 10 list of priorities. And to couple that with a forecast, that probably isn't going to change any time soon.

MiroslavPokorny

Going to guess this is mostly about the housing problem that basically all modern societies are facing from Korea to Australia to Spain. There are two sides of this problem, cities where everyone wants to go and old towns where everyone is leaving. Capitalism says buyers pay and when there are too many customers, the price goes up. This is what we are seeing, its that simple. Some suggest to add some sort of tax to owners, but this wont help, they will of course just pass the cost onto their renters. Its pretty obvious owners dont care if you cant pay someone else will, its that simple. The REAL problem is the concentration of living in big cities and the fact there are too many people. The same is also true of wages, wages dont go up because there will always be someone else who will do the job for the same or less be it actual wages or extra hours and other negatives. The system is broken, we have to appreciate that all this centralisation of everything and anything is the problem. Slowly or maybe its quickly everything is becoming a monopoly of some kind. Major cities are becoming the monopoly of employment and work, previoously it was spread across more places and more industries. Now its becoming concentrated. In Spain that means everyone wants to move to Madrid or Barca and the consequences mean too many people and too few homes. People want to live in certain places for their advantages, big cities also mean more commuting, and people want less travel time, but that means they pay more in rent. You cant win, if you have one then you lose on the other. THis is always the case in everything from commuting time, to rent, in the end most of the people lose most of the time. What we are seeing is what happens when you have a monopoly. THe problem is people cant see who or what are the monopolies. THey think a monopoly must be a single company or person, they cant comprehend its something above that at the nationwide level, namely the structure of each country. A perfect example is everyone in NZ is moving to Auckland, and then everyone in NZ also moves to Australia. Of course its not everyone but its alot and this affects the balance both in NZ and also in places like Sydney which grow even bigger. The answer is to stop the centralisation, and break things up.

keybored

All capitalism is bad. > And then the policy you want is simple: Tax the bad capitalism, don’t tax the good capitalism. Tax isn’t punishment. Imagine a company which has a thousand trucks. The trucks themselves are ethically pure EVs. They pay the land value tax for the parking lot and the auto shop. But they don’t indirectly pay taxes for the use of the roads? That’s a massive wear on the road infrastructure.

pyrale

Dear Wilson, As a country, I host a somewhat large and educated group of humans. Some of them are economists like you. They most certainly have heard about georgism before. The current issue is not so much that they don’t have enough ideas, but that they can’t agree on which ones to apply. Sincerely, France.

incognito_robot

> And then the policy you want is simple Any time anyone says that complex societal issues can be solved with simple policy changes, alarm bells go off in my head. By that I don't mean that simple solutions to complex problems do not exist, rather that getting them approved and implemented is often not so straight forward as some would like to think. Human societal systems are complex and very messy. Watching the introduction of the embedded video gives me the feeling that the author is perhaps still studying economics and so it does come across quite hubristic to say to have a definitive answer in a early career paper that has yet to go through rigorous peer review.

Zealotux

France needs to stop spending 57% of its GDP on public expenditure while experiencing virtually no economic growth. It needs to stop handing out massive pensions and generally treating pensioners like royalty. The French government needs to stop spending money it doesn't have when it can barely keep the lights on. New taxes in a country where the GPD is already taxed at 45%, please, give me a break.

KolmogorovComp

The paper seems stuck with the long debunked idea that all market actors are rational and centred on economic values, but that is utterly incorrect. Similarly it states value comes from either work or land, but value can also be created out of thin air. It is called branding. Especially for France and its luxury industry. You take two identical handbag, one is from LV, the other an unknown brand, one will cost 1,500$, the other 150$.