There are more efficient ways to achieve the same and get a bunch of other positive side effects in one go: Land Value Taxation. Henry George proposed it already in 1879 in his book "Progress and Poverty".
From a dev perspective, I see your point. Redmine was great for the reason that we documented a lot better inside tickets because it was lower friction.
Only that doesn’t happen in real life. People on the brink of poverty don’t inherit property. And if they do, they can always sell it and put that money to better use.
I am talking from experience. You are wrong on both counts.
What makes you think that poor people don't inherit property? There are lots of people with very low incomes but who own a house.
And no they don't just sell it. Why sell the only house you have? Or maybe it is not their house but it is a piece of property that they have always owned and which they use as a garden or a yard or storage.
They don't sell it because they'd rather have a piece of land to enjoy then some money in the bank. It might be their only luxury in an otherwise frugal life.
This only happens because our terrible land use is inflating the real estate market + terrible policy like prop 13.
In an LVT world, the value of land (overall-inflation-adjusted) should basically track the population, and virtually no one will own land they could no longer afford to buy.
In which case you should sell your property and make bank on what Walmart would be willing to pay for it. (If you wouldn't make bank then your taxes wouldn't be prohibitively high)
Why would Walmart make a deal when they could just wait for or lobby the county to valuate your land at some excessive value and force a sale in distress?
LVT is just bad policy that sounds ok in concept. In my city, inner city residential property is near worthless once it falls below section 8 standards. The taxes are low too as result. With a LVT scheme, someone would cook up some “true” value subjectively, which has obvious potential for abuse.
It's really the same as eminent domain. Wal-Mart wants your property for a store? They just need to offer to pay enough that the LVT is unaffordable to you. You'll have no choice but to sell, even if you don't want the money and would rather keep the property.
What is a better use than property? I though property was the best investment one could make. The government taking property because of a lack of income to pay taxes is heinous.
You most certainly should be paying the equivalent of 10 households. You deny 9 others the ability to use the land.
If you have real use for the land, paying the lvt won’t be an issue. If you can’t use it efficiently, an lvt will incentivise you to sell what you don’t use.
I disagree, if a town with 1000 households are interspersed with 100 farms, those 100 farms should not be paying an equal amount of money to the town finances as the 1000 households. It just doesn't make sense. They should certainly be paying for the right to have exclusive access to that land, but those 100 farmers do not put as much of a financial strain on the town budget as those 1000 households
> those 100 farms should not be paying an equal amount of money to the town finances as the 1000 households.
If those 100 farms take up the same land area as 1000 households, then yes they absolutely should. Hell, they'll even have an easier time doing so, since they're (ostensibly) using that land productively (and if not, they absolutely should be) and thus be more able to internalize that opportunity cost they've imposed on others.
And if they can't produce enough to internalize that opportunity cost, then all the more reason for someone else to be given the opportunity to do so.
Would that happen? 100 smallish farms can be a pretty big area, it would be atypical for 1000 additional residences to be mixed in (they would tend to concentrate).
Also, when I lived in a rural township there weren't any household services, the township did things like look after a couple of roads and zoning and had a little park. We had a well and septic and contracted with a private trash hauler.
They do - if there could be 5000 more households on the land occupied by the farmers, and paying that much more tax revenue to the town, that could be viewed as a financial strain.
It's unlikely that there is pent-up demand for 5000 more households in a rural farm area. Farm land just sits there. It doesn't "cost" the local town/county anything.
> It's unlikely that there is pent-up demand for 5000 more households in a rural farm area.
Okay, then all the more reason for those farms to sell off some unused acres to alleviate what little pent-up demand there is. And if there are no unused acres, then it's best to work on getting more productivity per acre to make some unused acres.
The agricultural sector is in dire need of a kick in the rear to encourage better land efficiency; LVT is one heck of a kick.
> Farm land just sits there.
Then it ain't a farm, in which case all the more reason to sell off that land and make it available to someone else.
> It doesn't "cost" the local town/county anything.
It imposes an opportunity cost on everyone who would more effectively use that land, including other farmers with better methods (and also, more broadly, anyone else wanting places to live and/or work and/or play).
